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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: [bug] identiy
From:       Don Sanders <don () sanders ! org>
Date:       2000-07-30 21:12:51
[Download RAW message or body]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2000, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> @#$%^&% kmail throws away your message in the composer when you select
> "Quit" in the mail reader. Second attempt:

Quit means completely quit the application. Close will just close the mail 
reader. Definitely quit should give you some kind of "do you want to save 
unsent messages being composed warning", I guess that would be easier to 
implement if we had a drafts folder.

>
> On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Don Sanders wrote:
> > > Yes, please :-) I got flamed over this by my wife who tried to use
> > > KMail yesterday as a new user. She has used KMail before for some time,
> > > but her configuration was in another KDEHOME directory so it obviously
> > > wasn't picked up. (I wasn't home so I couldn't tell her)
> >
> > Ok, I think this is when things went wrong, perhaps it wasn't such a good
> > idea for her to do this by herself. I'm guessing she has limited
> > experience with configuring mail clients.
>
> Fuck you Don, don't give me bullshit like this. She is a system admin.

-Timeout- 

Waldo, please give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I was simply 
honestly expressing my views without any malicious intent.



I didn't know she was a system admin, I have no prior knowledge of your wife, 
I guessed she had limited experience with computers, I was wrong, at the time 
it seemed like a reasonable possibility. I've never had a girlfriend whose 
even been remotely interested in computers, it's natural for me to assume 
other programmers have partners who are not interested in computers.

Sorry for offending you.

> > > Anyway, the complaint she has is that after typing a rather long
> > > message she tried to send it, and got a messagebox stating that she
> > > should set "somekind of server" (I guess the text in the messagebox
> > > could be written in some easier language)
> >
> > The message says "Please specify a send method in the settings and try
> > again". It's ok, could provide more detail.
> >
> > > She did that, but after doing so there was no way
> > > she could actually use this server for the mail she had already
> > > written.
> >
> > I just rm'd my kmailrc file, started kmail composed a message without
> > setting my send method, tried to send the message, got the error, opened
> > up the settings dialog (which is modeless luckily), specified my send
> > method and tried to send the message again, it worked fine. So I'm not
> > sure what happened here.
>
> She first got a message that she had to specify a mailserver in the
> settings dialog. She got this message in the composer, and the composer has
> a settings menu, but no way to specify the mail-server.
>
> So it took some time to discover the second settings menu in the
> mailreader.

Aaah, I see, that is pretty confusing. The dialog should specify which 
settings dialog, or perhaps just open the configuration dialog and go to 
network section. (That way we don't require any new strings to be i18n'd).

> [Can you imagine how long you would search for that if you run kmail in
> composer-only mode?? E.g. after clicking a mailto-link]

No, not really, I seem to have just flunked the 'pretend to be a first time 
KMail' test.

> She tried to send the mail again but now she got your "Please specify a
> send method in the settings and try again" message. Well, she just HAD
> specified a send method: SMTP to port 25 of mail.svn.net,

I don't understand where she set the send method. This does not make sense to 
me.

> she had no idea
> what this messagebox was talking about. At the end she has send her message
> with netscape. She has never found the "Default send method" in the
> properties tab.

Ok, we used to pop a the configuration dialog the first time KMail started. I 
liked that, I wonder whether there was any good reason for it being turned 
off. I might turn it back on again if no one objects, I think that would help.

> Now to the constructive part: Do we need this message about the send
> method, can't we just pick "send direct" as default and let the user change
> it if he/she doesn't like it? She clicked on the "send" icon... what is the
> "default" used for anyway?

I don't understand, send direct is the default. I must be missing something, 
perhaps this is related to the fact that I don't understand where 
mail.svn.net was specified as the send method.


> If she had wanted to queue it she had clicked on
> the queue icon.
>
> Some other suggestions:
> *) Ask in the message box whether to "send directly or queue" instead of
> "specify a send method".

Don't think we can due to the i18n freeze.

> or
> *) Add an option to popup the relevant settings dialog.

Something like that would be good, might as well do it automatically.

>
> > Pity she didn't copy and paste it into kedit or something and then save
> > it.
>
> Sure.
>
> > > She suggested that if there had been a "Save" option, it would have
> > > sucked a lot less.
> >
> > She could have queued it.
>
> Sure. But she didn't. It doesn't matter what she could have done, it
> matters what she _thought_ she could do. If she had been writing a review,
> KMail would have gotten 0 points because it failed at the basic task of
> "sending an email". I mean, she spend more time trying to figure this out
> than the average user would have. If I check out a new program and it
> doesn't do anything usefull in 5 minutes it get's rm -rf'ed. She spend 45
> minutes trying to get her mail out before she used netscape.

Maybe there is some kind of bug here I don't understand, I suspect I'm 
missing something. I don't understand how she specified her send method 
correctly and mail was still not sent.

I will make some time to look at what things are like for first time users.

BFN,
Don /hoping there is nothing offense in this mail

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