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.
Evolution 1.2 brings with it a redesigned comprehensive
settings window that you can open by choosing ToolsConfigure, no matter
where you are in Evolution. On the left half of the settings
window is a column, similar to the Evolution shortcut bar,
which lets you choose which portion of Evolution to
customize. The right half of the window is where you'll make
your actual changes.
Changing Mail SettingsChanging Mail Settings
There are eight items you can customize. From top to bottom, they
are:
Mail Accounts
Here, add or change information about your email
accounts: the servers to which you connect, the way you
download mail, your password authentication mode, and so
forth. This is the most complex item in the list, and is
covered in .
Folder Settings
Here, you can choose the default folders for various
components of Evolution, the folders that will be cached
locally when you go to offline mode, and the folders that
Evolution will use when it is searching for
autocompletion information as you address a mail.
Mail Preferences
These are overall mail reading preferences: display
settings, notification options, security, and so
forth. These are covered in .
Composer Preferences
Settings for the way that you use the mail composer:
shortcuts, signatures, spelling, and so forth. One fun
feature here is the ability to substitute graphical
smiley-faces for "emoticons" such as :) that many people
use in email. This tool is covered in .
Calendar and Tasks
Here, you can set the way the calendar behaves, including
your time zone and the length of your work-week.
Directory Servers
If you want to use a shared directory server (LDAP
server), this is the place to set it up.
Font Preferences
Choose the fonts that Evolution will use to display email
here. You can choose fonts for the mail composer by
selecting EditProperties from
within the composer window.
Summary Preferences
Set the mail folders, news feeds, schedule summary
length, and weather locations to be displayed here. For
news feeds, enter the web address of any RDF file.
Mail Settings
The first few tools, with the exception of the folder tool,
cover mail tasks:
Working with Mail AccountsXimian 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), read and keep it on the
server (Microsoft Exchange or IMAP), or read it from files
that already exist on your desktop computer. 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 how often, as well as other message
retrieval options.
If you chose POP:Checking for new mail: If you would
like Evolution
to check for new mail automatically,
check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
Message Storage: If you'd like to store
copies of your mail on the server, check
this option.
Store Store status headers in
Elm/Pine/Mutt format: If you would like to
use the X-Status header format used by the
mail clients Elm, Pine, and Mutt, select
this option. This option is useful if you
plan to check your mail with those clients
from time to time.
If you chose Microsoft Exchange:Checking for new mail: If you would like
Evolution to check for new mail
automatically, check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
Exchange Server: If your active directory user name
is different from your Exchange mail user name, check this
box and enter your mail username here.
Create a Global Address List folder: If you would
like to have a seperate folder for the Active Directory's
Global Address List, leave this box checked.
Active Directory Server Name: In most organizations,
the Active Directory server will be different from
the Exchange mail server. If so, check the box and
enter the Active Directory server name here.
Limit number of Responses: Select a maximum number
of results for an address search. A maximum number of
results limits the load on your system and on your network.
If you chose IMAP:Checking for new mail: If you would like
Evolution to check for new mail
automatically, check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
If you want Evolution
to check for new messages in all your
IMAP folders, make sure the Check for new
messages in all folders box is selected.Show only subscribed folders: Check this box if you
have more folders in your IMAP view than you want to
read.
Override server-supplied namespace: If you like, enter a
specific directory where your server stores mail for
you. Typical values are "mail" and "Mail." For more
information about how to use IMAP mail, see .Apply filters to new messages in INBOX on this
server: If you'd like your filters to work on this account
as well as on locally downloaded mail, check this box.Store Store status headers in Elm/Pine/Mutt format:
If you would like to use the X-Status header format used
by the mail clients Elm, Pine, and Mutt, select this
option. This option is useful if you plan to check your
mail with those clients from time to time.
Sending Mail
In this section, you will choose and configure a method
for sending mail. You may choose SMTP, Microsoft Exchange (if
you have purchased the Ximian Connector for Microsoft
Exchange) 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. You can
learn more about PGP and encryption in .
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 .
To change the font which Ximian
Evolution uses to display mail, do the
following:
Open the Control Center by selecting SystemSettings from
the menu panel.
Select the HTML Viewer settings tool.
Choose the font and font size you would like to use.
Alternately, open a terminal and run the
gtkhtml-properties-capplet command. This
will open the GNOME HTML Display Properties tool, and you can
select a font and other attributes of your HTML display,
including that in Ximian Evolution.
Message Composer Preferences
There are three whole tabs of settings you can change for the
message composer. The General tab covers shortcuts and
assorted behavior, and the other two control signatures and
spell checking. In the General tab, you can set:
Shortcuts Type
Choose a keyboard shortcut scheme: do you prefer
keyboard shortcuts similar to those of Microsoft
Windows, XEmacs, or Emacs?
Default Behavior
Choose how you will normally forward and reply
messages, what character set they will use, whether
they will be in HTML, and whether that HTML can
contain smiley face images.
Alerts
There are two optional alerts here:
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.
The signature editor is new for Evolution 1.2. It allows you
to create several different signatures in plain text or in
HTML, and to specify which of them will be added to emails
you create in the message composer. If you prefer to use an
alternate signature or none at all, you can select it from
the mail composer itself.
In the spell-checking tool, you can set spelling options,
including the language or languages you will use. Note that you
must install the gnome-spell package, available through Red
Carpet, for spell-checking to be available in
Evolution. Alternate dictionaries are aslo available through
Red Carpet and are detected automatically if you have installed
them.
Calendar and Task List Settings
The calendar configuration tool has two tabs
General and
Display, and is illustrated in .
Calendar Preferences DialogCalendar Configuration
The General tab lets you set the
following:
Time zone
The city you're located in, to judge your time zone.
Time formatYou may choose between twelve-hour (AM/PM) and
twenty-four hour time formats here by clicking the
appropriate radio button.
Work Week
When does your work day start, and when does it end?
In the day and week views,
Evolution displays all the
hours in the range you select here, even if there are
no appointments for those times. Of course, you can
still schedule an appointment outside of these hours,
and if you do, the display will be extended to show
it.
First day of the weekYou can set weeks to start on Sunday or on Monday.Start of day
Says what time of the day your weekday starts. This
will show all times till the end of the day,
regardless of there is an appointment during the time
period.
End of day
Sets the time the day ends at.
Alerts
If you'd like to be warned before you delete any
appointment, or to have a reminder automatically
appear for each event, select the check boxes here.
The Display section lets you choose how
your appointments and tasks will appear in your calendar.
The display properties you can set are:
Time divisions
Sets the increments shown on the daily view in the
calendar. You can set this to be anywhere from five
minutes to an hour, in five minute increments.Show appointment end times in week and month views
If there is space,
Evolution will show the end
times in the week and month views for each
appointment.
Compress weekends in month view
If checked, your weekends will be shown in one box,
instead of one for each day in the month view.
Show week numbers in date navigator
This will show the week numbers next to the respective
weeks in the calendar.
Tasks due today
Configures what color to set your tasks that are due
today to.
Overdue tasks
Choose the color for overdue tasks.
Managing the Addressbook
Addressbook settings are limited to the usage and
configuration of directory servers (LDAP and
Exchange). Contact folders for the mailer's autocompletion
feature are set in the Folders tool above, and all other
addressbook controls are available in the addressbook window
itself.
Adding Directory Servers
To add a new LDAP server
to your available contact folders:
Select
ToolsSettings
and click the Directory Servers
shortcut button.
Click the Add button on the right
side to open a Directory Server addition assistant.
Enter the server information as requested by the assistant:
Server name
Address of the server where the addressbook is located.
Login Method
Specify whether your login is anonymous, using
an email address, or a "distinguished name." If
the login is not anonymous, enter the login name
required by the server.
Port
The internet port
Evolution connects to
in order to access the LDAP database. This is
normally 389.
Use SSL/TLS
SSL and TLS are security mechanisms. If you
select Always, Evolution
will not connect unless
secure connections are available. The default value is
Whenever Possible, which uses
secure connections if they are available,
but does not cause failure if they are not.
Search base
The base entry to use for all your searches.
Contact your administrator for information about
the correct settings.
Search scope
How broad the search is in the directory. The
following options are available:
One
Searches the Search Base and one entry
below it.
Sub
Searches the Search Base and all entries
below it.
Timeout Limit
This is the maximum time Evolution will attempt to
download data from the server before giving up.
Download Limit
Set the maximum number of results for a given
search. Most servers refuse to send more than
500, but you can set the number lower if you
want to shorten downloads for very broad
searches.
Display name
The name that you see on the screen. This could
be anything you wish.
Click OK.
Click OK to permanenty make
changes or Apply to temporarily
set the changes.