kmail has messed up the email accounts

[Erik Quaeghebeur]

> On Mon, 2020-06-01 at 13:55 +0200, Ian Douglas wrote:
>>
>> [Identities are convenient for me, I use them for…]

On dinsdag 2 juni 2020 02:04:19 CEST, test wrote:
>
> So you just use different email accounts.

Identities and accounts are functionally different. In a first 
approximation, think about identities as different ‘From’ addresses 
belonging to the same accounts. The concept of identities is present in 
many MUAs (sometimes using a different name).

Using different accounts cannot replace identities. For example, I have a 
single account with multiple email addresses. 

>> […] When you understand how to use 
>> them properly, you may agree :-)
>
> And how do you use them, be it properly or otherwise?

In any way that helps you organize how you work with email. If they do not 
help you, one identity per (incoming+outgoing) account is all that is 
needed. 

> That would be settings that depend on the recipients of the message.

Recipient-dependent settings are an example of context-dependent settings 
(can include other things, such as, e.g., time-of-day, for automatic 
salutation generation). The idea is very powerful, but difficult to 
implement in a user-friendly way. For example, what must the MUA do when 
you send a mail to two recipients with incompatible settings associated? 
Identities provide a way to get partly there, but where the user must take 
action, implying they're in control as well.

You could in principle create an identity for each of your recipient 
categories (as fine-grained as you like) to get close to the functionality 
you want.

> Only one identity is needed, potentially using multiple accounts,
> […]

That may be the case for you. And this means that kmail has functionality 
that you do not use. This may imply that the interface is a bit heavier 
than needed for your use case. However, Ian and myself can attest that we 
really appreciate the existence of identities.

> I'm not turning into multiple personalities just because some MUA
> figures I should go crazy. It's the MUA which is mad.

Identities are just a name. Sometimes it's called Aliases. I personally 
would name it Roles. You may like to think of it as 
recipient-specific-setting-selector. The kmail developers obviously did not 
intend to make the users go crazy; they wanted to add useful functionality. 
How would you feel if I called something you took great effort to create 
‘mad’? (Even if it was meant as a joke.)

> Well, I fiddled after it got broken by trying to set up some email accounts
> and it broke so badly that kmail has become unusable because it only shows
> a popup that it doesn't work and then quits or crashes before I could do
> anything.

That sounds frustrating. Frustration because of kmail crashes is something 
that I share. Nevertheless, it should be possible to get a working system. 
You will need to find out what exact configuration change caused the 
breakage, however. Starting clean and adding/fiddling with the accounts in 
a step-by-step manner should provide that information.


Best,

Erik