[Bug 171858] New: "Complete Message" is a poor default choice for "Find Messages"

[Mark Martinec]

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171858

           Summary: "Complete Message"  is a poor default choice for "Find
                    Messages"
           Product: kmail
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: FreeBSD Ports
        OS/Version: FreeBSD
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kdepim-bugs at kde.org
        ReportedBy: Mark.Martinec at ijs.si


Version:           1.9.9, 1.10.1 (using KDE 4.1.1)
OS:                FreeBSD
Installed from:    FreeBSD Ports

A default choice (top of the list) for "Find Messages" used to be a search by
"Subject", which has been changed to search by "Complete Message" starting with
mail 1.9.9.

The new default is a very unfortunate choice for IMAP users with more that just
a few messages in their IMAP folder. IMAP searches by indexed fields such as
Subject, From, To, Size are very quick, while searches across entire message
contents can be quite slow, from dozens of seconds to several minutes on
folders with lots of messages.

This means that now for every search I need to perform additional operations to
select a "Subject" from a list of choices, and hope that I do not forget to do
so.

Forgetting to do so on a large folder now bears a heavy penalty for the user:
either one has to wait minutes for a search to complete, or forcibly terminate
entire kmail application and restart it in order to open a new IMAP session.

It does not suffice to STOP a search, as the IMAP server remains tied up in
searching and is unresponsive to new requests until the search completes. The
only choice is to terminate kmail so that existing IMAP session is dropped.

Replacing a default search by subject (quick and usually sufficient) by a
search on complete message was a poor decision from usability viewpoint. I urge
you to make it configurable or to revert to a previous default.


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