[Bug 104956] dimap: sudden mail loss

[Richard Hartmann]

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------- Additional Comments From richih-kde richih org  2007-01-09 22:29 -------
Apart from reopening this bug, there is an issue that is much more important:

KDE, as a whole, is production level software. It is stable, reliable and in productive everyday use in lots of places. The complete system is of a very high, if not superior, quality.

Kontact, more specifically KMail, stands out in two very negative aspects. While the frequent and easily reproducable crashes (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126715) are highly annoying, they can be coped with and do not lose data (unless you are writing an email). On the other hand, the issue we are discussing in this bug report has been losing real data of real people for over one and a half years. While some people might argue that backups are vital for all parts of our digital lives, these are meant for emergencies, not the common case. Making these emergencies the common case does not help anyone.

My suggestion consists of three parts:

1) Remove the option of creating dimap accounts, bury it in some deeper option or _at least_ warn everyone wanting to create a dimap account or anyone using one currently of the very real chance of them losing all their mail, in this order of preference.

2) Force the user to manually confirm every deletion of mail, especially if KMail wants to batch delete anything and/or a large portion of the mails in any given folder/account. To make this less annoying, KMail could wait until the end of the session with that question (which is bad if KMail dies or if the user walks away immediately when closing his KDE session) or move mail into another folder instead of deleting (which is bad if there is not enough free storage left). Yes, no matter what is done, this is still a pain.

3) Keep a detailed log of all actions and decisions the mail handler takes and for what reason it takes them. Make it easy (http upload, email sending, whatever, just make it a one-click affair) for those logs to be sent to a central site where they can be looked at accordingly.


I am fully aware that all of these three steps are disruptive. Still, this issue is amongst the very worst ever to haunt KDE and has been open for way too long. Let me stress that this is not an attack against anyone, it is just a desperate call for action.

I know of no single bug, or group of bugs, that is as devastating to the whole experience of KDE for any user as this one. Please change this situation.

Richard Hartmann