Re: [gentoo-user] At last! A Qt5 version of KMail-2 - but here be dragons!

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday, December 28, 2016 11:11:27 AM CET J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On December 27, 2016 3:38:28 PM GMT+01:00, Peter Humphrey
<peter@××××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> >On Sunday, 18 December 2016 19:07:23 GMT J. Roeleveld wrote:
> >> More important, how is the latest kmail behaving?
> >
> >My first impression is one of horror. It's ghastly!
> >
> >I've never seen such profligate waste of screen space. I've attached a
> >couple of screen shots to show you what I mean.
> >
> >Take the folder list, for example. I used to be able to show all those
> >folders in one panel with no scroll-bars, with no difficulty reading
> >them;
> >now eight folders spill over. I may be able to find a more compact
> >arrangement but this is the best I've managed so far. At least with
> >kmail:4
> >I could tweak Qt settings to condense it; now nothing I do makes any
> >improvement.
> >
> >Then the message view. Message.png shows what your message looks like
> >in
> >this version of KMail (the message I'm replying to now). This is with
> >all
> >the bells and whistles I can find switched off.
> >
> >Next, after I'd emerged kde-apps/kmai-16.12.0, it was incomplete. I had
> >to
> >install several other packages to complete it, including the import
> >wizard.
> >Rather than messing about, I just emerged kdepim-meta and had done with
> >it.
> >
> >Even after doing that, I get "No backend available for spell checking,"
> >even
> >though I've set everything up that I can see. Myspell and hunspell are
> >both
> >installed.
> >
> >In the message list I have next-to-no control over the font. I can set
> >the
> >basic one, but not those for unread, important or action items. They're
> >now
> >displayed in a reduced-density form of the basic font (while pretending
> >
> >they're going to use the same font as the message itself). The
> >designers
> >evidently know what I want better than I do (anyone might think this
> >was
> >Gnome).
> >
> >Nothing to do with KMail, but the display of gkrellm has changed
> >dramatically. I use its Invisible theme, which hasn't actually been
> >invisible since the switch from KDE-3 to 4, but it had a plain,
> >unobtrusive
> >grey scheme and showed what I wanted to see, clearly and with no drama.
> >Now,
> >the chart backgrounds have changed from charcoal-grey to a dark red,
> >and
> >what was grey is now a dreadful salmon-pink. Of course I can't see the
> >red
> >traces any longer. Perhaps I'm missing a KDE or Qt component.
> >
> >Oh, and when I start a reboot in KDE, akonadi crashes with a
> >segmentation
> >fault.
> >
> >I dare say version 16.12.0 of KMail-2 will make a decent platform for
> >development, now that it's finally here, but a very great deal of work
> >lies
> >ahead. I can see that I'll be doing my fair share of shouting too, at
> >it and
> >at the devs.
> >
> >It's taken me about 30 hours to get this far. I ditched the old system
> >altogether and built a new one on the kde-plasma profile. I didn't ask
> >for
> >anything in a slot 4, just slot 5 versions. I also ditched my old user
> >and
> >set up a new one from scratch. Headache? What headache?
> >
> >I think I'll have to go down the pub to drown my sorrows.
>
> My impressions will start here. Emailing using mobile while the IMAP mail is
> being synchronised. That usually takes a few hours.
>
> Although that does appear to go faster now. I normally use Kontact for the
> whole shebang. And it looks similar to version 4.
>
> The upgrade went quite smoothly, with a very rigorous cleaning exercise of
> anything wanting older versions. Am expecting some possible issues when
> reinstalling those. But will see how that goes later today.
>
> Full upgrade only took a couple of hours this morning.
>
> --
> Joost

Ok, update time.
I haven't been able to do much with it today as I had to go to the office.

When I came back, various stuff had failed, but this is due to synchronizing 
all email (old offline-imap option) to the desktop and the home-partition had 
filled up.
I cleaned up all the kdepim config-files and the database tables again and 
started kontact with a clean config. It is, again, synchronizing.

I did not experience any crashes of akonadi or kontact during normal use and 
shutting down of applications (including akonadictl stop). 
With the exception of what I mentioned before, which can not be blamed on 
akonadi.

Things I like so far:
- Synchronisation seems to be faster, so is the rest of the interface.
- Synchronisation of groupdav is smoother
- There finally is a decent option to connect to office365 (including calendar)
(with the above, I have only tested loading data, not tested modifying 
anything yet)

Things I miss:
- A configuration option inside "systemsettings", can not find the kcm for 
akonadi:5.
- I can't find the little "-" icons which were present in the screenshots from 
Peter Humphrey. I was actually hoping to test those, but they don't appear.

Things I don't like so far:
- The default colour scheme (unread emails are by default a very light-colour 
blue, I prefer the old colourscheme.
- Having to get rid of kmymoney due to incompatible libraries. (Why does a 
financial app have a hard-dependency on kdepimlibs????)

More updates are likely to follow, if people are actually interested.

The update to the current in-portage-tree version went quite smoothly once the 
blocking packages were identified and removed. (All of kdepim:4 needs to be 
removed first for portage to be able to identify all required keyword-changes)
This was mostly due to running a mixed stable and unstable setup.

If anyone is interested, I can provide the full keyword file I used.

--
Joost