The Sylpheed Email Client [LWN.net]

Sylpheed is a GTK+ based lightweight email client that is authored by Hiroyuki Yamamoto. According to the project FAQ, Sylpheed aims to be fast, graceful, intuitive, easy to configure, reliable and full of features. The name comes from the wind spirits, the Sylphs, representing the lightweight nature of the application.

Sylpheed features include:

An easy to use intuitive user interface.
Works with a minimal amount of configuration.
Supports Mutt-style MIME type checking.
Supports the following protocols: POP3, IMAP4 rev 1, SMTP.
Supports NNTP for News reading.
Includes GPG encryption with the SSL/TLSv1 protocol.
Works with IPv6 networking.
Includes spam filtering capabilities via bogofilter.
Uses the MH (1 file per message) mail file format.
Is designed to work with massively populated mail folders.
Features name completion using the built-in address book.
Supports threaded mail reading for grouping by common topics.
Has the ability to compose emails using an external editor.
Can execute external commands.
Supports a wide variety of character encodings.
Has high-level Japanese language processing capabilities.
Features translations for 29 languages.

The User's Manual explains the operation of the software in more detail. A few obligatory screen shots show Sylpheed in action.

Version 2.0.0 of Sylpheed was announced this week, it features a switch to GTK2, usability improvements, inline viewing of attached images, and more.

The software was a breeze to configure, build, and install on a Fedora Core 3 system. Pre-compiled packages are available for several popular Linux distributions. Operation was simple and intuitive, as advertised. Your author is seriously considering a switch from the old reliable (and somewhat clunky by today's standards) exmh mail client to Sylpheed.

to post comments

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 7:01 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

If Sylpheed would add multithreading so I don't have to wait for a network operation to finish before the UI updates, I might use it for all my mail. It's wonderfully fast and non-bloatey. I hope they add message threading too. Both kinds of threading would be nice.

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 8:01 UTC (Thu) by idrys (subscriber, #4347) [Link] (4 responses)

Sylpheed does provide message threading - or I wouldn't be happy reading lkml with it :) What exactly are you missing?

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 10:22 UTC (Thu) by jonth (guest, #4008) [Link] (2 responses)

Multi-threading, not message threading. He means that he wants to be able to look through his local mail whilst the client is fetching new messages from the remote server.

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 11:01 UTC (Thu) by idrys (subscriber, #4347) [Link] (1 responses)

While I would like multi-threading too (annoying wait while the client fetches several hundred mails), he also asked for mail-threading :)

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 11:06 UTC (Thu) by jonth (guest, #4008) [Link]

Oops - fair point!

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 17:15 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

It does?? Sweet! I'll have to try it again.

The lack of multi-threading, though, is still a problem.

The Sylpheed Email Client

Posted Aug 25, 2005 12:56 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

It looks a lot like Mozilla Thunderbird or maybe rather, Mozilla Thunderbird looks a lot like Sylpheed.

Sylpheed and Unseen sequence.

Posted Aug 25, 2005 18:49 UTC (Thu) by humberto (subscriber, #70) [Link]

I found that old versions of Sylpheed didn't play well with the mh unseen sequence, so messages I read via mh-e or the command line show up as unread in Sylpheed.

I like the newer versions of mh-e better than Sylpheed, especially with the speedbar. It certainly interacts better with the standard mh tools.

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Aug 26, 2005 5:58 UTC (Fri) by mcatkins (guest, #4270) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm surprised that no-one (including the original article) has mentions Sylpheed-claws, the cutting edge version of sylpheed. It adds most of the extras people want (some multi-tasking, for example).

There are claws packages in debian, etc, as well normal sylpheed packages.

I've been using it for several years, and have not seen instabilities, despite the warnings on the webpages.

see http://claws.sylpheed.org/

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Aug 28, 2005 19:50 UTC (Sun) by BackSeat (guest, #1886) [Link] (1 responses)

Sylpheed-claws is excellent, and I used to use it all the time. Finally, however, the lack of multi-threading when checking an IMAP server made me give it up.

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Sep 3, 2005 2:32 UTC (Sat) by higuita (guest, #32245) [Link]

the current sylpheed claws version finally use libetpan for imap, and so it doesnt block anymore on network operations
also, the use of the libetpan improved the impa support, its now smarter and faster than the old engine

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Sep 1, 2005 11:49 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link] (3 responses)

Even in Claws I can't find what I miss most in Sylpheed: virtual folders.

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Sep 3, 2005 2:37 UTC (Sat) by higuita (guest, #32245) [Link]

you can use find+symlinks to emulate then

or use the quickfinder...

its not perfect, but at least for me, its enough

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Sep 4, 2005 23:07 UTC (Sun) by obi (guest, #5784) [Link] (1 responses)

If you use IMAP with Maildir, or Sylpheed supports Maildir (don't know) - check Mairix.

The Sylpheed Email Client - what about claws?

Posted Sep 5, 2005 15:49 UTC (Mon) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]

check Mairix

Sounds interesting, but how to make it work with IMAP?