[Kde-pim] Project: Active Mail

[Michael Bohlender]

On Friday, February 28, 2014, Abhijeet Nikam <connect08nikam at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I'll be submitting around 25-30 code style check patches tomorrow
> which I have just completed. Really happy and excited - got my first
> patch in open source reviewed :)


Awesome! Time to give you some real coding work. There should be some
errors related to our use oft anchors withon the toolbar layout. I can not
test Thema because I am currently nowhere near my development Maschine. Do
you also see them?
Do you think you can fix them?


> Related to the GSoC proposal:
>
>  I have been playing around with the Active Mail for some time, I
> found the user interface very simple to use but it lacks  many
> features. Apart from creating an API for composing mails , I have also
> thought of the following ideas:
>
>  1.We can have a tagging feature of important things like 'click here'
> to see the  mails so that it is more user friendly. We can  also
> create an option to switch of the tags for experienced users.
>
> It is already possible, to tag mails as important. It will be easy to
access important mails, once we switch to the searchfolder approach for
browsing (currently in the making ). See question 5.

 2.I also wish to include some basic different themes (consisting of
> default contrast colors and a simple but cool looking background
> picture) for the user to choose for a start to enhance the user
> interface. Will it  be possible in the required time frame? We can
> have them loaded which the user can load it simply after clicking the
> required options. But I don't have a clear cut idea about saving the
> changes. Any pointers for it?


We usw PlasmaComponents. These should already be styled, but it is not
picking up the theme. This bug will be gone, once wie switch to the API
approach and make the app a plasmoid, running in a window. However, feel
free to investigate and fix it, If you wish to.


>  3. I also plan to include awesome color high-lighting for all the
> folders (like in-box ,sent mail and the other sub folder's) and add a
> light translucent shaded colors to all the read mails, marked ones
> etc.


Not nessisary. See above.


> 4.How about, creating a color-palette of some limited colors and then
> giving the user the freedom to customize the colors and appearance at
> click by using the signals concept? We would also have to work on
> saving the changes with that.


>
Again, see above.

>

5. It will be great to categorize the mails. Can we sort the email's
> based on tags?


 Something similar is planed, yes. The idea is to offer user defined
searches (that can include tags) that act as virtual folders to the user.

I know it may not be possible in the required time frame so the ideas
> may not be up to the mark.


The composer will be a lot oft work. It is always possible, to give you
Mord work, once you finished that.


> Could you please give a feedback on the ideas?


It is great to see, that you come up with your own ideas. Some oft them are
similar to our own ideas and already in the making.
I would like to see some ideas, related to the composer.


> I am going presently through the tutorials, so could you point me to
> some resources which will help in writing the email composer? I there
> any specific email client in your mind which you may want our client
> to function like?


Unfortinatly, I did not blog enough during my GSoC project, but you can
have a look at it here [1]. The idea is, to have the composer inline as
another Page instead of a seperate window. You can take the current
composer as a reference for the functionality. We also have a requierements
page [2] . These are suggestions and not set in stone. You can always come
up with your own ideas. We are happy to discuss them with you.

For the technical part:
The API should be done as a QML import using QDeclaratveExtesionPlugin.
The UI in QML using PlasmaComponets.


> And yes, the client crashes on quitting. Should I report it as a bug
> or is there some work already going on it?


This is a known issue, that shoud be gone, once we switch to the API
approach. However, feel free to investigate an fix it.

Cheers

Mike

[1] mbohlender.wordpress.com
[2] community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/mail
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