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. 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.

Installing/Uninstalling

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.

AutoZip

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".

GnuPG/AutoGPG

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] 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. The "Home Dir" folder should point to the folder containing your key ring files. It can be a relitive path to the location of the scribe executable.

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 incoming 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.

Html

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.

Aspell

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.

Scripting/Forms

There is some basic scripting of filters and a package for writing form emails documented here.

LDAP Client and Server

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.