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List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: [Kde-pim] IMAP namespaces
From:       Ingo =?iso-8859-1?q?Kl=F6cker?= <kloecker () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-05-15 11:53:42
Message-ID: 200505151353.44736 () erwin ! ingo-kloecker ! de
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On Sunday 15 May 2005 12:46, Carsten Burghardt wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 15. Mai 2005 11:59 schrieb Adriaan de Groot:
> > On Sunday 15 May 2005 01:11, Carsten Burghardt wrote:
> > > Am Donnerstag, 12. Mai 2005 23:14 schrieb Adriaan de Groot:
> > > > See, I _had_ a Folder Prefix set for my IMAP folders: Mail/ ;
> > > > it even says so in the config file:
> > > >
> > > > prefix=/Mail/
> > >
> > > There is no reliable way to transport this prefix from the old
> > > config to the new namespace based config as the server can
> > > support more than one personal namespace. Therefore I do not know
> > > what namespace should be mapped to this prefix.
> >
> > OK .. but then this change needs to be shepherded _really_
> > carefully, since the effect was:
> >
> > 1) Upgrade KMail
> > 2) Get 100MB of junk all of a sudden in folders
> > 3) Lose old setting of prefix
> > 4) Have to find setting in config dialog, guess new setting, remove
> > additional namespaces
> > 5) Try cleaning up folder display in IMAP and lose 100MB of data
> >
> >
> > I realize this will surely improve between now and whatever next
> > release there is, but it's best to be forewarned.
>
> I have to problem to improve this (hey, of course not) but the
> question is: how? Hmm, perhaps a warning would be good when kmail is
> launched and detects and old, non empty prefix in the config.

Two things are mandatory:
a) Upgrading must be painless. The upgrading user must not have to 
change anything in his configuration.
b) Setting up an IMAP account needs to be trivial in the trivial case 
that the user only wants to see his folders.

Since I don't know what namespaces mean and how they are related to the 
prefix the following suggestions for solving the above problems might 
not be applicable. But anyway:

ad a) Try to figure out which namespace we have to use to make it work 
as it worked before. If it's not possible to guess the correct 
namespace just from it's name then we'll have to try all namespaces and 
compare the result with the currently known folder structure. If we are 
still unsure afterwards then present the most likely configuration to 
the user. In 99.9% of all cases the user should at most have to click 
OK (ideally he shouldn't have to make anything).

ad b) A wizard. The wizard should provide a preview of the folders which 
belong to the namespaces. This way the user can still make changes 
before KMail starts to download any data except for the folder 
structure.

> > > Then you have an UW-imap server which supports a whole list of
> > > namespaces and all those show up. And if you have folders that
> > > reside under "#ftp" they will show up in the foldertree under a
> > > folder "#ftp". If the namespace is empty it will be ignored.
> >
> > Yeah. I still don't know what they're _for_, though, and since the
> > instructions I have from the IMAP admin are: "set IMAP prefix Mail
> > in your client", I suspect that IMAP namespace support isn't
> > widespread amongst mail clients yet. Messing around with deleting
> > namespaces and accounts led to (5) above.
>
> That's not right - kmail was the only mua (AFAIK) that did not
> support namespaces yet. The prefix was a bad workaround and you had
> no chance to see your folders, shared folders and folders of users
> that you are allowed to see (other users) in one account.

At my university account (iPlanet Messaging Server) I could see at least 
my folders and other users' folders in one account (with empty prefix). 
So this statement doesn't seem to apply to all IMAP servers or I 
misunderstood the statement.

I just tried to set up a new university account and got the following 
namespace structure (IIRC):
+ Personal
  +
+ Other Users
  + Shared Folders/User/

Editting the namespaces is totally non-intuitive. Many users don't know 
that something like context menus exist so putting Delete into a 
context menu is a very bad solution. A much better solution would be a 
separate dialog with Delete and Reload buttons. The line in the config 
dialog should just show a comma separated list of the configured 
namespaces and a configure button (with the configure icon) next to it.

BTW, with my university account upgrading was painless. The namespace 
support seems to work. Now we just need to polish the rough edges.

Regards,
Ingo

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