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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: [Bug 49784] strange question marks left to subject
From:       Thomas Reitelbach <tr () erdfunkstelle ! de>
Date:       2002-10-28 22:43:37
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On Monday 28 October 2002 22:59, Ingo "KlXcker" wrote:
> On Monday 28 October 2002 22:07, Stefan Bittner wrote:

> > IMHO in that line you should display the state of the message and
> > not the state of Your knowledge of the message.
> > The message has any of the encrypted / signed / not encrypted / not
> > signed state and that state definitely doesn't change because one
> > selects ist. It's just that You now more about the mail once it's
> > selected.
>
> Let me reiterate:
> When nothing is shown then this indicates that the message it neither
> signed nor encrypted.
> When the signature/lock icons are shown then this indicates that the
> message is partially/fully signed/encrypted with/without problems.
> Last but not least, when questions marks are shown this indicates that
> it's currently unknown whether the message is signed and/or encrypted.

Hi Ingo,
IMO the question marks are very confusing. I asked the same question here at 
this list others did, too. I understand your point, and technically you're 
completely correct with your explanation. But it's not a solution to simply 
show question marks, because they will confuse the user ("hey, what's wrong 
with my kmail? is it missing something?").
I've often seen question marks as a replacement for missing icons (in a 
different software, not kmail of course).

I guess while messages are downloaded from the server, they are processed, all 
one by one, aren't they? So why not check state of every downloaded message 
and immediately update it's state to the index files? if this check fails for 
some reason, we can show the question marks and _then_ we have a good reason 
for showing them :)

> We can't simply show nothing when the state of a message is unknown
> (because it hasn't been checked yet) because then the user would
> correctly assume that the message is _not_ signed and _not_ encrypted
> which is not necessarily the case.

technically i agree. 
but as i said above, we should avoid not knowing the messages state.

> Exactly. But as long as KMail hasn't checked the state of a message it
> obviously can't tell you the state. And therefore it displays question
> marks to indicate that the state is still unknown. BTW, the state of a
> message is saved in the index once it has been checked. So it will be
> only checked the first time the user selects the message and not each
> time.

So the messages state has to be checked automatically and not when the user 
clicks it. Are there any security objections that would give a reason for 
_not_ checking messages automatically?

> If you don't want those icons then please turn them off.

No. The icons exist for a good reason. But they need some improvement 
regarding useability :)

Bye,
Thomas

- -- 
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