Sylpheed: a pleasant surprise

[Lou]

Yesterday i moved to Sid from Etch, which is nothing important because every month i get restless and switch around. Everything went fine till i had to send an e-mail and discovered that icedove was useless a this point in time due to numerous bugs.

I promptly uninstalled it, and installed Sylpheed. Sylpheed was a surprise, light, very, very fast, and it did the job perfectly, i was impressed, i guess i'll use it from now on. I guess something good always comes out of something bad

[Bulkley]

I have used Sylpheed for years and really like it. I do have one complaint: while the addressbook is easy to set up, it is difficult to re-organize at a later date. Further, the addressbook is incompatable with those of other mailers (Icedove, Evolution, etc.) so you can't simply transfer it over and bail out. Still, I will continue to use Sylpheed (partly because the addressbook has locked me in).

While you are still at an early stage, try Sylpheed-Claws. This is the version that tests the cutting edge. No guarantees. Last time I tried Sylpheed-Claws it wouldn't read my fonts properly.

[goweropolis]

I have used Sylpheed at my home computer for a while, but I don't use it nearly as much as Gmail. I do love how quick and responsive it is. And it has junk mail filtering too which is cool.

Sylpheed-Claws is now Claws Mail. "It was initially the bleeding-edge testbed for new Sylpheed features, but evolved enough to now be a completely separate program."

[Pobega]

Now try Mutt. It's my favorite mail program, I'll never be able to go back to using conventional mail programs anymore.

[pcalvert]

Yes, Sylpheed and Sylpheed-Claws (aka Claws Mail) are very good. Now if we could only get those guys to make an equally impressive web browser to replace Firefox/Iceweasel...

[pcalvert]

Now try Mutt. It's my favorite mail program, I'll never be able to go back to using conventional mail programs anymore.

I use Mutt for reading local mail, and for checking email at an old account that has only shell access (no POP3 or IMAP). I would never use it as my main email client, though.

Phil

[AgenT]

While this is a wild guess, Sylpheed probably uses plain text for the address book. If so, then "importing" and "exporting" should not be difficult with some grep, sed, and/or awk "magic".

As per mutt. Yes, mutt is indeed man's best friend. But only when you tame it! Wild mutts are no fun.

[Bulkley]

While this is a wild guess, Sylpheed probably uses plain text for the address book.

No, it's *.xml.

[gillbates]

i started using it too...i like it very much. could you tell me how to tell sylpheed-claws-gtk2 to save my mailboxes in a folder I specify rather than the default /HOME directory? I cant find an option to select a folder of my choice anywhere... i might have missed it when i started it for the fist time...

thanks...

[Telemachus]

I with Pobega: Mutt with Abook and Urlview for email. Throw in a nice Spamassassin and Procmail set up, add a few lines to your .bashrc or .zshrc to get email notifications in your console. It's delicious!

[Hevoos]

I with Pobega: Mutt with Abook and Urlview for email. Throw in a nice Spamassassin and Procmail set up, add a few lines to your .bashrc or .zshrc to get email notifications in your console. It's delicious!

Could you please explain or post a link? This sounds very interesting!

[AgenT]

My first mutt
The Mutt E-Mail Client Manual
Mutt Wiki
Learn Mutt
Mutt Primer
Mutt Printable Keybindings Reference(PDF)

[Telemachus]

I with Pobega: Mutt with Abook and Urlview for email. Throw in a nice Spamassassin and Procmail set up, add a few lines to your .bashrc or .zshrc to get email notifications in your console. It's delicious!

Could you please explain or post a link? This sounds very interesting!

Here is a quick link, but I will get back with more later:

http://www.lativy.org/articles/debian-mutt/

Quick update: Bash and Zshell can check your mail every x seconds and print a specific message. Say for example, that you are in a shell a fair amount and want to know if you get email in a specific folder. Put something like this in your .profile or .bashrc:

# Check for mail in Jmail
MAILPATH=~/Maildir/Jmail'?New mail from Jo'
MAILCHECK=1

MAILPATH and MAILCHECK are built into Bash. MAILPATH tells the shell where to look and the '?Message here.' part tells it what to say. You can write whatever you want there (The question mark is part of the syntax, but it is not printed to the screen. Maye that's obvious, maybe not.). Mine here is set to the folder that my wife's email goes to, but you can set it to any folder you like (a general inbox, work email, etc.). You can also set different messages for different folders, if you care to. MAILCHECK tells the shell how often to check, in seconds. The default is 60 seconds, and apparently I really want to see my wife's email as soon as it arrives.
One thing to remember though is that if the shell is inactive, that is, if it is open but you are not typing on it or running commands, then it won't post the message. What happens is that say Bash checks for mail at 2:05 and there is a new mail, but you are not doing anything on the shell. The shell says nothing. If at 4:15, you run "pwd", then the shell tells you your current working directory and then and only then prints out your message, "New mail from so and so." after it runs "pwd". Also if you are in vim or any other ncurses terminal, then you get no message at all for the length of that process. Bottom line, it's a feature with limited usefulness, but I like it, so there it is. I know it works in Zshell also, but at the moment I cannot recall if the syntax for MAILPATH is any different. Mutt to me is the definition of Linux/Unix: it is infinitely configurable, if you care to do the work to play with it. This is a nice small example of it.

[pcalvert]

i started using it too...i like it very much. could you tell me how to tell sylpheed-claws-gtk2 to save my mailboxes in a folder I specify rather than the default /HOME directory? I cant find an option to select a folder of my choice anywhere... i might have missed it when i started it for the fist time...

Here's how I would do that:

Configuration > Edit Accounts
Select account and click Edit button
Click on Receive tab
Change path for Default Inbox to where you want your mail to go.

I am using an older version that comes with Sarge, so it might be somewhat different for you.

Phil

[AgenT]

MAILPATH and MAILCHECK are built into Bash.

MAILCHECK only works with mbox, right? It does not work with maildir?

[Telemachus]

MAILCHECK only works with mbox, right? It does not work with maildir?

It works with maildir - actually that's the only way I've ever used it, since I don't use mbox mailboxes. I just checked a few manuals/references, and I don't see any limitation on the format of mailboxes. Maybe that was an earlier version of Bash?

[AgenT]

Maybe that was an earlier version of Bash?

Possibly. It has been years since I have tried using MAILCHECK. Thank you for making that clear.