[kde-linux] Re: KMail Distribution Groups

[John]

Hi Duncan,

Thanks for the very comprehensive answer. At least I know it's not just me.
A pity though it would have been nice if there were a couple of permissions
to fix and things would work.

In previous versions of kmail I often struggled to enter and change the
Distribution Lists but at least they were usable, perhaps that was pre 4.4.
Now the problem seems to have moved to the interface.

Wonder if anyone has clever ideas as workarounds?? I tried copy and paste
out of the distribution list in KAdressBook into the message but it copies
the addresses with space separators which need to be changed manually.

Regards,
John



On 30 Jul 2011 11:04:04, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net> wrote:

John posted on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 07:35:29 +0200 as excerpted:

> I am using kmail as my mail client on a recent open SuSE installation.
>
> About KMail shows KMail Version 1.13.6 Using KDE Development Platform
> 4.6.00 (4.6.0) "release 6"
>
> I have set up a "Contact Group" using kAddressBook which was launched
> directly from kmail. I have also added the "Contact Group" to all
> Address Books.
>
> I can not however find out how to use this Group when sending an email.
>
> Is there a special trick/ bug to overcome, nothing intuitive seems to be
> working.

It's a rather long story, but the really brief and simple version is that
it's a known bug for what you're using -- contact groups apparently don't
work.

The medium length version is that the kdepim (including kmail) folks have
been working on "akonadifying" (getting all kdepim apps working on the
common akonadi database based backend) pretty much all of kdepim, but
this work has taken rather longer than expected.  kde 4.4 akonadified
kaddressbook, and 4.5 was supposed to akonadify kmail.  Except that a
kdepim 4.5 was never released as the job wasn't finished.  4.6.0 didn't
bring a new kdepim 4.6 either, tho one was released somewhat later with
the akonadified kmail (kmail2), about 4.6.3 or 4.6.4 for the rest of kde,
tho it was still kdepim 4.6.0, and even then, it was apparently only
considered ready for early-adopters.  Later, there was a kdepim 4.6.1
with a few minor updates, but it too was for early adopters, I'm told.

The problem you mention was supposed to be only relatively temporary, a
result of the akonadified kaddressbook, while kmail itself hadn't yet
been akonadified.  However, with the delay in further kdepim releases,
that problem and other issues related to the fact that at that point they
weren't doing much with the old kmail, pretty much simply keeping it
working until the akonadified kmail2 could replace it, lasted far longer
than originally intended.

With kde 4.7.0, kdepim re-syncs with the release sequence of the rest of
kde.  So there's now a kdepim 4.7.0 out there along with kde 4.7.0.

But I'm not sure what the user-target is for kdepim 4.7, whether it's
considered appropriate for normal users or not.

Meanwhile, while I had been skeptical, I had earlier adopted a wait and
see attitude toward akonadified kmail.  But with kdepim 4.6, even
ignoring the hopefully temporary bugs, it became very obvious to me that
while the akonadified kmail might ultimately function very well as an 18-
wheeler semi-truck (if you will), with the kontact suite integrating
kmail, knode, korganizer, akregator, etc, what I needed was mail that
"just worked", a sporty two-door convertable in comparison to the
akoandified kdepim 18-wheeler.  kmail, and indeed, kdepim in general (the
only other kdepim app I use being akregator), was no longer an
appropriate fit for my needs; I needed to find something else more
appropriate, switch to it, and dump kmail (and akregator).

I finally arrived at this conclusion only about a week before 4.7 came
out, and wanted to have at least kmail off my system by the time I
switched to 4.7.

It took quite a bit of work, but aided by the fact that I'm
"underemployed" ATM, so had rather more time than I would have normally,
I did it.  I switched to the gtk2-based claws-mail in place of kmail,
converted my address book and mail-store (using scripts that were a bit
dated and had to be hacked a bit to work, and converting nearly 50 kmail
filters with 1-10 conditions and two actions each, to claws-mail filters
by hand, thus the work mentioned above), and was able to remove kmail
from my system before installing kde 4.7.

I expect to have settled on and converted to an akregator replacement
before 4.7.1 (which should be out a month after 4.7.0), at which point
I'll be able to remove all of kdepim, akonadi, etc, from my system, and
since I'm on Gentoo, then turn off USE=semantic-desktop and kill nepomuk,
strigi, etc, as well, as I already have them disabled but USE=semantic-
desktop is still required as an indirect dependency of akregetor, which
I'm still using, so I can't evict them from my system just yet.  But for
4.7.1 if not before, I expect to be finally free of this semantic-desktop
albatross that I've been saddled with (mixed metaphor, but oh, well...)
since I switched to kde4!

--
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
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