[Kde-mobile-users] Re: Experiences

JP Horst jphorst at sciencebridge.de
Wed Dec 15 13:18:59 CET 2010


Dear Bernhard,

Am Montag, 13. Dezember 2010, um 10:07:35 schrieb Bernhard Reiter:
> Dear Jens-Peter,
> 
> 
> Thanks for the hint, I take it you were using the instructions at
> http://userbase.kde.org/Kontact_Mobile/Maemo5, we are constantly trying
> to improve them. The change of "unstable" to "testing" is something we started
> recently and it still might need fixing. We will look into the clucene-core 
> issue.
> 
Somehow the entry for unstable reinserts itself in the file hildon-application-manager.list. This causes then an error message on apt-get update. I deleted this entry at least tree times manually in the meantime.



> > A little explanation on the website as to what the different symbols mean
> > would be nice though. It is not quit clear to me what the blue bar under
> > the user ID  stands for.
> 
The blue bar seems to be the download indicator (in the left folder list under the folder name).


> Can you make a screenshot or point to one? 
> I am not entirely sure which bar you are refering to, we have several ones.
> In the full screen email like in 
> http://userbase.kde.org/File:Kontact-mobile-mail-Screenshot-20100811.png
> it is just for layout purposes. We do have a darkblue bar for encrypted emails
> and a progress bar in the folder list.
> 
> Newer versions also have a "First steps" link on the home screen
> which will point you to a few features.
> 
This is a nice feature. I installed the new version yesterday. However when clicked, it says that the manual could not be found on the system.


> > Suggestion: A separate icon with opened emails for quickly deleting them
> > (without pulling out the menu etc.) would be handy.
> 
> Try the bulk action mode, you will get into it, when you touch a folder 
> another time when it is already selected. Then you can mark several emails 
> and then delete or move them all at once.
> 
That will do.

> > The email downloading is not intuitive to me. Mails show up automatically
> > (probably due to the email checking interval), but not necessarily right
> > away when I select "Synchronize emails in folder" manually (which I would
> > prefer). This does not seem to be responsive or delays make this
> > counter-intuitive (the connection is through openvpn).
> 
> There are a few ways that a folder get "synced":
> a) sync during an interval, you can configure this
> b) you select a folder when working online which will try to sync it
> c) you explictely trigger a sync via the menu
> d) there is still a connection to the server on the folder with IMAP idle in 
> which case the server might notify your client asynchroniously.
> 
> When the backend has the emails, the little sync symbol and the detailed view
> in the "accounts" flap will show a done state. To get it displayed the 
> frontends need to fully get the date from the backend and this is sometimes 
> causing a delay which is too large. So we are still looking into this as 
> well. You could try to configure a sorting without gropus.
> 
Thanks for adding the sync state in the new version accounts view.
However, the following scenario I could reproduce a couple times:
Start Kontact (No connection to Kolab available yet)
Start Openvpn (Kolab server availability verified)
Manually syncing on the home page (as Sync all accounts) as well as on every available subfolder level, remains unsuccessful. Account status says "No connection to server".
Activating in the account setting "interval checking" solves this problem immediately.
After deactivating "interval checking" again manual syncing then is possible and remains functional.
Therefore, there seems to be an initial connection step that is not overcome by manual syncing but with interval checking.


> > Criticism: The power consumption / CPU load of the software is really high.
> > With KMail open my N900 hardly last the 8-12h of one workday. When
> > travelling (and this would be the main scenario of use) this is really a
> > critical aspect.

It turns out, the bigger part of the rapid battery drain is caused by the active openvpn connection.


> 
> There is still some room to fine tune the client, especially the syncing.
> Newer versions already have improvements. Try disabling the intervall sync
> for a start. 
> 
> > Upgrading: As far as I now the application (Testing repository) did not
> > apply any upgrade within the last maybe two weeks through the standard
> > softwaremanager. Is there a separate upgrade approach or were there simply
> > no changes lately?
> 
> Testing has already gone through a number of internal and external tests,
> this is why we only update it every few weeks. If you want to be closer to the 
> edge, use "experimental", people do this productively for many months now.
> 
> > In general I value this application very much. Other aspects of usablity
> > are very nice.
> 
> Thanks again for your encouraging feedback!
> Are you already using it with your production data? Are you using end-to-end 
> email security like OpenPGP or S/MIME?
> 
I copied my .gnupg to /home/user and changed the owner to user.
gpg --list keys as user on the shell lists all the keys as expected.
Kontact however does not find the keys (if I want to set my key under identities).
Click on Certificate Manager produces error "Could not start certificate manager; please check your installation".
Pggui by the way also does not see the keys.
Do the keyrings need to be at a different place or have different access rights?


New points:

- I also think, that when creating new accounts I was not asked for the smtp server. It also took me a while to find the setting in the composer. Nevertheless I could not get sending on a second non Kolab account to work. To simplify things I deleted that account again in the meantime.

- When selecting email addresses in the composer the auto-complete uses email adresses as search criteria. However, I don't memorize email addresses but names. Therefore the search criteria for auto-completion should be last name, frist name. Can I change this somewhere?

- When pull out menus do not fit on the screen and have to be scrolled there is a slight shading at the limits to indicate that. It took me a while to find this out. Maybe the possibility to scroll to additional menu entries should be indicated more clearly.

Calender view:
- Pressing + / - to change days does not change days but switches to complete years, e.g. 2009.
- Within e.g. day view a +/- to changes days would be nice.

Thank your for your efforts!





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