Plugins
Plugins
Scribe has a reasonable plugin interface for a few of the common things that plugins
are useful for. The main reason that some things come as plugins and are not built
directly into Scribe is that they would increase the size of the main download
significantly. Currently Scribe is quite a small download, and I'd like to keep it that
way, without limiting the functionality too much.
That said, the plugins are not the most stable of things. They will usually only work
with the very latest build of Scribe, so you have to upgrade them every time you
update the main executable file. The exception to this general rule is the SSL plugin
that is NOT linked against Lgi and (may) work happily with different versions of Scribe.
Although if it stops working the first thing I'd try getting the latest. I don't
increment version numbers until I actually change the functionality of the plugin, but
I do recompile them against the latest Scribe/Lgi and upload them.
I'm working towards a more stable C++ ABI but it's not there yet. Mostly you'll
find that it will break every other version of Scribe rather than EVERY version. By
v2 it should remain stable over many builds.
If your plugin doesn't load, i.e. the plugins window says "not a plugin", then chances
are that you need to grab the latest dll/so. All your settings remain during this
period so once the plugin is updated, everything will start working again. I'm looking
into an auto update function for downloading the latest build of the plugins being used.
To install a plugin, download the distribution archive from the website and unzip it
into the Scribe directory. Generally they create their own little sub folder to keep
things neat. The open the plugins window using the File -> Plugins menu. Then click
"Add" and a list of local plugins should be displayed. Pick the new plugin from the list
and a status message will appear.
To uninstall the plugin, open the plugins window, select the plugin and click "Remove".
Then you can delete the plugins sub-directory.
Some plugins have properties that you can edit. To access these just double click the
plugin in the plugins window.
The autozip plugin automatically zips outgoing attachments to email. This saves on network
bandwidth and folder storage requirements. You can specify a set of file types that are
not zipped, typically files that are already heavily compressed, like JPEG, PNG and video
data. The format of this property is a space or colon separated list of file maskes. e.g:
*.zip *.png *.jpg
Would make a good default setting.
All zipped attachments are stored in the same zip, called "Attachments.zip".
These plugins intergrate GnuPG
into Scribe to allow encryption, signing and decryption support.
Both these plugins will need to find the location of the gpg executable before they
can function. The places that the plugin looks for gpg are:
- [Win32 Only] HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GNUPG for a key 'gpgProgram'
- The system path
- ../GnuPG relitive to Scribe's exe file.
This allows some flexibility in where you install GnuPG. Even on systems where it is
not installed at all but mearly next to Scribe in the directory tree, like on a key
chain drive.
Both of these plugins operate solely on the text body of the message and don't affect
the attachments of the message. This is a limitation of Scribe's architecture and should
be removed after v2.
The GnuPG plugin in a text pipe plugin that appears in the mail window to provide manual
encryption functions.
The AutoGPG plugin is an automated encrypt/decrypt that has to be associated with a
contact record to do anything. It automatically encrypts outgoing messages to that contact
and decrypts the incomming messages. You will need to install the contact's public key in
your gpg keyring for this to work. Then open the contact and click on the plugins tab,
there you will see "AutoGPG" (if it's loaded) and an empty checkbox. Turn on the checkbox
to associate AutoGPG with the contact.
The html plugin loads Windows Internet Emplorer's HTML control to render HTML email. This
requires you to set the default alternative in the Appearence
Options to 'text/html' before it will do anything.
Because IE will execute any script in the email I don't suggest you use this plugin, as it
could mean a virus could embed itself in some HTML and then get IE to run itself when it
arrives in your inbox, in much the same manner that Outlook and Outlook Express are
vunerable to virii.
There are plans to offer the Mozilla control as an option, but I havn't got that working yet.
The aspell plugin uses the
aspell library to do rudimentary spell checking
inside the mail window. It places a button on the toolbar to check the contents of the
compose control and offer up suggestions for mis-spelled words.
To use this plugin install aspell first. On windows I suggest heading
here to download setup files and dictionaries.
Once the plugin is installed, you should configure the dictionary it will use in the
plugin's options.
The plugin ignores email and website address' in the content it looks through. But thats
about as smart as it gets.
There are plans to make it spell check in the background and highlight mis-spelt words.
But as yet it's not implemented.
There is some basic scripting of filters and a package for writing form emails
documented
here.
LDAP is a standard
sometimes used to maintain shared contact information. Scribe can connect to an LDAP
server and retreive contact information, and also be a server that exports contacts
to others.
The LDAP client plugin once installed and configured will allow the user to type in
names in the main window recipient entry box which is then matched against all the LDAP
contacts as well as any locally stored contacts. You also get an LDAP tab in the "Add
Contact" window off the mail window which lists all the contacts returned from the
LDAP server so that you can browse for an entry.
The LDAP server exports all the contacts in /Contacts and all it's sub-directories.
It is however read-only. If you want to keep some contacts private then you'll have to
move them into a directory outside the /Contacts folder.
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