KDEPIM 4.6 prob^Wimpressions

[Duncan]

Alex Schuster posted on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:20:50 +0200 as excerpted:

> 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.

I got used to it after awhile...

But I had forgotten that kde4 even /had/ a knewsticker for awhile, then 
it simply went away at some update or another.

Anyway, I know it was a bit dated as it only did rss and not atom feeds, 
and there wasn't really a way to show anything but headlines (tho that 
could in theory be arranged, a multi-line panel with the headline and say 
the first 3-5 lines of story below), but I'd have certainly enjoyed an 
updated newsticker than could handle atom, even if it only did 
headlines...

Or if akregator could close the browser pane and only show the feed tree 
and "headers pane", with clicking on a header loading the full article in 
the configured browser.

Or if combined mode (which is sort of headers mode with a summary, too) 
had a selection indicator for the active entry, and a way to mark 
individual articles read and to multi-select ranges and mark them read if 
desired, much as one can headers in the header pane of kmail, for 
instance.

But I miss the filters, too, especially as I try to make my feed-reading 
time more efficient.  There's a LOT of stories I'd filter if only I 
could, while keeping those feeds.

So as I said, akregator just seems klunky and undeveloped.  It's lacking 
the basic features like pane management and filtering/scoring that any 
basic article reading app really needs, whether it be news, mail, or 
feeds.  (I'm not a major IRC/IM user so I don't know if it could fit in 
that class or not, but certainly the others do.)  The lack of these 
features only serve to accentuate how well they work where they're 
present. 

(FWIW, kmail isn't perfect here either.  If I had my way, I'd have it's 
tri-pane layout arranged much like I do pan's, full width headers at the 
top so I can get all the usual columns and a reasonable width subject/
title without horizontal scrolling, folder tree and body pane below, with 
the folder tree actually to the right instead of the left, as to a 
western left to right, top to bottom reader, the lower right is the low-
focus corner, and I spend far less times changing folders or newsgroups 
than I do reading headers or their full messages, so the folder list 
works real well there.  But kmail's pane layout isn't as flexible as 
pan's and while it has a short folder list option, it places it beside 
the header pane which is the one that needs the extra width in the first 
place, so there's little point!  There's no option to place the short 
folder list beside the message body pane, which is where I really need 
it, even if it won't allow me to put the folder pane to the right, which 
I'd actually prefer, but I'd settle for it to the left if only it could 
be beside the body pane instead of the header pane!  Pan by contrast has 
a layout setup with three numbered panes in the various possible 
configurations, and a separate setting that lets one choose which pane, 
tree/header/body, corresponds to which number in the layout diagram, thus 
making any possible arrangement of the three panes actually configurable.)

> BTW, since 4.6.5,
> Akregator saves the session / the open tabs, I was missing that before.

Yes.  I'd noticed that in 4.7-rc2 (4.6.95).  Didn't have time on 4.6.5 to 
notice it.  And when I was playing around with unstable opengl 
screensavers and crashed, upon kde restart, akregator asked me if I 
wanted to restore the previous session or not.  That was a nice change, 
altho the way I use it, not a hugely critical one.  I'd be far happier if 
they'd have implemented one of the layout ideas mentioned above, or 
filters, but this was OK, and I guess it must be more useful for the 
authors and probably many users, than my ideas would be.

But being nitpicky, since akregator is actually part of kdepim, that 
change is actually in kdepim 4.6.1 (maybe 4.6.0?) not kde 4.6.5 or 4.7-
rc2.  And I believe we're both on kdepim 4.6.1, so that's what would have 
brought the change.

> [KDE4's Amarok]
> I can under stand this. But I'm happy with it, because while being
> entirely different, I like Amarok very very much.

I'm glad /somebody/ likes it! =:^)

>> [About the duplicate message warning that Kevin says is a known issue
>> ATM.]

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

OK.  I got the sequence wrong on that, then.  I thought you'd done the db 
change then seen the dup-notice again and triggered the issue by choosing 
both.

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

>> 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.

OK, makes MUCH more sense, now!  =:^)  I was very confused on that one 
for a bit.

But I /think/ I used klipper on 4.6.5, and /know/ I've used it on 4.6.95, 
specifically by clicking the tray icon, without issues.  So while I can't 
quite confirm that it worked on 4.6.5, if it's still broken in the same 
way on 4.7 (assuming of course they don't break it between rc2 and 
release), it's gotta be something in your setup, as it is working here.

One thing that might make a difference, tho.  I have my systray in a 
panel at the top-left corner.  If the bug is that it's opening the popups 
down and right, I'd not see it as that's expected here, but it'd be off-
screen for systrays in the traditional bottom right corner.  Since you 
can have multiple systrays in kde4, why not add another systray plasmoid 
somewhere else, even on the desktop, and see?

> 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.

Try renaming your $KDEHOME/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc file.  
That contains your entire plasma desktop layout (yes, in a very 
complicated for kde config files SINGLE file!), so you'll lose that 
unless you have a proper backup somewhere, but it's very likely to let 
you back into plasma-desktop again, then.  If that doesn't work, try the 
other plasma* files in the same dir.

If you can't tell, I had problems with that one before, myself, tho they 
were a bit different than yours (mine were magically multiplying 
activities).

As I said, the file is quite complicated, so very difficult to edit 
manually as you must pretty much reverse engineer what numbers correspond 
to each container and plasmoid and how they relate to each other in the 
hierarchy, but it's possible for the suitably patient and technically 
inclined, as I did it, having little choice at the time because my layout 
is so customized I didn't want to have to redo from scratch, and I didn't 
have a good recent backup.

But once you realize how complicated that file is and the problems you 
have if it gets corrupted, you'll tend to back it up periodically and 
before playing to much with your plasma config.  That way, if it gets 
corrupted again, you can just restore the backup, and perhaps redo 
whatever trivial changes you made since then, instead of having to redo 
your whole plasma setup.

> 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.

That sounds like a problem I had right after the kmail2 conversion.  I'm 
not sure what caused it, but I know how I fixed it, tho it's a bit 
complicated to explain (not that I let that stop me!).  And there's still 
a quirk to it.

The bottom line is that mail-fetching seems to work best if you configure 
not kmail, but akonadi, to remember the passwords, etc.  In your akonadi 
resources, however you configure them (akonaditray/akonadi-kcm, 
akonadiconsole, or thru kcontrol's akonadi resource config, tho that last 
one might be a kde 4.7 change since I'm running rc2), find the resource 
for each mail account and hit modify.  This should popup a dialog with 
the configuration, *AND* a kwallet prompt.

Type in the kwallet password and setup your account info including the 
account password.  Saving it here lets akonadi control it instead of 
kmail.

Do this with every account.

That should work fine, with akonadi handling the checking now instead of 
kmail (tho again, I have pop3 not imap3 so there might be a few 
differences in behavior I'm not aware of, but I expect they work 
similarly in this regard), EXCEPT for the caveat.

When akonadi/kmail starts and does the initial fetch, for some reason 
I've not quite figured out but that might be related to the fact that I 
have pop3 accounts on two different servers, I have to actually type the 
kwallet password twice.

But here's the trick.  After I type it the first time, it'll apparently 
check the first account(s), but then kmail will freeze, because it can't 
get to the second set, because I haven't typed in the kwallet password 
for it yet, because it hasn't prompted me for it, because apparently it 
can only raise one prompt at a time!!

So every time I restart akonadi for whatever reason (be it just an akonadi 
stop and restart, or kde, or a full reboot), I have to type in the first 
kwallet password, then open kmail, look at the fetching mail thing at the 
bottom right (which will sit there forever, doing nothing, waiting on a 
kwallet dialog that I never got, if I don't attend to it), click the 
little arrow beside it to expand the jobs, click the button to the right 
of each to cancel it, wait a few seconds for it to actually cancel 
(during which I can be canceling the others)...

Then when all of them are canceled and the back-and-forth indicator 
disappears, indicating idle, *THEN*...

I can hit the kde fetch-mail again, and since it has the passwords for 
the first account(s), it'll get them, but popup the kwallet dialog for 
the other accounts, that were frozen in the fetching state before.

NOW I can type in the kwallet password a second time, and the second set 
of accounts fetch.

After that, akonadi/kmail remembers the passwords and can continue the 
periodic mail checks as it's configured to... until such time as I shut 
down akonadi again and restart it, thus triggering the whole double-
kwallet password with the cancel-fetch in the middle sequence once again!

On the bright side, akonadi seems stable enough that I normally only have 
to do this once per kde login.  It'd certainly drive me crazy, or more 
likely, very rapidly to some other client, if I had to go thru the 
sequence for each mail check.

<shaking head>  The stuff we put up with...

Anyway, see if either entering the passwords in the akonadi resource 
instead of in kmail, or manually canceling and then doing a manual mail 
check, probably triggering another kwallet password dialog, fixes the 
problem for you.

> 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>

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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