KDE PIM User Survey

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hello Daniel.

Daniel Vrátil - 29.07.17, 10:06:
> If you use KMail (or Kontact), please help us, the KDE PIM developers, to
> get a better picture of how you use it so that we know which parts of the
> software we should focus on, and how we should evolve it in the future. We
> will use the results of the survey to make the experience of using KMail as
> best as possible for everyone.
> 
> You can fill the survey here: https://survey.kde.org/index.php/852475. It
> won't take you more than 5 minutes.
> 
> Also please remember to spread the word about the survey to other KMail
> users so that we get as many responses as possible.
> 
> Thank you very much!

Thank you very much for making that survey!

Since I revealed my identity in survey anyway I can put up my additional notes 
here on the mailing list as well.

More than KMail Akonadi needs improvement in several ways (please note tough I 
am still using KDEPIM/Akonadi 16.04 on Debian unstable so my notes may partly 
be outdated):

- see thread "My major issue with Akonadi: Blocking on user input" on kdepim-
users.

  - an akonadictl fsck that really *fixes* issues: "akonadictl fsck: What 
messages indicate real issues and what to do about them?" Daniel you answered 
this and I didn´t reply to it further, thinking "Whoa! Now I have to play 
database admin, low level hex editor game in order to get things consistent 
again".

  - No blocking on user input. I cannot repeat this often enough.

  - Robust connection handling. I still have it with Exchange that… at some 
time Akonadi just seems to give up and I need to restart it in order that it 
picks up IMAP connection again… Or maybe its a different issue, but KMail 
shows "ItemRetrieverException : Unable to retrieve item from resource: Did not 
receive a reply" or even "Unable to connect to backend resource" (I am not 
exactly sure about the wording of this one). What I expect instead is after 
some retries to connect with IMAP server… "Unable to connect with IMAP server. 
Retry?". You cannot allow it to silently give up without giving the user an 
option to retry. I know this is a bit challenging due to the asynchronous of 
how KMail handles Akonadi (which is good). But maybe just add a reconnect 
option to KMail in a promiment enough place and mention that in the 
notification.

I´d focus here… and then start to improve KMail itself. Cause… KMail itself is 
really in my eyes one of the best mail clients I know of. Its an excellent 
piece of software when it comes to usability and features. That I am still 
with it after 13 years, says enough about it. If it wouldn´t have been that 
good, I wouldn´t have put up with all the fights I had with Akonadi over the 
years, and sometimes still have.

Yes, that is a compliment!

Thanks,
-- 
Martin