[sylpheed:36384] A list of Sylpheed issues, with request for comment

yuuri yd-syy at gurukun.info
Fri Dec 18 06:50:33 JST 2015


Hi everybody!

I recently started using Linux and Sylpheed. Managed to set up a duplicate of my complex mail system (a setup involving a dozen servers, with five dozen accounts, and requiring lots of filters) within a day, and am happy with how everything works. :-)

I'd like to share a few observations and hope to get some comments from you (some things will likely be "old hat" issues to you, but since I cannot search the list archive, I don't know what has been mentioned prevoiusly).

Here goes:

1 (not important to me):
Mailboxes are automatically ordered alphabetically (cannot be ordered freely)
Permanent workaround:
Starting mailbox names with numbers let me set them up in the desired order...

2 (important to me):
I can't find a control to set (enforce) the TLS version that I'd like to use, which is currently v1.2.
Does Sylpheed use v1.0 by default or does it use v1.2 whenever possible and automatically switch down when encountering servers that use v1.0?

3 (important to me):
I can't find a way to edit the FROM address when composing a new message.
Current workaround:
I set up an extra account each time I need to use a different FROM address...

4 (not important to me):
I can't find a (relatively) current manual - but perhaps I don't need one anyway. ;-)

5 (not important to me):
Filters cannot handle combinations of logical AND and logical OR (maybe by design, to keep the code simple?).
Permanent workaround:
Split complex filtering requirements into simple parts and create a separate filter for each part

6 (important to me):
The Re-Edit function is greyed out; I cannot edit a sent message for resending.
(The manual mentions an "edition mode": how does one get to that?)
Current workaround:
Start a new message and copy and paste address and content from the sent message.

7 (not important to me):
Numbers of messages in a mailbox (folder) - New/ Unread/ Total - do not include messages in nested mailboxes (subfolders).
Workaround:
Don't collapse the mailbox display (in my case that would make the mail system unwieldy), or don't use that information (that's my solution)

8 (important to me):
When opening a message window, there are no controls, so it is not possible to delete the opened message or do much else without first closing the window.

9 (important to me):
Just clicking on a new message sets it already to "read". This is most irritating and seems to be related to the existence of the lower right panel that shows the top lines of the selected message. There seems to be no option of chosing just a two-panel display (a list of mailboxes to the left and a list of the messages in the currently selected mailbox to the right).

I hope this information is useful in one way or another...

Thanks & regards: Yuuri

PS: here is some background info for those who are interested and have the time:

For many years I had been using the Mac OS, but in recent years circumstances forced me to use Windows. That was OK, as long as I was using Windows 7, but Windows 8 and the recent upgrade to 10 pushed my frustration level so high that I finally made the switch to Linux: I am now using Mint 17.3 on my "old" computer, a 5 year old Acer Aspire One mini notebook. :-)

The reason why I had put it with Windows for so long is the outstanding "native Japanese" mail software Hidemaru Mail (aka Tsurukame Mail), which is capable of handling multi-account, multi-mailbox situations, can be extensively customised, and (unlike Thunderbird) stores messages and attachments as plain files. After switching to Linux I tried Claws first but couldn't get it to work satisfactorily on my small screen (1024x600). Now I am using Sylpheed, which works well overall.

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