Struggling with Kmail

[Feathers McGraw]

Well, I only do that kind of thing at work. At work we use Office, so it's top-posting and HTML all the way. Personal email rarely requires anything more than sentences and paragraphs.

Makes sense. On a related note, I was investigating MIME because Spamassassin has a breakdown every time my Dad emails me from his WebOS touch pad - seems the email app is broken. Headers say it's a multipart/alternative and that it includes HTML and text versions, but then it doesn't actually send one of the versions. As a result, the plain and HTML parts are different (obviously) and it gets flagged for that as well as the incorrect headers.

I was wondering, what do the headers look like for an email with an HTML part, a plain version AND an attachment?

Didn't realize that...I don't ever check to see if Android apps are open source, TBH. MailDroid is one of the few IMAP clients that groups messages into conversation threads. This is a make-or-break feature for me. Trying to keep track of non-threaded conversations makes my head explode.

That's a nice feature, I see quite a few people have requested it in K9 mail. Hopefully they'll implement it soon and you can use a nice FOSS app

If there's something I need/want, I generally check F-droid and use one of the apps on there. If the functionality I need isn't available there or doesn't work, I generally browse the play store and check if there are FOSS apps on there that aren't on F-droid (surprisingly, there are quite a few of these), and finally if those don't cut it I curse and go for a proprietary one.

Best to support the little people, eh?

[SteveRiley]

I was wondering, what do the headers look like for an email with an HTML part, a plain version AND an attachment?

I just happen to have one in my inbox right now. Let's take a look:

Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=__Part2F1D07AD.34__="         [B][I][COLOR="#B22222"]<--start of multipart container "34"[/COLOR][/I][/B]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.34__=                                                 [B][I][COLOR="#B22222"]<--first MIME part in container "34"[/COLOR][/I][/B]
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=__Part2F1D07AD.35__="      [B][I][COLOR="#008000"]<--start of multipart container "35"[/COLOR][/I][/B]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.35__=                                                    [B][I][COLOR="#008000"]<--first MIME part in container "35"[/COLOR][/I][/B]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

[...snip plain-text part...]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.35__=                                                    [B][I][COLOR="#008000"]<--second MIME part in container "35"[/COLOR][/I][/B]
Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Description: HTML

[...snip HTML part...]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.35__=--                                                  [B][I][COLOR="#008000"]<--end of container "35"[/COLOR][/I][/B]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.34__=                                                 [B][I][COLOR="#B22222"]<--second MIME part in container "34"[/COLOR][/I][/B]
Content-Type: application/pdf; name="[...snip filename...]"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="[...snip filename...]"

[...snip attachment data...]

--=__Part2F1D07AD.34__=--                                               [B][I][COLOR="#B22222"]<--end of container "34"[/COLOR][/I][/B]

This is a great example, because it has a multipart container inside a multipart container. The outer container, "34," holds two parts: another multipart container and a PDF file. The inner container, "35," holds two parts: the plain-text version of the message and the HTML version of the message.

The start of a container begins with Content-Type: multipart and declares the boundary string. Each part begins with two hyphens and the boundary string. The end of the container is marked with two hyphens, the boundary string, and two more hyphens.

Aren't standards wonderful?

[Feathers McGraw]

That's cool, I didn't realise you could layer them like that. The multipart/alternative only appeared to allow for two types of content, I didn't see how you would do three in one.

Thanks for the explanation!

[bendy]

Seems like outside of MS Outlook for the corporate world, no one is giving desktop email clients any love these days (for windows or linux). kmail has it's issues, and thunderbird has been relegated within the Mozilla structure. I blame gmail - everyone expects casual home users to use webmail now.

It's only the mobile world where developers are doing anything new with email clients.

[SteveRiley]

kmail has it's issues

What issues? Have you asked for help here or filed bugs?

Both KMail and Evolution (on the GNOME side) are part of complete gropuware suites that would work very well in corporate environments.

[Guest]

open kmail by clicking on new mail system notification?

I'm trying to use kmail too, like different settings etc. I even receive "new mail notification" messages into the system notification tray even if kmail is not running. Cool, but... I have a naive assumption that clicking on such message would open kmail or any other email application, but this doesn't happen?!?

I have setup kmail as default application for mail, still no lack. Only by manual start of kmail I'm able to see new messages. But what's the point to have new mail notifications if they can't open mail program I'm overlooking some settings?

Regards,
Andrey

[Feathers McGraw]

I even receive "new mail notification" messages into the system notification tray even if kmail is not running.

I think Kmail is running on the background.

Go to settings > configure Kmail > appearance > system tray and check "enable system tray icon" and "always show Kmail in system tray". You can then click x and kmail will minimise to the tray, if there are new emails you can click the icon to bring up Kmail.

Not quite what you were after but it should help!

[Guest]

Go to settings > configure Kmail > appearance > system tray and check "enable system tray icon" and "always show Kmail in system tray". You can then click x and kmail will minimise to the tray, if there are new emails you can click the icon to bring up Kmail.

Thanks, I have it already.

The point is, that I expect that clicking on *notification* should somehow work (but how), otherwise there is no sense in showing popup (the kmail tray icon is showing basically same info).

[Feathers McGraw]

Yeah I know what you mean, quite a few KDE programs seem to do that. You can always turn off the popups if you like.