KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Alex Schuster]

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:09:32 +0200 as excerpted:
> 
>> Duncan writes:

>> I only used KMail for a long time, but then I gave Akregator a try, and
>> I liked it. And so I thought why not, and started using the whole
>> Kontact suite.
> 
> FWIW, akregator still feels a bit kludgy (hey, "kludgy" would make a nice 
> kde app! =:^) to me.  I preferred the knewsticker kicker applet that was 
> part of kde3.

Oh, these newsticker applets. The KDE4 one didn't do anything when I
tried (a long time ago), but I don't like them anyway, they tend to
distract me.


> But when I read mail I read mail.  When I read news, I read news (FWIW 
> using pan to do it, not kde's knode).  And when I read feeds, I read 
> feeds.  I don't have any desire to unify them in some way, for the same 
> reason I rarely view the combined feed list instead of tech/linux news vs 
> other.  If I'm thinking about Linux and reading Linux/tech feeds, I don't 
> want to be off-tracked by the latest about Obama or the debt talks, tho I 
> value that too and follow it separately.  But the key is just that, 
> /separately/.  Having mail from my family, or from my voicemail service, 
> while valuable in themselves, intrude on my Linux concentration, would be 
> even worse!   So keeping the apps separate is just fine by me; no kontact 
> necessary!

Hmm, I'd say with Kontact things are more separated for than they were
before, when I had a mail window, and some browser windows (showing
things I now read in Akregator), on the same screen. Now Kontact shows
me either, and I have to switch between the sub-applications, so it's
either mail, or usenet, or feeds (along with some open tabs in Akregator
for messages I want to have a deeper look at). BTW, since 4.6.5,
Akregator saves the session / the open tabs, I was missing that before.


[KDE4's Amarok]
> So I split, and as with every case where that has happened to me, I'm 
> glad I did, only wishing, perhaps, that I had done so sooner, altho 
> recognizing as well that there comes a time when you are ready, and 
> trying it sooner would be rather counterproductive.  (In particular, 
> that's the way it was with MS, for me.  It took me two years after I'd 
> basically decided Linux was where I was headed, before I finally made the 
> switch.  Had I tried earlier, it would have likely been an abortive 
> attempt and I don't know if I'd have /ever/ made the switch.  That's why 
> I will certainly argue that Linux is the better way, but there's no way 
> I'd try to force people to switch before they're ready for it.)

I can under stand this. But I'm happy with it, because while being
entirely different, I like Amarok very very much. It still has some
bugs, it is slow, but it fits great into my desktop. I like that I can
change the layout, that I can arrange the views how I like, side by
side, one upon the other, or in tabs, saving space. I like the kontext
view with lyrics or Wikipedia stuff. Or searching my collection.

But it's not an improved version of the old Amarok, so for sure many
people are disappointed. Well, like KDE 4 is very different from KDE 3.5.


> akonadiconsole seems to be the newer, more powerful alternative, and it 
> DOES support sqlite at least to some degree (I see it in the DB Browser 
> tab, for instance) but opens with a warning that it's a development tool 
> only, use is at your own risk!  And for sure, the stuff it shows looks 
> scary enough and I know little enough about it that I'd be scared to 
> touch much of anything therein, without direct instructions from someone 
> who knew more about it than I do!

I already used it a couple of times, yes, it's scary. I like the 'Do not
even think about changing anything in here!' notice :)

[After switching to QSQLITE3]
>> I get a notification every few minutes: '<server>: Unknown error. (Could
>> not create collection).'
>>
>> And I had a 'KMail-Folder' before, which was the content of my local
>> .kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail directory. This is gone. There is a 'Local
>> Folders' resource pointing to that directory, which I already had
>> before, but it only shows the usual folders (Drafts, Inbox, Outbox,
>> Sent, Templates). I'm missing the Trash, no idea why that is gone, I
>> think this already was the case since the KDEPIM upgrade. Deleting to
>> trash still works though, I wonder where these messages are. BTW,
>> deleting via shortcut now also works, it didn't before.
>> I added a new 'mail' resource, selected the mail directory (it would be
>> nice if one could use the directory selection dialog to browse this, but
>> I don't know how to make it show hidden files (Alt-dot works in the file
>> select dialog, but not in the directory dialog)). Cool, the folders are
>> back.
>>
>> The address book is still working. Hooray! But I still cannot use a
>> distribution list. I can create a new contact group and add email
>> addresses to it, but KMail does not seem to know about it, it does not
>> auto-complete when I start entering the group's name.
> 
> I don't do enough multi-address mails to be of any help to you there.

Neither do I, but it's a basic feature, and a friend finally dropped KDE
4 when he was unable to make this work. So I tried again. Some while
ago, KMail knew about this contact group (auto-completing the name), but
instead of sending the mail to the members, it sent to
<groupname>@<hostname>.


>> *BUT:* I cannot send mails. 'Problem encountered enqueuing the message
>> into the sending queue: Unknown collection'. Too bad, you know, sending
>> mails always has been one of my favorite features of Kmail :)
> 
> =:^]
> 
> You mentioned not having a trash.  You said you had an outbox, but 
> perhaps it's screwed up, somehow.  I know I had to delete a bunch of 
> weird half-configured resources at one point, tho again that was when it 
> was only the address book I had to worry about.  And I had to redo the 
> conversion/import to akonadi a few times, when I did the kdepim 4.6 
> upgrade.  But it's possible the backend conversions causes some of the 
> weird resource stuff earlier, and combining that with the kmail folders 
> resources now, you may well need to delete the bad resources and possibly 
> recreate new resouces, manually.

Yes, I will try that. When my other problems are sorted out...


> [About the duplicate message warning that Kevin says is a known issue 
> ATM.]
> 
>> It happened again this morning, right in this list's folder, and this
>> time I chose both. And indeed both messages showed up. But now when I
>> visit the kde mailing list folder, I again get the '<server>: Remote id
>> is empty or invalid.' notification, and all the mails in it are gone. I
>> see new mails, but once they are read, they also disappear.
>> So now it's two folders I cannot access. I use thunderbird for them now.
> 
> I KNEW there was a reason my instincts were saying WARNING!! DO NOT 
> CHOOSE BOTH!!! =:^0
> 
> It's rather worse than simply having two copies, tho, which is what I 
> figured would be the extent of it.
> 
> You'll probably have to delete and recreate that resource again, to get 
> it working, unfortunately. =:^(  But at least it's on remote IMAP so 
> there's little danger of data-loss. =:^)

Well, that was yesterday morning, before the database change. After, it
was fine again.

Well... until I logged out. See below.


>> BTW, I usually add a note about these things in KNotes, but when I
>> wanted to, I found that I cannot access the notes via the panel any
>> more. A right-click still opens the menu, but a left click does nothing.
>> So I edit the notes in Kontact now, which is rather complicated.
> 
> That I don't know about.  I do see a notes resource, and figured it must 
> be for personal notes, but I've never used it in any way shape or form, 
> that I know of at least, so there was nothing to convert or get lost 
> there, and I don't even know what app/applet/plasmoid/whatever I'd use to 
> interact with the resource.  You mention kontact, which I don't have nor 
> want installed, and knotes, which I could install but doesn't happen to 
> be installed ATM.  And apparently they're connected to akonadi.  Also, 
> judging by the version numbers (a gap between 4.6.1 and 4.6.90), it's 
> part of kdepim, as would be expected for an akonadi-connected app.  
> That's already way more than I knew about it previously!

It's not an Akonadi problem, this started right with KDE 4.6.5. It's a
GUI problem, the little KNotes icon in the system tray simply no longer
reacts to left mouse clicks.

> Same goes for Klipper. I found this out when I wanted to view the
>> Akonadi error log, there's an option to store the messages in the
>> clipboard.
> 
> ??  I'm not sure what you're referencing there at all.  AFAIK, klipper is 
> working just fine, here (altho I've not actually used it since I 
> installed kde 4.6.95 aka 4.7-rc2, less than 24 hours ago), and isn't 
> related to akonadi at all.
> 
> Actually, just tried it; I /think/ I tried what you were referencing. 
> From the akonaditray dialog (aka the akonadi kcm), server config tab, I 
> ran the test, then hit copy to clipboard.
> 
> It worked here and I can see it in klipper. <shrug>  Either you have some 
> other klipper related issue or some other akonadi issue, or perhaps I 
> didn't follow your reference correctly and you were talking about 
> something else entirely.  That's entirely possible as the reference 
> wasn't entirely clear to me.

Sorry I wasn't clear about that. Klipper is working fine, but I cannot
access it by clicking its icon in the system tray.


>>> AND, I've not has a single issue of that nature since. =:^)
> 
> I've had one since.  Fortunately minor as I still had the pre-akonadi 
> versions available and don't believe any mail had come in for that mail 
> folder since, but my family folder just up and went empty on me, possibly 
> due to a hard-lock system crash while I was playing with an unstable 
> OpenGL screensaver.  Whatever.

Ouch.

> That's exactly the type of scenario people feared when they read about 
> kmail going database-based.  Losing everything in the family folder, of 
> ALL folders, is not a good thing AT ALL, tho for me it wasn't bad because 
> I did have the pre-akonadi backup so all I had to do was a reimport.  But 
> that sort of thing *MUST* *STOP* if kmail ever wants to be taken 
> seriously again.  I NEVER had that sort of issues back before akonadi, 
> and few people (including me) are going to put up with it for long after 
> akonadi, either, tho for the time being I'm somewhat philosophical about 
> it.

I'm glad I'm using IMAP for most things, and some local folders. In the
past (long ago) I had some problems with POP3, like fetching mails over
and over again so I had them multiple times, or deleting them on the
remote server which I did not want.

>> It's strange, but my setup feels better to me than before. Less usable,
>> because I really want to be able to actually send mails with KMail, but
>> this can probably be solved easily. Sonehow. Now now, it's late, this
>> stuff just took me some hours, I'll have a look at it tomorrow.
> 
> LOL!  I know the feeling!

And then I logged out, mainly because kwin was using 500M of memory, and
usually weird things start happening then.

When logging in, KDE did not come up. The splash screen stayed for
longer than normal, then the screen went black, and stayed like this.
Going black is normal, KDE takes about three minutes here until
everything is started (plasma-desktop is using all the CPU during this
time), but now it never finishes. I let it run for a couple of hours
this night, then I killed plasma-desktop, and finally the desktop came
up. I started plasma-desktop in a Konsole, but it still only eats CPU time.

Time for testing with other users, old configs, bisecting... again.

And about KMail... it does not show _any_ mail any more. In the folder
view, I see folders with unread messages, but those were still unread
when I logged out of KDE. It does not scan for new mails. An when I
select any folder, it does not show the contents, it just says it's
fetching the contents, and I should wait.

This is a bad morning. No Plasma (meaning also no panel, no system
tray), no KMail. And Thunderbird has a weird problem, it does not check
folders for new mails. I should do some work, but I guess I will spend
some time making my desktop work again. <sigh>

	Wonko
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