Password and User kcm module

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Thursday 21 October 2004 20:17, Frans Englich wrote:
> On Thursday 21 October 2004 17:19, Chris Howells wrote:
> > * Name: Does this get updated in /etc/passwd if I change it?
>
> Why don't you try? Or you mean it should, but doesn't? It does on my
> setup.
>
> > * Organisation: Where is this used?
> > Email address: Where is this used? what if I have more than one
> > e-mail address? how do I know which one I need?
> > * Smtp server: where is this used? What is sending email?
>
> KDE has the simple API KEMailSettings for personality data. AFAIK,
> it's used by KOffice for template/document info data, and similar
> situations. KMail has the possibility to use the KControl settings
> when setting up identities.
>
> The PIM folks have probably already figured this out, but the
> question is how KDE should handle identities: Should it all be in
> KControl, or should it be in the relevant apps(kmail, pim)? I think
> for various reasons such settings should be in pim, but still basic
> info can be good to have globally(which leads us to where we are
> now). Name, email, organization, are info which are used in documents
> and such things.

The problem with sharing identities is that all apps put custom entries 
in the identities. But this makes it more or less impossible to share 
identities between many programs. The only information that is really 
used by many applications are name, email, organization, etc. But those 
are already in the user's personal address book entry. Those values 
should be used by all applications that need personal information about 
the user. So I think basically KEMailSettings is obsolete (apart from 
the SMTP server setting? see below). Maybe KEMailSettings could simply 
be changed to make use of the user's personal address book entry 
instead of duplicating the information.

> However, stretching it to technical details such as account setup is
> to go too far, IMO, so the SMTP settings is out of place. IIRC I
> probably tried to nuke it, but it's used in kscd's CDDB submission.
> Is the settings used somewhere else? Can it be moved to KSCD?

Isn't this setting also used by the KReportBug dialog to send bug 
reports (for KDE apps which are not using bugs.kde.org)?

> I've thought about this before; AFAICT, KMail shouldn't have a
> special option for importing from KControl, but automatically load it
> as default(when setting up identity).

AFAIK we guess the values (name, email address) from /etc/passwd (or its 
equivalent) and from the hostname. I doubt that a significant 
percentage of users will enter name and email address in the 
KEMailSettings before they start using KMail. I guess most users never 
even look at KEMailSettings.

Regards,
Ingo
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