Chapter 9. Advanced Configuration
Perhaps your mail server has changed names. Perhaps you've grown tired of a certain layout for your appointments. Whatever the reason, you want to change your Evolution settings. This chapter will tell you how to do just that.
Mail Settings
To change your mail settings, select Tools->Mail Settings in the Inbox. This will open the mail preferences window, illustrated in Figure 9-1. Mail preferences are separated into several categories:
- Accounts
This allows you to create and alter one or more identities for your email.
- Display
Allows you to edit how email appears.
- Composer
Customizes the behavior of the email message composer.
- Other
Configures miscellanious aspects of Evolution such as character set and encryption tools.
Working with the Accounts Tab
Ximian Evolution allows you to maintain multiple accounts, or identities. This is useful want to keep personal and professional email separate, or if you wear several hats at work. When you are writing an email message, you can which account to use by selecting from the drop-down list next to the From entry in the message composer.
Clicking Get Mail will refresh any IMAP, mh, or mbox listings and check and download mail from all POP servers. In other words, Get Mail gets your mail, no matter how many sources you have, or what types they are. If you don't want to check mail for a given account, select it in the Accounts tab and click the Disable button.
To add a new account, simply click Add to open the mail configuration assistant. To alter an existing identity, select it in the Preferences window, and then click Edit to open the account editor dialog.
The account editor dialog has six sections:
- Identity:
Here, enter the name, email address, and other identifying information for the account.
- Receiving Mail
Here, select the way you will be getting mail: you may download mail from a server (POP or IMAP) or access it from files on your local system. If you use a server, it may permit or require you to use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. To turn SSL connections on, just click the Use Secure Connection (SSL) button.
Specifying Port Numbers: Your system administrator may ask you to connect to a specific port on a mail server. To specify which port you use, just type a colon and the port number after the server name. For example, to connect to port 143 on the server smtp.omniport.com, you would enter as smtp.omniport.com:143 as the server name.
- Receiving Options
Here, decide whether you'd like to check for mail automatically, and set other options related to the behavior of your server. If you use POP mail, you can decide whether to leave mail on the server, and if you use IMAP, you can set folder subscription options here.
- Sending Mail
In this section, you will choose and configure a method for sending mail. You may choose SMTP or sendmail.
- Special Folders
Here, you can decide where this account will store the messages that it has sent, and the messages that you save as drafts.
- Security
In this section, you will set the security options for this account. Enter your PGP Key ID and decide how frequently to encrypt and sign your messages.
Mail Display Options
In this tab you can decide how you would like Ximian Evolution to display your mail: how to display citations, how long to wait before marking a message as read, and so forth.
This is also where you can decide how you would like Ximian Evolution to handle inline images in HTML mail that you get. There is a detailed discussion of the issues surrounding these options in the section called Inline Images in HTML Mail in Chapter 3.
To hange the font which Ximian Evolution uses to display mail, do the following:
Open the Control Center by selecting System->Settings from the menu panel.
Select the HTML Viewer settings tool.
Choose the font and font size you would like to use.
Message Composer Preferences
Mercifully, there are only four preferences you can prefer in the message composer preferences dialog:
- Send mail in HTML format by default
If you would like all email messages that you compose to begin in HTML format, leave this box checked. You can convert messages between HTML and plain text by selecting the Format->HTML toggle in the message composer.
- Default Forward style
Select from:
Attachment: the message you forward appended to the message you send as a seperate file. Inline: The message you forward is included at the end of the message you send. Quoted: The message you forward is included at the end of the message you send, and a greater-than symbol (>) is inserted at the beginning of each line to indicate that it is quoted. - Prompt when sending messages with an empty subject
The composer will warn you if you try to send a message without a subject.
- Prompt when sending messages with only Bcc recipients defined
The composer will warn you if you try to send a message that has only Bcc recipients. This is important because some mail servers will fail to honor blind carbon copy if you do not have at least one recipient that is visible to all readers.
Other Mail Preferences
Not everything fits neatly into categories. This tab contains some miscellaneous configuration options that didn't fit anywhere else.
- PGP binary path
The complete path to your external encryption tool On most Linux systems, this will be /usr/bin/gpg.
- Remember PGP Passphrase until Exit
Check this box if you want Ximian Evolution to remember your PGP passphrase for as long as it is running. You will still have to enter your passphrase again each time you start Ximian Evolution.
- Default Character Encoding
Choose a default character encoding for your messages.
- Empty Trash Folders on Exit
If you would like to expunge all deleted mail when you quit Ximian Evolution, check this box.
- Log filter actions to:
If you like, you can have Ximian Evolution write all its message filter actions to a log file. Select a log file here.