The Preferences Window

Balsa has many more options than the initial Druid reveals. To access the configuration window, select Settings->Preferences. You will see a notebook. The tabs and options are explained below.

Figure 9. Preferences Window

Identity

This page lets you specify how you present yourself to the rest of the world through your email.

Your Name

This doesn't have to be your name, I guess. But it's the word prefixing your email address in mail you send.

E-Mail address

As you wish it to appear in your "From" header.

Reply-To address

The address that you wish people to reply to your email with (if you have a home and a work address, for instance).

Default domain

The domain that you wish to append to all e-mail entries where you did not specify the domain. Normally you would use your local domain. You need to enable Alias Expansion for this to work.

Signature

Use this page to set up signature files and how Balsa will use them in your messages

Use Signature File When

Sending Mail

Include the signature file when sending email.

Replying to Mail

Include the signature file when replying to mail

Forwarding Mail

Include the signature file when forwarding mail

Signature file

The file to append to all your messages. You also get to control when the signature is appended.

Reply Prefix

The character sequence to prefix quoted lines in a reply with

Enable Signature Separator

When checked, this has Balsa insert the standard signature separator before your signature.

Mail Servers

This page lets you specify how you get POP3 mail, send mail, etc.

Remote Mailbox Servers

These are POP3 servers that you receive email from. The three buttons let you create, modify, and remove records. POP3 mailboxes will not show up in the mailbox list. You can specify multiple servers, when adding a server you will be asked to give:

  • mailbox name that will identify the mailbox

  • The server you have the POP mailbox on.

  • The port that will be used to connect to the server. The port number is usually 110 but you may change it if you for example use some kind of connection tunneling,

  • The user name on the mailbox server.

  • Corresponding password.

  • What does the check check box mean?

  • You can select the 'delete from server' button to remove the downoladed messages from the server.

Local Mail Directory

This is the directory that Balsa will scan looking for mail folders.

Remote SMTP Server

If your computer is not equipped with sendmail or you do not wish to use it, select this radio button and enter a host name to contact via SMTP.

Local Mail User Agent

Balsa will attempt to use sendmail to send mail. Unfortunately, you cannot specify the command to execute right now.

Address Books

Balsa supports the use of multiple address books, both local VCARD and remote LDAP address books, both of which can be configured here. GnomeCard also uses VCARD address books, so this allows Balsa to share address books with other GNOME applications

The main portion of the preferences page is occupied by the list of current address books for Balsa. The list shows the type of address book, the name, and whether it is included in automatic alias expansion when typing new messages. There are also several buttons that manipulate the list of address books:

Add

Using this adds a new address book for Balsa to use to find addresses. It brings up a series of dialog boxes that step through the process of adding a new address book.

Figure 10. Add Address Book Dialog (Step 1)

If Balsa was not compiled with LDAP support it will not let you choose LDAP as an addressbook type. Once the type of address book is selected you must specify the name and location of the address book.

Figure 11. VCARD Address Book Dialog (Step 2)

With LDAP support, the dialog looks somewhat different, offering options to set the location of the directory instead of a file.

Figure 12. LDAP Address Book Dialog (Step 2)

To locate the LDAP address book, Balsa needs to know the host name and the base domain name of the LDAP server. For example, if your directory server was located at address.domainname.org, you would enter "address" as the host name, and "domainname.org" as the base domain name. The address book name can be whatever you want, but it's a good idea to give it an informative name.

Modify

This enables you to change the properties of the selected address book.

Figure 13. Modify an Address Book

It is possible to modify both the name and location for any address book. Also, you can change whether the contents of the address book will be used when attempting to auto-complete an address when sending a message.

Delete

Delete the selected address book.

Set as Default

Set the selected mailbox as default.

Mail Options

Use this page to set the Balsa's behaviour regarding incoming and outgoing messages.

Incoming

Check Mail Automatically

If selected, Balsa will connect to your POP3 servers at the given interval and check for mail.

Warning

Using "0" as an interval is a really bad idea.

Quoted Text Regular Expression

The entry box allows you to set a regular expression you would like to use to identify text that should be considered quoted for incoming messages. The regular expression should match the beginning of line of quoted text a single level deep, the program will then use this to calculate the depth of quoting and alter the quoted text colours appropriately. A default regexp is provided that should work in most situations.

This regexp affects both highlighting and spell checking, and uses the extended regular expression set. For more information see the grep(1) manual or info page.

Outgoing

Wrap Outgoing Text

Have Balsa wrap all outgoing mail at the specified column.

Default Bcc

An address to Blind Carbon Copy to on all emails.

Display

This page controls how Balsa appears to you.

Use Preview Pane

Set whether to use the preview pane to display messages, or rely on the separate mail viewing window.

Show Mailbox Info

If Balsa was compiled with --enable-info, this will allow the number of total and unread messages for each mailbox to be shown in the left pane of the Balsa main window.

Toolbars

Use this to determine whether Balsa's toolbars display only text, only icons, or both text and icons.

Display Progress

This sets the behaviour of the dialog that is shown when Balsa retrieves messages from it's specified POP3 servers. The dialog can be shown only while the messages are being retrieved, automatically closing after Balsa is finished. Or it can be set to stay active until manually closed. Finally, the dialog can not be displayed at all.

Date Encoding

Set the format used to display dates in Balsa. This uses the same format string as strftime, a summary which is provided below:

  • %a — The abbreviated weekday name.

  • %A — The full weekday name.

  • %b — The abbreviated month name.

  • %B — The full month name.

  • %d — The day of the month.

  • %R — The time using a 24-hour clock. (HH:MM)

  • %r — The time using a 12-hour clock (HH:MM AM/PM).

  • %T — The time using a 24-hour clock, with seconds (HH:MM:SS).

Tip

See the strftime manual page for a full listing of conversion specifiers.

Displayed Headers

A space-separated list of the headers to display in the message window.

Printing

Print Command

The command executed when the print button is pressed. The message text in the command is signified by "%s".

Break Line

Whether to break the output line at a specified column, or to let the printing program do the wrapping to the page.

Spelling

The pane to setup Balsa spell check options. Balsa uses the Portable Spell Checking library (pspell) to do provide an interface to the spell checking program of your choice. Currently there are modules for ispell or aspell, both of which can be found at the pspell website. For more information visit the Balsa homepage.

Pspell Module

The Pspell library allows you to use whatever spell checking engine you prefer, though the use of loadable modules. Currently Pspell has support for two modules, the traditional ispell, and the newer and more advanced aspell.

Ispell is most likely available on your system as it is a Unix standard, however Aspell is more advanced as it uses an advanced phonetics engine and adaptive techniques to learn how you tend to misspell words. More information is available at the Aspell website.

Balsa will attempt to use whatever module you specify here, however if the module is not installed it will not work and generate an error.

Suggestion Mode

The suggestion mode determines how hard the computer will search for suggestions for misspelled words. There are three options:

Fast

This mode quickly scans for replacements, which means it might be used by a good speller who occaisonally makes typographical errors.

Normal

The Normal mode is probably good enough for most people, it should produce the correct suggestion in the majority of cases.

Bad Spellers

The Bad Spellers mode is the most thourough and accurate mode, however it also takes the longest to find a list of suggestions.

Ignore Length

This provides the ability to ignore words shorter than a certain length. It may be useful to automatically skip short acronyms that are normally flagged as incorrect.

Encoding

Set Balsa's character set encoding.

Charset

A string representing the character set for Balsa to use to use by default.

Encoding

Set the character encoding method to either 7 bit, 8 bit, or what the quoted message is using.

Misc

Debug

Toggle the output of debugging information. Depending on what notification priority set for it in the Display page, it can show up in list or dialog as the program runs.

Empty Trash on Exit

Set Balsa to delete all messages in the Trash mailbox when Balsa exits.

Preview Pane Font

The font used to display the text of the message in the preview pane.

Unread Mailbox Colour

Set the colour of mailboxes that contain unread messages.

Expand aliases as you type

This will expand aliases as you type them. Read more about this feature in the Alias Expansion section.

Startup

Check Mail at Startup

If set, Balsa will automatically attempt to download mail from the POP3 mail server upon startup.

Remember Open Mailboxes Between Sessions

When marked, Balsa will remember and reopen mailboxes that were open when Balsa was last quit.