[Kde-pim] kmail soc branch

[Sven Burmeister]

On Monday 08 September 2008 01:51:56 Szymon Stefanek wrote:
> On Sunday 07 September 2008, Sven Burmeister wrote:
> > I used the kmail-soc branch for a while and except for one crash, it is
> > very stable and I like it a lot! Thanks to those that implemented all of
> > this!
>
> Great! I'll use this feedback to fix the bugs.
> Just need some time as I'm busy with an exam this week.

Exams come first, so I'll just add to this thread and wait, no worries.

> I've seen your bugreport about the crash and I've reproduced it. Need
> some time to fix it since it seems to be caused by an "obscure" KMail
> internal related to message releasing (unGetMsg() seems to be done twice,
> for the ones that know something about it).

Nice, I hate it if I see bugs that others cannot reproduce. :)

> > - aggregation headings are huge
>
> If I understand correctly, you're talking about the group items font.
>
> This is only the default. You can change the size of the font in the skin
> editor. However, I've been guided only by personal taste for assigning
> the defaults, so maybe people could just vote for the fonts.

True, apparently I did not right-click all items yet. :) If the font is set to 
"custom" and one clicks on "custom" to change the settings that does not work, 
one has to change to "default" and back to "custom" in order to change the 
settings. Changing from custom to default however loses the custom settings, 
i.e. if you switch back again you do not get the "huge" fonts but a standard 
size. Not sure if the latter is intended, seems minor to me in any case.

Personyally I chose sans serif, bold, 12 or 11 pt

> > - kmail does not not remember aggregations' open/collapse status when
> > switching folders or quitting.
>
> Hm. This could be an interesting feature... I can add it, but it
> will have the drawback of eating a lot of configuration space
> (as for large folders there may be really many groups)...

That's true. I just thought about working in one folder/project, receiving a 
call about another project/folder. Currently the user would lose all the 
opened groups because of this.

One way to allow the user to set groups he definitely wants to have opened all 
the time, no matter what, would be to introduce a pin feature like kwin offers 
it, i.e. some button in the grouping header. Yet having to click on that 
before switching folders because of a call, as described above seems a bit 
odd. Or one introduces an option "remember grouping status" and if the user 
enables it, he accepts the drawbacks, if there are any.

> > - moving emails from outbox to trash/sending emails from the outbox does
> > not update the folder-pane
>
> Hm, I can't reproduce it. Are you moving messages by right clicking on them
> or by dragging them to trash ? The counts seem to be correctly updated
> here...

I had this only when using "send later" first and then right-click on the 
outbox to send them. I will try again with this email.

> > - right-click on aggregation headings does not offer to show the status
> > column (I think this did work before)
>
> The "status" column has been split in several smaller columns now. This
> depends on the skin though. You can easily create a colum that has all
> the status icons of your interest.
>
> I'm also planning to provide a default "fancy skin with status" that will
> offer all the status icons inside a column.

If I remember correctly the fancy skin did show the "message" column heading 
above its grouping headings some days ago, which is now gone. If one picks the 
new fancy skin with clickable status those are visible again.

> > - status-icons are very small, which is bad for recognising their
> > functionality and clicking them (offer switch to show them two lines
> > high?)
>
> Another interesting potential feature. I'll look into this.
>
> > - (clickable) status icons do not have tooltip that explains their
> > functionality
>
> Right. Actually the tooltip contains message informations for the
> whole item. Having sub-item tooltips might be also a nice improvement.
> I'll look into this too.

What about only showing the "message tooltip" if one hovers the message 
column, i.e. subject, sender etc. and not showing it when hovering the status 
column. I am not sure what to do if people put the status icons into the 
message column (except read etc), but since that would not be default, I guess 
those people do know about them already.

> > - aggregating to days when there is only a single email per day seems odd
>
> I agree. But how to do better and make everyone happy ?
>
> We could add an option to "merge small groups"... but I expect more
> votes for such a feature as it will require some equilibrism in the
> aggregation algorithms.
>
> > - since there is enough space it might make sense to always show verbose
> > month - enterprise headers are cut off if one switches from a message
> > that needs a vertical scroll-bar to one that does not
>
> Right, the date format for the groups should be configurable.
> Adding to the TODO list.
>
> Hm.. quick vote: would you prefer to configure them per-skin or globally ?

I only use one skin, so it would not matter for me, not sure though if this is 
interesting for companies who provide a custom skin for their standard 
workplace.

> > - I don't know what "show headers" does in the customise skins advanced
> > tab. - I would opt for showing the status-column by default since "todo"
> > and "important" and the others as well are quite useful IMHO
>
> Yep, that's an unclear part of the skinning engine which I was awaiting
> comments on. The fact is that when a skin has only one column then
> one likely does not want the column header to be shown since it only
> eats space. This is why the option is there. On the other side
> if you hide the header then you have no way to show/hide columns
> by right clicking (since these options are available via the header
> context menu). So this option is actually useful only for skins
> with a fixed number of columns that are all always visible...

Ah, that explains a lot. I caused the issues with not being able to enable the 
status column myself. I will think about a better label for the functionality. 
When I read headers in a mail application I think about the headers in the 
email itself and not the headings of the columns. Maybe "Message list headers" 
would do.

If found some more things, however some of them I do not know how to reproduce 
reliably.

- Did you get any feedback yet that some people are annoyed by the tooltips? I 
can imagine that some would like to turn them off. I cannot decide for  myself 
yet though.

- if I click the spam-icon to enable it, i.e. mark the mail as spam, the 
message is marked as ham instead. One has to click again, which, if one does 
it too quickly opens the message.

- Marking a message as spam does not apply the spam filter, i.e. move it to 
the trash.

- In the customise skins dialogue, the column width of the message column is 
always small, although there is enough space to expand it a bit.

- "Expand all Groups" is not remembered, this would only be one setting per 
folder to remember.

- opened tabs are not remembered

- If you have a thread like this:

message1 (thread 1)
|- message2 (thread 1)
message3 (another email not from thread 1)

and delete message1 by pressing DEL, the selection jumps to message3 rather 
than message2.

- Sometimes, if I right-click a message the "create-filter" is greyed out. I 
thought that it would happen for the first message of a new thread (only if 
there was no Re: in the subject), but it is not that simple.

- Sometimes I click on a message and am shown the text of another message. The 
message I am shown is not visible in the message-list, yet if I apply the 
quicksearch to search for it, I can see it and clearing the quicksearch does 
also show it in the normal view, as if searching would show some refresh.

Good luck with your exams!

Sven
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