Installation and Configuration
There are two ways to install Scribe, depending on which download you
have. Either you have a .zip file or a .exe file.
- Installing the zip file
Using a program like WinZip,
extract the files in the archive to a new directory created for
Scribe. Make sure the "Use Folders" options is on otherwise the
help files won't be in the right place. To start the program,
double click on the Scribe.exe file. You'll have to create shortcuts on
the Desktop and/or Start Menu yourself.
- Installing the exe file
Double click on the .exe to start the installation process. The
setup program will guide you through the installation, just follow
the prompts. Then when thats done double click on the desktop or
start menu item called "Scribe" to start the program.
When you run the program for the first time Scribe won't find any local storage
for email and contacts, it will prompt you to create them. If you don't have existing
folders then you should click "Ok". If you do have an existing installation with mail
folders select "Open an existing folder", then use "..." to browse to the location of the
folders.
Now you'll be able to see a folder tree on the left, a menu along the top and a toolbar
beneath if everything is working properly. At this point you'll want to start configuring
your identity and accounts. To start this process click File -> Options. Enter your
identity on the first tab and then move on to the accounts tab to configure your
mail server settings.
When you have installed the application there are some command line options
you can use the start Scribe with. These are completely optional, and most users
will not need to use any command line parameters. This is just for reference sake:
- -o<filename>
Sets the options file to use. Files with
the extension ".ini" will be read and written in text, other extensions will
be in binary. The default file is scribe.r in the same directory as the
executable program. e.g.
Scribe.exe -od:\scribe\scribe.r
- -m<address[,address]>
- -t<address[,address]>
New email, specify the primary addressee of the message
- -f<filename>
New email, specify the file which should be sent as the body of the message
- -b (no parameter)
If present, indicates that the file is binary and should be attached.
- -c<address[,address]>
New email, specify Carbon Copy (CC:) recipients of the message
- -s<"subject">
New email, specify the message subject (must appear in quotes). e.g:
Scribe.exe -msomeone@domain.com -s"Message Subject" -bd:\temp\body.txt
- -p<max-pages>
Prints max-pages of the .eml on the command line, or the whole file if
max-pages is 0. The printer used is configured in File->Print Setup. e.g:
Scribe.exe -p1 d:\temp\message.eml
- -noreg
[Win32] Don't write anything to the registry. This disables the ability to use
Scribe as the default mail client. But it's useful for users putting Scribe on
a portable disk for use on public computers.
- -noskin
Don't load the skinning library.
- -nch
[Linux] Don't use the KDE crash handler.
Once Scribe is running you can at any time open a different set of folders using the File ->
Open Folders menu. This closes the currently selected folder if any. You can create new folders
with the File -> Create Folders menu.
Every couple of weeks, depending on usage you should backup the folders (by copying them in
you file manager) and compact the folder using File -> Compact Folders to remove unused space.
Otherwise your folders will just get bigger and bigger, even if you delete things.
Then once you have the folders setup you need to configure the accounts and options.
Click File -> Options
and begin filling out your identification details. The following is a
description of the different options:
- Identity Tab
- Folders Tab
- Mail Folders
This path to the folders.mail2 file that stores all the email, contacts, calendar
entries etc.
- Password
You can configure a password on the whole folder file by switching the checkbox on
and entering the password twice.
- Account(s) List
This tab has a list of accounts, which is limited to one item in i.Scribe. Click
properties to edit the details of the account.
There is no provision in Scribe for dialing up to the internet. If you need to manually
connect to the internet then you should do so before sending or receiving email in Scribe.
InScribe: Click "Add" or "Delete" to edit the account list. There is no
undo for these actions.
The "Default Send Account" should be set to the account with your main SMTP server.
This options will not set the default identity used to create email with, to set that use
the main window's Identity menu.
You can send using another accounts SMTP server by opening
the status panel on the main window, selecting the account, right click and "Send"
Account Properties:
- Identity
Enter a descriptive name for the account.
InScribe: Enter the identity associated with this account.
When replying to email received on this account any identity specified here will
be used instead of the "default" identity in the main options.
The "Only Send Through This Account" option forces replies to email received
on this account to go through the Send server settings for this account as well.
Otherwise they will be sent through the default outgoing server.
- Send
Configure your outgoing SMTP server details here. If you need to specify a
non default port for your SMTP server then use the syntax:
<server>:<port>
The domain field is used to sign on to the SMTP server. In most cases leaving it
blank is ok. But some SMTP servers are finicky about it, so in that case you
should enter the domain of your connection, which is usually the part of your
email address after the '@' sign.
If your SMTP server requires authentication, switch on ESMTP, enter your
Username and Password. The Username is used to annouce who you
are regardless of whether ESMTP is switched on or not. Check the
features for supported ESMTP login methods.
If you want to override the default charset used in sending, you can configure one or
two on the send tab. Scribe searches through the available charsets when encoding an
outgoing message looking for charsets that can encode all the characters in the message.
The prefered charset just forces this process to look at the specificied charsets first
before checking through the list of all installed charsets. Thus if the message can be
displayed in one of your prefered charsets it will be encoded in that rather than one
of the other charsets available.
If the charset you want to send with is not in the list then it's not
available for outgoing messages.
- Receive
Set the mail box type to the protocol that you use to receive mail. Usually this is
POP3, which you should try if your not sure.
The IMAP4 support comes in 2 flavours, "fetch" which retreives email from the
server in much the same way that POP3 does. It doesn't allow managing of mail
on the server, but it's pretty stable. And "full" IMAP which is experimental support
for managing your mail on the server. This feature is considered to be "unstable".
The "Calendar" protocol is for connecting to the MemeCode
Groupware Server. For users
stuck behind a HTTP only firewall there is a protocol for accessing
POP over HTTP. On windows you can also fetch mail from
a MAPI source. There is no support for MAPI on non-Windows platforms (complain to
Microsoft not me).
Enter in the address of your server. You can specify a non-default port using:
<server>:<port>
Most servers are similar to:
mail.isp.com
If your looking for a setting from your ISP.
Under that goes your User Name and Password. If you don't enter a password then
the each time you run Scribe you will be asked to enter the password once, and then
it will remain in memory until Scribe exits.
Check every.. defines how many minutes between an automatic check for new email.
Leave on server... means that new email will be downloaded but not deleted from
the server. All email currently on the server is stored as a list of unique
identifiers in the Scribe options file. That way scribe can track the old mail on
the server and download ones it hasn't seen yet. If the options file goes missing
all mail will be considered "new" and be downloaded at the next connection.
Don't download... is the size limit of incomming email. If some email is larger than
this it will remain on the server until you do something about it using the "Preview on Server"
feature.
Destinaion folder is where new email from this account will be put. If this is blank
then by default the email goes into the /Inbox folder specified in the sub folder
locations dialog.
- Connection
If you have transport plugins (like SSL)
loaded then you can select to use them when
connecting to this account's servers. Currently there is no way to use a transport plugins
for just one of the server's (ie. just send or just receive).
- General Tab
- Quote when replying with ???
This option allows your to quote the contents of the incomming mail when
replying. This adds the specified characters to the start of each line.
Typically the string "> " if used for quoting.
- Append signatures to replies and forwards
Automatically adds your signature to the bottom of a reply or forward.
- Reply/Forward
These fields point to files to use as reply and forward templates. The files
are simple XML (utf-8 charset) containing Scribe
DOM fields and plain text.
By clicking '...' the file is openned in a text editor, and created if it doesn't
already exists with some default values to play with.
- Populate recipients from clipboard
If this option if switched on scribe checks the clipboard when a new email
is created, if a string with a '@' symbol less than 100 characters long is
present it assumes its an email address and puts it in the recipients feild
by default. This is really usful for emailing to an address without a hyperlink.
Copy the address to the clipboard, hit new mail... and off you go. Sometime
you'll have an email address in the clipboard thats not who you want to send
to, in which case you have to delete the recipient. Or turn off the option.
- Minimize to tray icon
This just hides the main window while minimized. So the window doesn't clutter
the start bar.
- Check default email client on startup
Win32 supports a default email client for mailto: URL's. If this option is set
then Scribe will monitor that setting on startup and prompt you if it doesn't
point to Scribe.
- New Email Sound
If this points to a wav file then that sound will be played when new email
arrives.
- Automatically delete executable attachments
This option tells Scribe to removed attachments that contain native executable
code. Commonly the only time you receive this in an email is when you receive
a virus. This option allows you to head it off at the pass and never have to
worry about it again. Esp. useful option for people that know enough to be
dangerous (i.e. can save and execute an attachment) but not know it's a virus. If
you call someone else for tech support that means you!
- Connection Tab
- Appearence Tab
- Editor Font
Select the font to use in the preview pane and the mail compose/view window.
- Wrap lines at ??
Wraps the text in the mail window at a specific column or at the edge of the
window if no value is supplied. Replys are wrapped to the column value
specified or the default of 76 if nothing is specified.
- Default Alternative
This sets the prefered alternative part of the email to view, either text or
HTML.
- Interface Language
This overrides the operating system's language setting.
- Interface Font Size
This adjusts the size of the main font used by Scribe.
- Use Glyph Substitution when displaying text
When displaying internation charsets it's often the case that the character to
be displayed is not actually in the font being used. So by switching this option
on Scribe will find the character in another font and use that instead. This has
the effect of displaying more accents and strange characters at the cost of more
memory usage and a small speed hit when a new character is needed. Some systems,
like Windows 95, 98 and NT don't have great fonts and will display characters out
of alignment, and some computers are too old and slow to do this sort of thing.
So you have the option to turn it off. Btw Windows XP does Glyph Sub. by default
so you can't turn it off under XP.
- Show unread in bold
Shows the message is bold in the main list view when still unread.
- Preview first lines of email
Shows the first few lines of an email in the main window's list. The text is
in a smaller font coloured blue. Often you can tell the basic content of the
message from the first few lines and decide whether to read the email or discard
it.
- Show text on toolbars
Puts little text labels under the toolbar buttons.
- Draw grid
Draws a grid in the main windows's item list.
- Date format
Choose a format you want to see your dates in. Under windows "auto" uses the system
settings. Under other OS's that don't have a system setting for this auto does
"d/m/yyyy" which is the default in my country ;) However all the other settings
override any default.
- Debug Tab
- Log File
If you need to see the client/server dialog that scribe goes through when
connected to a server then set this to a file name (doesn't have to exist
by default). Then as Scribe sends and receives information it will write a
copy to this file. However now days the status window contains a visual log
of the transaction so it's easier to see whats going on. So this option is
not really needed anymore.
- Output Debug Statements to "Scribe.txt"
If your having connection issues this will log lots of information during the
online phase, which may help to diagnose connection related issues. Between
sessions you should delete the Scribe.txt file as it accumulates a lot of information,
and if left unchecked would bolloon out to many MB's.
How you uninstalling Scribe is dependent on which method you used to install it. If you used
the zip file to install Scribe with then you can just delete the directory containing Scribe
and your done.
If you used the self contained installed exe then go into Scribe's entry in the Start Menu and
select "uninstall".
Only a few unavoidable settings are left in the registry and no dll's or other files
are put into system directories. If you want to keep your folders and email then don't
delete the folders.mail file in Scribe's directory.
The registry settings left behind are:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Scribe (IE intergration)
- HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto (If you have selected Scribe as the default client)
These are unavoidable for system intergration and don't impact system perforance
after you remove Scribe. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto can be set to something else by
changing Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Programs -> Email.
To access the plugin window click File -> Plugins. This window allows you to load,
unload and configure plugins for scribe. If you a 3rd party developer looking to
create a plugin for Scribe then I'm more than happy to help you. The architeture
is fairly flexible. However I'm still adding the the functions that can be performed
by a plugin. Currently plugins can handle directory services, content display and
text processing.
- Add
Loads a new plugin into Scribe. The menu shows any plugins in the same
directory as scribe and gives you an option to browse for plugins elsewhere.
If you load a plugin and it doesn't say "loaded" then the most likely problem
is that it's an old plugin that doesn't support the latest format for plugins.
You will need to get a recent version from the Scribe website or the plugin
vendor.
- Remove
Remove the selected plugin(s).
- Configure
Open the configure dialog for the selected plugin. Some plugins have some
properties that can be edited. Others have full blown user interfaces. Some
just work.
- About
About displays some information about the plugin, including the file that it's
loaded from and a description from the object.
Signature file's contents can contain commands that are executed when
the signature is added to an email. Otherwise they are plain text, in utf-8 format.
These commands are formatted in XML and
are inserted amongst the text of the signature. The following commands are
available:
On shutdown options:
<scribe on-close='option'>
Where 'option' can be:
- 'Minimize' zooms the window down to the taskbar.
- 'Compact' compacts the folders and then exits.
Neither option will function when the OS is shutting down.
Adminisrator password:
<scribe admin-psw='password-hash'>
Where password-hash is generated by the password tool.
Folder permissions:
<scribe-folder path='scribe-path' read='read-perms' write='write-perms'>
Where:
- 'scribe-path' is a valid path in Scribe
- 'read-perms' and 'write-perms' can be:
- 'admin' = requires admin access.
Account settings access:
<scribe-accounts read='read-perms' write='write-perms'>
Where 'read' and 'write' can have the value:
- 'admin' requires administrator access.
Configure some of the colours used in Scribe:
<colour.LC_MAIL_PREVIEW hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_UNREAD_COUNT hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_URL hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_1 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_2 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_3 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_4 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_5 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_6 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_7 hex='xxxxxx'>
<colour.LC_REPLY_LVL_8 hex='xxxxxx'>
Where the 'xxxxxx' is a html hex colour.
The POP over HTTP protocol allows you to access a POP mailbox from behind
a HTTP proxy and no direct socket access. You do however need a web server
on the outside of the firewall that can run PHP scripts. Although it doesn't
have to be on the same machine as the POP server you want to access. However
it's a lot faster if it is on the same machine as the POP server.
You can either setup the PopOverHttp script on your own webserver or you can
sign up at PopOverHttp.com
for an account.
To configure a self-hosted PopOverHttp account, firstly download the
script
and edit it to contain your POP account's server, username and password. Then
upload it to your webserver, preferably in a directory that is password protected.
Setting up a webserver or password protecting a directory on a webserver is beyond
the scope of this document, but there is plenty of websites describing how to do
all that on the net.
Once your script is in place, configure an account in Scribe to use the PopOverHttp
protocol. Enter the full http URL of the script in the server field. e.g:
http://www.host.com/~user/popoverhttp.php
If the directory requires a username/password to access then enter those credentials
in the user/pass fields of the account. Otherwise leave them blank.
You can use a normal web browser to test that the script is working, just put the
URL to the script into the browser and if you get a list of message ID's then it's
working and the URL should work in Scribe as well. Remember that if you need a proxy
retreive pages from the web you need to set that up in the connection
tab in the main options window.
Now you should be able to connect to your POP account. As a nice side effect of
bundling lots of requests and responses in batchs over HTTP it's actually substantially
faster than raw POP if the webserver hosting the script is on the same machine
as the POP server. Which is the configuration that I've used successfully for the last
year or so.
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