[Kde-pim] Google Summer of Code Application - KMail

[Till Adam]

On Wednesday 26 March 2008 06:17:36 Szymon Stefanek wrote:

> I plan to apply as a student in Google Summer of Code and I've spotted
> the small paragraph about KMail in the ideas page.
>
> It's about improving the message view by supporting multiline text.
>
> I'm using KMail daily since years and I'd like to take care of the task
> and maybe contribute other code around. GSoC would be also my entry point
> to KDE development.

Great. Welcome. :)

> The simple "multiline text" task IMHO might be too "small" for GSoC so my
> proposal contains more ideas and also a generic "help in the Qt4 port" to
> fill in the time span that may remain at the end of the project.

Agreed.

> I would like to have some feedback about the proposal
> and maybe some hint about a possible mentor.
>
> First of all I've played a bit with the current kmail trunk and came
> out with the following screenshots:
>
> 	http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap1.png
> 	http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap2.png
> 	http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap3.png
> 	http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap4.png
> 	http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap5.png
>
> This is how a multiline message view could look like.
> The shots are obtained by hardcore hacks in the Qt3-compat
> headeritem painting code and by some gimping (4 and 5).

Ah, Outlook. ;)

> Here are the keypoints of the application.
>
> - Create a message view with rich items.
>
> 	I'd actually like to have more than just multiline.
> 	Rich items that allow painting multiple text items and multiple
> 	pixmaps on multiple lines.
>
> 	In the screenshots you can see some examples. The sender is left aligned
> 	in the first line, the date is right aligned in the first line
> 	and the subject is left aligned and elided in the second line.
> 	We have more space so we also can display more state pixmaps.
>
> 	We could explore the possibility of grouping toplevel items.
> 	Examples of groups might be "Today", "Yesterday", "Last Week", "Last
> Month", "Search Results" etc... (see
> http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap4.png for example).
>
> 	Multiline items would rule out simple sorting by clicking on the column.
> 	I'd be then tempted to remove the columns at all and specify sorting by a
> 	combo box. (still in http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap4.png).
>
> 	This would allow for more sorting rulesets possibly more sophisticated.
> 	Sorting could include grouping rules as described above.
>
> 	All this stuff would require a custom widget to be defined. Well, we could
> 	use QTreeView but it would add several constraints to the ideas expressed
> 	above. With grouping it would be something similar to a specialized
> 	QTreeView with different kinds of rich-text items, no branches and no
> 	column headers.
>
> 	Implementing a totally custom widget could introduce problems with styling
> 	but would also allow for great optimisations: the message view must be
> fast.
>
> 	Such a custom widget could be useful also for other applications. Korn for
> 	example. It could eventually end up in kdeui.
>
> - Implement tooltip based message preview in the view.
>
> 	Such a tooltip is faked in http://labs.pragmaware.net/misc/kmailsnap5.png
>
> - Port the message view to native Qt4
>
> 	Actually the message view is implemented by using the Qt3 support
> 	classes. I will port it to use only native Qt4 classes and maybe
> 	adapt it to use the standard model-view architecture (to be discussed
> 	in detail).

This is the interesting (and hard) part. It's a prerequisite to one day using 
Akonadi as a backend for KMail, so that work would be very much useful and 
valued. I would stress this aspect of it in the application over the item 
painting, which, while nice, isn't really challenging.

> - Implement the relevant configuration items/pages for all of the above.
>
> - Remove Qt3 support from kmail sources and other relevant places
>
> 	I see that there are still several instances of Q3*/K3* classes
> 	floating around. I'd like to help in replacing them with native Qt4 code.
> 	Result at the end of GSoC: kmail (and maybe other apps) no longer
> requiring Qt3 support. I already have a certain experience in porting huge
> apps from one major version of Qt to another :)

That's a bit broad, for gsoc, if applaudable. :)

Feel free to stop by in #kontact on freenode to discuss this in more detail. 
Many of us pim folks hang out there regularly, as do some of the other people 
interested in pim gsoc work.

Cheers,

till

-- 
Till Adam
KDAB - platform independent software services
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