1.  I just tried Spruce 0.6.1 and when I send a message or try closing the compose window it always seems to hang/freeze on me. What's wrong?
 

You have just discovered a bug in glib versions 1.2.6 and presumably earlier. Try upgrading to glib 1.2.7 and see if that solves your problem, if not please contact me. For further details, you can either contact me or see the News page.

2.  I notice that when my Inbox (or any other Mailbox) gets full, the performance of Spruce during operations on that Mailbox really begins to suffer (like over ~75 emails)
 

Yes, this is true and I am aware of this problem. I will be trying to fix this along with some other small bugs for the 0.5.x releases. Until then, if you have multiple Pop3 accounts dumping into your Inbox, perhaps consider creating a new Mailbox for each Pop3 account to help limit the sizes of these Mailboxes. If you only have 1 account dumping into Inbox (or whatever), then perhaps try your best to delete old messages on a weekly basis (or more if needed).

Update: With the release of Spruce 0.5.5, mailbox access has significantly increased.

As an example of how much better it is: I subscribed to the kernel development mailing list and currently have over 1400 emails sitting in one mailbox and it takes less than 1 second to display it.

Note: You may want to use some optimization options when you compile (it will help to increase performance). As an example, I use: CFLAGS="-O6 -mpentiumpro -march=pentiumpro" ./configure [options]

3.  With Spruce 0.5.x, sometimes the text in the Composer window doesn't show up. What's wrong?
 

I've got to figure out what the deal is here, because I'm not 100% certain. However, with one person I helped, the problem seemed to be that they were trying to attach a signature when the signature file did not exist. Once they unchecked the auto-append signature checkbox, their problem seemed to have disappeared. I've taken a look at the code and don't see why this would cause the problem, but for some reason this seems to be the problem. If this doesn't work, please let me know.

Update: As of Spruce 0.5.9, this problem was solved

4.  Do you plan on supporting other languages, besides English?
 

I coded NLS support into Spruce 0.5.1 but I am unsure if it works or not, if you find that it doesn't work, please notify me and I'll see if I can figure out why it isn't working (assuming it's not working). Please read the ABOUT-NLS file to see what libraries you will need in order to take advantage of this feature. I believe GNU gettext 0.10.35 is what you need.

Update: With the release of Spruce 0.5.5, English and Swedish are supported. I was just recently sent a Big5 translation file also, so this will be supported in 0.5.6 and later. If you want your language supported, please either make a .po file for me or find someone who can make one for me. Thanky you.

Current supported languages (cvs): Swedish, Big5, Korean, Russian, Danish, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian, etc

5.  Does Spruce currently support IMAP?
 

Current "stable" versions do not support IMAP, however, the current devel and CVS versions do support IMAP. Starting with the Spruce 0.5.8 development version, it will support IMAP.

6.  Does it support POP3?
 

Yes. It also supports APOP and POP using cram-md5 authentication.

7.  I noticed that Spruce comes with a script called spruce.inst. Do I need to copy this to a bin directory in my PATH?
 

No, with versions 0.4.6 (for sure) and later, this script should not be needed. However, I have kept it up-to-date just in case for some reason Spruce fails to create it on it's own the first time you run it.

8.  Does it have an address book?
 

Yes. Is it fancy? No, but it'll get the job done and isn't too shabby if you ask me.

9.  Does it support filters?
 

Yes. As of version 0.4.9, Spruce *does* support filters thanks to Kristoffer Brånemyr. Thanks Kristoffer!!

10.  Does it support file attachments?
 

Yes, current devel and CVS versions support file attachments! (0.5.6 and later)

11.  Does Spruce support MIME/html formatted emails? And if so, on which ends (sending/receiving/both)?
 

Current CVS versions of Spruce do support MIME for both sending and receiving, however, it does not support HTML parsing. Will we code HTML parsing? I don't know - haven't decided if it's that important yet or not.

12.  Is PGP supported?
 

The 0.4.x series do not support any form of PGP, however, the latest devel and CVS versions do support GNU Privacy Guard (GNU's equivalent of PGP). To use GnuPG support in Spruce, you must have PGG (Privacy Guard Glue - see PGG.version for version requirements) and configure using the --enable-gpg switch.
example: ./configure --enable-gpg

13.  Can Spruce read local mail mailboxes (mbox format)?
 

The 0.4.x series do not support mbox formatted mailboxes, however, starting with the 0.5.x series, mbox will be supported. For further nformation, read README.mbox included with the latest 0.5.x versions.

14.  How do I get the latest Spruce CVS?
 

export CVSROOT=":pserver:anonymous@stampede.org:/home/cvs"
cvs login
(when it prompts for a password, give it: anonymous)
cvs checkout spruce

If you are running the latest release and something doesn't work, you may want to check CVS to see if the problem was fixed.
There may be times when Spruce CVS won't compile, if this is the case, do NOT email me...odds are I know it doesn't compile ;-)

15.  When I go to `make` spruce, I get errors about aclocal similar to:

  aclocal: configure.in: 15: macro `AM_PATH_GTK' not found in library
  make: *** [aclocal.m4] Error 1

Okay, what you need to do is this: find all the files on your system with the extension '.m4' and either move or copy them to /usr/share/aclocal
Another thing you could try, is `touch aclocal.m4` in the spruce build directory and then try making spruce again.

16.  How should I submit bug reports?

Jeff Covey had an excellent article on Freshmeat explaining How to Report Bugs Effectively. I would greatly appreciate it if you would read that document before sending me bug reports as I feel it is a very well written piece and would save me a lot of time and allow me to fix the bug you find sooner making us both happy :)

17.  You've done such a great job with Spruce, mind if I send you a small payment?
 

Seeing as how I'm a poor college student, I'd gladly accept payment for my hard work ;-)