On Tue, 2020-06-02 at 11:01 +0200, Erik Quaeghebeur wrote:
> > 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. 

How does that work?  Usually one email address means one account, and the
MTA should refuse to relay messages for "wrong" 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. 

Well, yes, but which way is that?

> > 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?

How could the settings be incompatible?  For each recipient, there would be
one set of settings.  When a message has multiple recipients, the MUA needs
to create one copy of the message for each recipient in order to apply the
relevant settings to it before handing it over to the MTA.

In case you create multiple sets of settings for the same recipient, you
would need to tell the MUA which set to use, unless you want the MUA to
create multiple copies of the message for each set of settings.
 
> 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.

Do you mean you need to take action in that you must create and send a copy
of the message for each recipient and for each identity manually?

> > 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.

Ok, I shouldn't say that the concept of identities is bullshit and rather
that I would find it better if the functionality was implemented in a way
doesn't involve 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.

Is it recipient-specific?  It seems to me that it is sender-specific
because the sender picks a set of settings they want to have applied to a
message regardless of its recipients.

>  The kmail developers obviously did not 
> intend to make the users go crazy; they wanted to add useful
> functionality.

I think so, too.

> How would you feel if I called something you took great effort to create 
> ‘mad’? (Even if it was meant as a joke.)

I would find it funny.  That the users call the software you created mad
shows that they are appreciating it, /especially/ when it was meant as a
joke.  Part of my job is creating software, and I guess the users sometimes
think I'm mad.  That doesn't mean I'm creating the software to make users
go crazy; it just happens.  That users go crazy usually means that the
software needs to be changed, so I eventually do that ...

> > 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.

Frustration is not so much the problem; the problem is that I would really
like to use kmail and now I can't because when it works, it's the best MUA
I could find, and it really like it. 

>  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.

That's what I tried.  I deleted all files in my home directory that
appeared to have to do with kmail or akonadi, and the identities were still
there.  So I configured them again, but I couldn't pick them, and sent
messages were put into the wrong accounts, and after configuring that
again, the trash folder was the only folder I could configure.  Then
messages I sent suddenly didn't show up in any of the sent folders, so I
ran akonadictl fsck and since that, kmail says it's broken and quits or
crashes right away.

So how do I start clean?  I have tried that at least four times now and
never found all the files I would need to delete.