Any POSIX compliant UNIX or similar OS, e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris. GTK+ 2.4.0 or later (GTK+ 2.6.0 or later is recommended). A recent ANSI C compiler (gcc 2.7.2.3 should also work). Note: it is reported that Sun C will not compile Sylpheed. Optionally:

Otherwise ./configure will fail. See also the INSTALL file that is being distributed with the Sylpheed tarball.

Note that as Sylpheed now supports the Windows platform, you can also compile it using MinGW.

When you run Sylpheed for the first time, it will ask you where you want to store your mailboxes. The default is $HOME/Mail. You can change this to anything you like as long as it is a valid directory name.

Please note: When Sylpheed is executed for the first time, it automatically creates the configuration files under $HOME/.sylpheed-2.0/, and asks you the location of mailbox. The default is $HOME/Mail. If some files which are non-MH format already exist on the directory, you will have to specify another location.

Sylpheed reports such an error if it can't create the default mailboxes (inbox, outbox, etc ...). This can be because $HOME/Mail already contains files with the same names. This occurs when switching from Kmail to Sylpheed, in this case backup and remove the existing Mail directory or use another name for the Sylpheed mail directory.

After loading Sylpheed for the first time, you can add an e-mail account by clicking theConfiguration menu. Select the option Create new account and fill in the appropriate fields.

The number is unlimited. The limit is reached when your computer stops responding.

You have to click the Execute button. The other solution: in the configuration settings (Common preferences->Details->Interface), you have to check the Execute immediately when moving or deleting messages box.

Yes, you can. In the configuration per account you can specify the exact port addresses you want to use.

Yes. You can switch it on and off in the View menu, just select Thread view or press Ctrl-T.

Absolutely. This is no problem.

You need to create at least one account in order to send. (This is a wonderful gotcha on LAN installs with only a local mailbox feed).

Copy patch to sylpheed directory. Apply the patch as follows:

% patch -p0 < some.patch

Or, if it's gzipped:

% gzip -dc some.patch.gz | patch -p0

Run ./autogen.sh, remove the generated /config.cache file (unless you want to install in prefix /usr/local). Run ./configure with the appropriate options and then make. (Text as found on the former Sylpheed patches page.)

You have to have a package called libcompface installed, so this is available for compiling into Sylpheed. Note that the exact name of the package depends on OS or distribution you use.

The faces package contains a program called xbm2ikon script, which converts a 48x48 xbm to the format suitable for compface. Thanks to Jeff Dairiki, you can have a complete online course in this. Visit this page for the details.

In the settings part of the program, write sylpheed --compose

Specific options for typical browsers:

When compiling Sylpheed, make sure you add --enable-gpgme in the ./configure command. When that completes successfully, there is a Privacy section in the Common Preferences.

For this to work you need to use the touch command in every MH folder. "touch" the file .xmhcache and Mutt should do just fine.

In case this happens, you can easily fix that by adding the following to /etc/mime.types:

image/gif gif

Download Gkrellm or a similar program that is able to notify you of new incoming mail. Gkrellm is available at the Gkrellm page.

Yes. You need to have GtkSpell installed prior to Sylpheed compilation. The support for GtkSpell is enabled by default in configure. (If you want to disable it, make sure you add --disable-gtkspell in the ./configure command.)

The GtkSpell option is not supported in Sylpheed for Windows (yet), so you will have no spell checking under this OS.

In the Configuration->Preferences for current account...->Send check Add user-defined header and press Edit button. A dialog appears, add a header named "X-Face" and fill the value field with your face data. Note that if you paste the data from a terminal into the field, some spurious newlines can be added, and these can mangle your face, be careful.

The SVN versions are meant to be used by developers rather than "normal" users, so the source (or binary) distributions are easier to use.

You need to generate the configure script by running autogen.sh. Be sure to have autoconf and automake packages installed for this.

There are some *.m4 files in the ac/missing directory. Try to copy them into the ac directory and run autogen.sh again.

If there are still some .m4 files not found (e.g. those from GTK+), try to run % locate m4 | less or % locate aclocal | less to find additional directories containing those macros. If you find e.g. a gtk.m4 in /opt/gnome/share/aclocal, change following line in autogen.sh from

     aclocal -I ac \

to

     aclocal -I ac -I /opt/gnome/share/aclocal \

and run it again.

Remove the config.cache file and run ./configure again. You should also use make clean to avoid undefined references.

The MIME-type to application associations are kept in /etc/mailcap.

The extension to MIME-type associations are kept in /etc/mime.types

You need to update Sylpheeds cache. Right click on the mailbox and choose Rebuild folder tree.

Sylpheed keeps its configuration files in $HOME/.sylpheed-2.0/sylpheedrc and creates default entries, if none are found. So the easiest way is to quit Sylpheed, temporarily renaming your $HOME/.sylpheed-2.0 e.g. to *.bak and restarting Sylpheed in order to get default entries.

Here are the most common variables:

In most cases, this is caused by fonts that use an unsuitable encoding on a not Unicode-based system. (On a Unicode-based system, fonts should support all thinkable characters for the vast majority of languages.)

Choose Configuration->Common preferences->Display->General, and click the button right to Text font. Now, a special dialog appears that allows you to pick a desirable font family, style, and size.

You should also make sure that your environment variables regarding locale settings have sensible values.

You can try to export your old mailbox to MH, MBOX or EML format.

	Tip
	Take a look at the Add sender to address book... item from the Tools menu, it could be a useful alternative or addition, when importing your old contacts.

Sylpheeds config files can be found in $HOME/.sylpheed-2.0. They are in plain text format and quite easy to understand, so don't fear to take a look into them using a texteditor.

You can use enscript for this. Use enscript %s to print everything on one page, or enscript -U2 %s for printing two logical pages on one physical page.