Daniel
Naber

    daniel.naber@t-online.de

David
Rugge

    davidrugge@mediaone.net

2002-10-03
1.5

# Configure &kmail;

&kmail;'s configuration window enables you to configure &kmail; in many ways. You can reach it via Settings Configure &kmail;....

It is divided into six pages, each of them represented by one of the icons in the list on the left hand side of the dialog. This chapter will describe each page in detail.

## Identities Page

You can find a quick introduction to the Identities page in the Getting Started section.

This page allows you to create one or more Identities, &ie; combinations of name, email address and other settings. For example, you can create one identity for business communication and one for personal communication. If you have more than one email address, you can create one identity per address. You will then be able to select an identity on a per-message basis.

The page consists of a list of identities and buttons to manage them. The identities list will always show at least one identity, which is then the Default identity.

To add a new identity to the identity list, click on the New... button. The New identity dialog will show up.

### The New Identity Dialog

You can enter the name of the new identity into the New Identity edit field. This will be the name shown in the identity list.

You can choose how the new identity should be initialized by checking one of the three radio buttons in the middle of the dialog:

With empty fields

  All fields of the new identity are cleared or preset with standard values.

Use Control Center settings

  Uses the settings of the Control Center's default email profile (you can edit that one under Internet & Network Email in the Control Center).

Duplicate existing identity

  Copies all fields from an already existent identity. You can choose which identity to copy from by selecting the corresponding entry in the Existing identities popup.

### General

The General tab allows you to specify some basic settings for the currently selected identity.

Your name

  Enter your full name here (sometimes also called display name). Although this field is not strictly mandatory, it is recommended to enter the correct value here.

Organization

  Enter your organization here. This field is optional. Most programs will show this information in a separate header field Organization. &kmail;, however, puts it between parentheses and displays is together with the email address in the From header field.

Email address

  Enter your email address here.

So if your address is Joe User <joe@example.com>, you should enter `Joe User` into the Your name field and `joe@example.com` into the Email address field.

### Advanced

The Advanced tab allows you to specify some rarely used or otherwise specialized settings for the currently selected identity.

Reply-To address

  Enter the address to which replies to your messages should be sent. Only fill out this field if it is different from your normal address (specified using the Name and Email Address on the General tab), since replies default to the sender's address anyway.

  This field is only useful if you want replies to your mail to go somewhere else than your regular email address, &eg; if you are using this identity to send messages from an email address that cannot receive messages. Note that this field will possibly be deprecated by newer versions of the Internet email standard. Furthermore, some mailing lists overwrite this header field with their post address to make sure that replies go to the list instead of individuals. So the usefulness of this field is very limited and it should only be used in rare cases.

BCC address

  Optionally enter an address to which blind copies of your messages should be sent to.

OpenPGP key

  Select here the OpenPGP key key that should be used to (digitally) sign messages when this identity is used. When you click on the Change... button, a key selection dialog comes up where you can select the key to use from the list of secret keys found. If you do not have an OpenPGP key or do not know what that is, you do not need to worry about this setting.

  The selected key will also be used as the recipient when you check Always encrypt to self on the OpenPGP tab of the Security page.

  You might need to configure your OpenPGP environment first, to make the key selection dialog work. You can do this on the Security page.

Sent-mail folder

  Select the folder into which messages should be filed after sending when using this identity.

  You can exercise more fine-grained control over where to file sent messages by creating a corresponding message filter that is applied to outgoing messages.

Drafts folder

  Select the folder into which drafts should be filed when using this identity.

Special transport

  Select or enter an alternative SMTP server to be used when sending messages using this identity.

  You need to configure outgoing mail servers first, before you can choose them from the list. You can do this on the Sending tab of the Network page.

### Signature

This tab allows you to specify a signature (sometimes called footer or disclaimer) to be appended to each message sent using this identity.

This type of signature has nothing to do with the (digital) signatures for which you can select the to-be-used key on the Advanced tab. It is just bad wording to call this a signature, but since the term is already used everywhere else, we keep this notation. Just keep in mind that these signatures and digital signatures are two completely different things.

Check the Enable signature option if you want to be able to append the signature when using this identity. To automatically append it to every new message you also have to select Automatically append signature in the Composer configuration page.

&kmail; can obtain the signature text from various sources. The traditional way on Unix is to read the text from a file called `.signature` in your home directory. This file can be shared between several programs, so you get the same signature in each mail program you use.

To read the text from a text file you select Obtain signature text from file. Enter the filename in the Specify file edit field or hit the button to the right of it to browse your filesystem. If you want to edit the file, hit the Edit File button.

&kmail; can also read the signature text from the output of a command. Thus, you can use programs such as `fortune` to create a new signature text for every message. Everything the program prints onto stdout is catched and used as the signature text.

To read the text from the output of a command you select Obtain signature text from Output of Command. Enter the command (preferably with full path) in the Specify command edit field or hit the button to the right of it to browse your filesystem.

As a third option, you can enter the signature text directly in &kmail;'s configuration dialog. To do this, select Obtain signature text from input field below and enter the text into the appearing text box.

On the Internet, signatures are by convention separated from the body of the message by a line containing only the three character -- (dash, dash, space). &kmail; will automatically prepend the signature text with this line if it is not already present in the signature text.

If you do not wish the separator to be prepended automatically by &kmail;, simply add it to the signature text yourself.

## Network Page

You can find a quick introduction to the Network page in the Setting up your Account section.

This page allows you to create one or more (incoming and outgoing) accounts, &ie; combinations of mail servers, login information and other settings. Typically, you will create one outgoing (used for sending messages) and one incoming (used to retrieve messages) account. You can create as many accounts as you want, though, and assign each one to different identities or decide on a per-message basis.

### Sending

The Sending tab allows you to define new outgoing mail servers and set some common options.

For basic information, see Setting up your Account: Sending.

When you click Add... or Modify... the Add transport resp. Modify transport dialog will open. For sending via `sendmail` you can specify a name and the location of the `sendmail` program. For SMTP you can specify Name, Host, and Port of the server. Server requires authentication will enable the Login and Password fields and the Authentication method buttons on the Security tab. If you are not sure about the security settings you can make &kmail; test for the best settings by using Check What the Server Supports.

Confirm before send will pop up a confirmation box every time you send a message.

Send messages in outbox folder on check will send all messages from the outbox when you check for new messages.

Default send method lets you define what happens when a message is sent. If Send now is selected, the message is sent to the mail server immediately, while if Send later is selected, the message is queued in the outbox to be sent later with the File Send Queued Messages command or automatically when you check your mail, depending on the setting of Send messages in outbox folder on check above.

Message property lets you select how your message will be encoded when it is sent. Allow 8-bit means that &kmail; will send your message in 8 bit ASCII, which means that all special characters such as accented letters will be sent as-is. If MIME Compliant (Quoted Printable) is selected, special characters will be encoded using standard &MIME; encodings, which may be more portable to other mailing systems than 8-bit ASCII. You normally do not need to change the default.

Default domain lets you specify which domain name should be used to complete email addresses that only consist of the recipient's user name. For example when you set the default domain to kde.org then messages you send to johndoe will be sent to johndoe@kde.org.

### Receiving

For basic information, see Setting up your Account: Receiving.

With New Mail Notification you can set how &kmail; will notify you if new messages have arrived. Of course this only makes sense if Enable interval mail checking is activated for at least one account: Beep will play a short beep sound, while more advanced notification options are available via the Other Actions button.

## Appearance Page

### Fonts

This section allows you to change the type, size and character set of the display fonts. Message Body sets the font for the reader pane, Composer sets the font for writing messages in the composer window. There is a separate entry for Message List - Date Field so you can choose a monospaced font for the date field for better readability.

### Colors

This section allows you to change the color of the text. Recycle colors on deep quoting means that even text that is quoted more than three times will appear in color. Note that the Quoted text colors only work in the message reader, not in the composer.

### Layout

Show HTML status bar activates a bar at the left side of the reader pane that tells you if a message is HTML or not. This is important because HTML messages might imitate the look of a signed and encrypted message, so you should be aware of the fact that you are reading a HTML message. The HTML status bar itself cannot be influenced by the HTML code of the message.

The Window Layout section lets choose between several layouts of the main window that differ with regard to the size of the folder list and to the position of the MIME tree. Let the mouse pointer rest over the icons and you will see a tooltip that explains the differences between the layouts.

The Show MIME Tree option lets you choose when the MIME tree will be shown: the MIME tree is a part of the main window that lets you access all attachments of a message. Never will disable the MIME tree (note that you can still access attachments as icons), Always will show a MIME tree even if the message does not have an attachment. Smart will display the MIME tree only if it makes sense, &ie; if the current message has at least one attachment.

### Headers

With Display message sizes selected there will be another column in the header pane that shows the messages' size.

Show crypto icons will add more status information to the Subject columns in the header pane: every message that has been signed will have a small Signed icon in front of the subject, every message that has been encrypted will have a small Encrypted icon in front of the subject. Note that you have to select a message once before these icons will appear, until then only question marks will be displayed.

Thread list of message headers will put all the messages in the header pane in a kind of tree list, so that the replies to a message are directly below that message.

With Message header threading options you can select whether threads should appear expanded (open) by default or whether they should be collapsed (closed). You can of course still open/close threads using the +/- buttons.

With Date Display you can choose between several date formats. The Localized Format is the one you can specify under Country & Language in &kcontrol;. For the Custom format you can get a description of the possible values by pressing &Shift;F1 and then clicking on Custom option.

### Profiles

This section offers several default settings for &kmail;'s layout. You can use these as starting points for your own configuration.

Note that choosing one of the offered profiles will override your current layout settings.

## Composer Page

### General

Automatically append signature lets you toggle whether to automatically include your signature as defined in the identity page.

Use smart quoting will break long lines but will try to keep the correct quoting (&eg; the > will always be at the start of the line).

Word wrap at column lets you turn word wrapping on and off in the composer window and lets you set the column at which words will be wrapped (you probably should not need to change the default value, which is `78`).

If you do not like the Composer you can use a different editor. Note that the composer window will still open and the external editor will open as soon as you type just one character in the body of the message. If you're done, save the text and exit the editor. The text will now appear in the composer window, where you can send it. Note that your editor may not return immediately, you have to use &eg; `gvim -f %f` for gvim.

### Phrases

The Phrases tab lets you define the automatically generated lines that are added to message replies, forwarded messages, and the character that is added in front of quoted text. There are special &percnt;-denoted characters that will insert certain values, which are also displayed at the top of the Phrases section. You can add reply phrases in languages other than your default &kde; language using the Language button. This will only work for languages whose i18n package you have installed.

### Subject

This section contains a list of prefixes for Reply and Forward. If you receive messages that use prefixes different to the standard ones, you can add them here so &kmail; will recognize them. This way &kmail; can ignore them for sorting messages and when setting the subject of a reply, and optionally replace them with Re:.

### Charset

Here you can manage the default charsets used for your own messages. Every message you send will be checked if it is written in one of the listed charsets, starting at the top of the list. If it is, this charset will be used. If it is not, a dialog will show up and tell you that you manually have to choose a charset using Options Set Encoding.

If you select Keep original charset when replying or forwarding, the original message's charset will be kept, unless there are now characters that cannot be represented using that charset.

### Headers

Check the Use custom message-id suffix checkbox if you want &kmail; to generate Message-Id's with a custom suffix. Enter the desired suffix in the Custom message-id suffix field. Please make sure that the suffix that you specify is world-wide unique. The best thing is to use the name of a domain which you are the owner of. If you do not check Use custom Message-Id suffix then &kmail; will automatically generate the complete Message-Id. If you do not know what this is all about do not check this option.

The Define custom mime header fields list sets the headers that &kmail; will use for its outgoing messages. You can both invent new fields and overwrite existing ones. This feature is only useful for advanced users.

## Security Page

### General

Prefer HTML to plain text will show HTML messages with their HTML formatting and layout. We strongly recommend to leave this option off, as security problems with HTML might show up. When this option is off, you can still read HTML messages, but only as plain text.

With Allow messages to load external references from the internet turned on, &kmail; can load external images, style sheets &etc; from the Internet when you look at an HTML message. We strongly recommend to leave this option off (although it has no effect if you only view plain text messages). By adding external references to their messages, people sending spam can detect that and when you have looked at their message. Note that this option has no effect on &Java;, JavaScript and Plugins - these are disabled anyway and cannot be enabled at all.

Automatically send receive- and read confirmations will automatically send a confirmation (in form of a new message) to the sender of a message if he requested that. If you leave this option off, no confirmation will be sent. We recommend to leave this option off. If you want to send confirmations to certain people you can do so by using the confirm delivery filter action.

### OpenPGP

For the OpenPGP tab please see the OpenPGP section.

### Crypto Plugins

For now, please refer to the homepage of the Ägypten project.

## Folders Page

Confirm before emptying folders

  To empty a folder means that its messages get transferred to the trash folder (and only get deleted if they are already in the trash folder). So although you normally will not lose any mail, you can still activate a confirmation dialog that will ask you if you really want to empty the folder.

Warn before expiring messages

  This will pop up a confirmation dialog before messages are expired (&eg; on exit).

Loop in the current folder when trying to find unread mail

  When you press one of the shortcuts to find new messages (&eg; Space) and this option is activated, &kmail; will not jump to the next folder, but instead try to find new messages at the top of the current folder.

Jump to first unread message when entering a folder

  When you enter a folder, &kmail; will go to the next unread message if this option is enabled. If it is not enabled, &kmail; will go to the message that was selected when you left the folder.

Mark selected messages as read after...

  When you select a new message, &kmail; will change the message's status to read after the amount of seconds which is configured here. If you disable this option, messages will keep their new status.

Ask for action after dragging messages to another folder

  When you drag a message to a different folder, a small popup will ask you if you want to copy or move the message. If you disable this option, the message will be moved immediately, without a popup.

By default, message folders on disk are...

  Here you can set the default folder format that is used when you create a new folder.

On program exit, perform the following tasks:

Compact all folders

  This will compact all folders every time you exit &kmail;. Compacting folders means that the messages you deleted will really be removed.

Empty trash

  The trash folder is cleared of messages when you quit &kmail; if this option is selected.

Expire old messages

  Delete old messages from folders, according to the rules in each folder's Properties dialog.

## Section Authors

This section written by: Daniel Naber daniel.naber@t-online.de and David Rugge davidrugge@mediaone.net.