Bug 115426

> Choosing INBOX. as my personal namespace. I expected to see all the folders
> inside this namespace to appear in the root as it did with KDE 3.4.4's
> PREFIX option. It doesnt seem to have any effect in this version.


What do you mean with "no effect"?
What personal namespaces are shown in your account configuration? Did you 
modify them?

I am using courier imap and this places all everything in a INBOX namespace. Previously in kde 3.4.3 I would set INBOX in the prefix config box and would end up with the structure:

my imap
|
+-inbox
+-personal
+-sent
+-trash

With kde 3.5 it automatically detects a personal namespace of "INBOX." however the folders are displayed as:

my imap
|
+-inbox
  |
  +-personal
  +-sent
  +-trash

With all folders contained within the inbox folder.

I have tried modifying the personal namespace with things like "inbox" but it nothing seems to fix the situation.

> With kde 3.5 it automatically detects a personal namespace of "INBOX."
> however the folders are displayed as:
>
> my imap
>
> +-inbox
>
>   +-personal
>   +-sent
>   +-trash
>
> With all folders contained within the inbox folder.


Well, this is the correct way to display the folders. The old prefix was a 
hack and there were some crude workarounds included to make it work. The 
structure that you see now is exactly how the server reports it.

Thats fair enough, I was just confused because I though the new namespace option was suppose to produce the same effect. Looking at the kmail help i found the following:

"If you are using IMAP, you can optionally specify a path in the Prefix to folders field. This tells KMail where it can find your folders on the server. If you also have a shell account on the server and the messages are stored in your home folder it might be useful to store the messages in a subfolder Mail. Use this as a value in the Prefix to folders field so that KMail does not mix up mailbox files and other files."

Although I dont have this problem at the moment, I have in the past and the prefix meant I could use kmail. Is the prefix option going to be reintroduced in the future?

Thanks for responding so quickly.

I sure hope so.

Wish for having the pre-3.5 look back is seconded. I got used to having all folders as subfolders under the account, instead of under the inbox folder... besides, this change makes kmail crash on start when you have imap folders configured as "sent" and "drafts" folders, and have been using the folder prefix (so that, for example, "sent" was imap-account/sent and now is imap-account/inbox/sent).


...was this change even mentioned somewhere in the 3.5 changelogs?

Hello,

quoting from the mail above:

"If you also have a shell account on the server and the messages are stored in your home folder it might be useful to store the messages in a subfolder Mail. Use this as a value in the Prefix to folders field so that KMail does not mix up mailbox files and other files." 

I do have this kind of setup, and I do no longer know how to configure my IMAP account properly. When I started KDE 3.5 for the first time, a little dialog box appeared to tell me that my configuration was converted to a new "namespace" scheme (for which I couldn't find any documentation), then my e-mail account got screwed up badly.

As I use e-mail for my job, I cannot allow things to happen to my mail so that I had to switch to Mozilla Mail after upgrading to KDE 3.5. :-(

I would prefer to use KMail, so are there any ideas what I could do?

Best,

Stefan.

When I upgraded to kde 3.5, kmail crashed the first few times I checked for new mail.  Then it finally rebuilt the folder tree so that folders show as subfolders of inbox.  Once this happened, it appears to work, though it lost all of its cached information, so it takes a very long time when first opening new folders.

I also would like the old view back - I need to make my folder pane wider now to view the folder names, since they are now all subfolders of inbox.

At the very least, making kmail do this reconfiguration automatically the first time it starts up would be ideal, rather than crashing multiple times.

> With kde 3.5 it automatically detects a personal namespace of "INBOX." 
 > however the folders are displayed as: 
 > 
 > my imap 
 > 
> > +-inbox 
> > 
> >   +-personal 
> >   +-sent 
> >   +-trash 
> > 
> > With all folders contained within the inbox folder. 
>  
> 
> Well, this is the correct way to display the folders. The old prefix was a 
> hack and there were some crude workarounds included to make it work. The 
> structure that you see now is exactly how the server reports it. 

I believe the old prefix was a hack, and see that Namespaces are much better (and follow the relevant rfc2342).  But, *this is not the correct way to show them*.  Yes, Courier reports INBOX.mailbox, but "INBOX." is the namespace, not part of the path.

See also, http://www.courier-mta.org/FAQ.html#namespace

Though the old prefix was a hack it worked faster then the correct implemantation. 

The new look is only a bit unfamiliar but one may live with it. 

But what is more displeasingly is, it takes now several minutes (via a DSL connection) to synchronize kMail with the IMAP account containing some 11000 mails. 

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

@Stefan: go to the account configuration, edit your personal namespaces. You probably have an <Empty> part in there. Replace this with "Mail". And delete the ~ Shared namespace. *Sigh* UW is such a crap.

@Josh: KMail uses the namespace and therefore knows that a folder called "INBOX.test" has to be displayed as "test". But I'm not convinced that the hierarchy has to be displayed in a different way. INBOX is a mailbox which has the path /INBOX/ by definition. So if a server chooses to use this as a prefix I would say that the mailboxes should also be displayed like this.
Nevertheless this has low priority for me as it's only a display issue. I'm more interested to iron out the remaining bugs of the namespace support.
I will leave this report open as one can argue about the way to display the folders but *please* don't add random thoughts and problems under this single report.

Argh!
I just upgraded to KDE 3.5 and had this problem.
It sucks (excuse-me, I'm a bit shocked).

I have the same argument as the other guys:
It adds an (unneeded) level more to the tree, what is really annoying for the pane size, 

Other mail clients (like thunderbird) have the same problem (ignoring the namespace) - mainly with courier & courier-imap servers -. But they allow to set a prefix to have all the folders back at the root level.
Perhaps adding the possibility for the users to set the prefix manually, or even a "strip namespace" checkbox would be the right solution.

It was perhaps a hack, but please keep a backward compatibility.
*P*L*E*A*A*A*S*E* ! m(__)m

I have other personnal arguments:
1. I have 4GB of mails on my mail server.
   They are currently cached (cached IMAP), and redownloading everything...
2. I selected lots of nice icons for my zillions of subfolders... and it would
   make me crazy to have to set them up again!

After living with it for a couple days, the folders as subfolders of inbox doesn't bother me as much.  Sure, a "strip namespace" checkbox would be great (on by default, since previous kmail versions did this with prefix).

What bothers be is:
1. Kmail crashes on mail checks until the folder list is rebuilt.
2. Cached headers (or whole mails for dimap) are wasted and need redownloaded.

It seems there is code to migrate Prefix -> Namespace.  It would be great if Kmail, when it found a prefix, would automatically rebuild the folder tree, and just move all the cached headers/mails under .kde/share/apps/kmail/[d]imap/ to the right place.

If any Kmail developers want an imap account on a Courier IMAP server to work on this, I can provide one.

When using Courier IMAP, all folders are subfolders of Inbox (which I don't
like at all) even when the INBOX namespace is set.

Now I'd like to change some folder subscriptions, but no matter what I try,
I always see Inbox in the left pane as only folder, and I'm unable to
change the subscription status of the subfolders of Inbox.

The REAL problem  with the new style is the transition - the need to download the whole inbox in chache IMAP and the need to configure all the folders once again. The current unexpected behaviour is unacceptable for serious use. And the way teh folders are dispalyed should be crafted for usability and not necesarily to represent the physical structure. The option 'strip namespaces' to control this bahaviour (on by default) is the perfect and much needed solution.

The problem reported by me in comment 15 (about subfolders not visible in subscription window) seems to be fixed in KDE 3.5.1

Just a question: do you plan to do this "strip namespace" thing?
I just upgraded to 3.5.1, hoping to get the folders back to the account root.
I'm somewhat disappointed...

I'm currently using Thunderbird since 2 months and I miss kmail :'(

I don't think it is correct to say that INBOX.test is a sub-folder of INBOX.  The problem is that the namespace is INBOX but there is also a special folder called INBOX.

INBOX will always exist; if you use something other than courier, then the default namespace could be anything.

I think this problem gets worse when multiple namespaces are available.  It should be possible to map a namespace to a folder in Kmail's folder list (including the root of an account).  This would fix this bug and make KMail much better at multiple namespaces.

I'll add another couple of cents...
I'm not sure how many people run kmail in this fashion, but I have a "local"
account that is used for sending email.  It also has an inbox, outbox, sent-mail, trash, drafts.. etc etc... And a bunch of storage folders that I
created.  I also have an imap account that I use for receiving email, it has
an inbox with all the folders on that imap server as subfolders under inbox.
This is in fact a local courier-imapd server.

The interesting thing to note is that for the local account, all the folders
are folders under the account name, not under inbox.  And for the imap account,
all the folders are subfolders under inbox.

This seems a pretty obvious discontinuity in UI work.

Please make it work the same for all account types.
Personally, I prefer my folders to be under the account and not under inbox.
Perhaps make it kmail configurable?

Yes pleaaaase! ^^;
Make it this way:

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

(Nice no? Just found it).

In 3.5.1, if I manually change the namespace to "inbox." (lowercase), folders are displayed under the root *as well as* under inbox.  Collapsing the folders under "inbox," things look just as they did before.  It doesn't seem like this is the way things could be (since the namespace is actually "INBOX."), but in the meantime it cleans up the display.

Actually, the workaround in comment #22, unsurprisingly, seems to cause some strange problems with folders (looking for inbox.INBOX.Sent...), so I don't recommend it.

I upgraded my laptop yesterday from KDE 3.4.1 to 3.5.1 and run into similiar problems:

I'm running the UW imap over ssl in my private network.
In the home of my mailserver there is a Mail subfolder containing all my mail stuff, but actual kmail shows all folders of my home directory and hangs.
This makes it unusable :-(

As my other boxes (both linux and solaris with kde) are still on kde 3.4.x, I will need this backward compability to the old prefix-hack :-(

Is there a workaround for this prefix things in the namespaces concept?
Reading all the comment here it is not quite clear to me..

best regards
Rainald

As written in Comment #11,
it helps to set the personal namespace to the name of the prefix folder.
But it seems to have no effect unless you recreate the account, it does not wipe out all e the other folders of my home dir automatically.

Now it seems to work fine.

regards
rainald

PLEASE!!! Allow me to strip the Namespace... It's a NAMESPACE, not a FOLDER.

Sad, no change in KDE 3.5.2

> Sad, no change in KDE 3.5.2


This is a new feature and thus not allowed in the branch. We can only 
implement this is in kde 4.

Depends... what you consider as feature is what I consider as bugfix. Previously it worked (me as a simple user does not care, why this changed and wheater it was a hack, you know), now it doesn't. So from a user perspective this is a bug.

Another thing... OK, you have the namespace appearing as a folder. Is it then at least a bug, that on the 'virtual namespace folder' you can execute action like 'Create new subfolder', which should only be possible on real subfolders?

Well, is it SO difficult to add this feature for the people that want KMail to stay backward compatible?

Even a hidden option in kmailrc would make me so damn happy that I could kiss you all :D

> This is a new feature and thus not allowed in the branch. We can only 
> implement this is in kde 4. 
Hmmm. I should never send replies too late the evening...
(btw, it's not a new but an old feature, but let's stop here).
Will you add it to KDE 4?

> Will you add it to KDE 4?


Probably yes.

I second the need for namespaces not being treated 1:1 as folders.  Currently, it displays the "Sent" and "Trash" folders (next to all the others, of course) within the "inbox" folder, which from a intuitive POV just doesn't make sense -- who on earth would keep their sent mail and trash in boxes within their inbox?  Besides, the additional sub-folder level wastes valuable screen space because the folder pane has to be made wider.

I look forward to KMail being able to display things as they were in KDE 3.4.

*** Bug 133920 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Yes, here's another vote for not having folders being children of the inbox folder. http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/FAQ.html#namespace seems to be another source saying it's a bug in the MUA.

It would be nice if this bug was fixed during the 3.x series.


Frans

Is it correct that no workaround exist?

Did someone check KDE4?
It's not yet available on my distrib.

Very annoying that it's not possible to set a prefix anymore. I have a standard unix system, and use my home directory naturally contains lots of files.
So, it's extremely annoying that every time I want to manage the subscription, kmail takes ages to scan through the 100000+ files in all other directories..

I've just been bitten by a really good reason that the INBOX should not be the effective root of all the other folders.

I had a dimap cache corruption in KMail, and wanted to redownload the messages in the INBOX.  However, doing Troubleshoot IMAP->Refresh Cache works on the selected folder and all subfolders.

So, in order to refetch 14 messages, I would have to redownload my entire 1.5GB mail archive, all because INBOX is incorrectly seen as being the parent of all my other folders.

Today I have done a KDE update and it seems this bug has been fixed?
The inbox seems to be where it belongs (hopefully not only optical ;-)

Could someone confirm this?

now it says: KMail 1.9.6 (KDE 3.5.6 "release 85.1" openSuSE)


Thomas

Nope - no change here.
I'm running "KMail 1.9.6 (Using KDE 3.5.6)" built on a Gentoo system.

I did the buildservice update on SuSE Linux 10.0 today as well and the bug is not fixed. 
By setting the namespace to "inbox" on account creation, you can get the folders to show as siblings to the inbox instead of children of it, but you can't open them. kmail says they were all empty :-(

I now understand the interest to display all folders under inbox.
We now have shared imap folders here, and it would be confusing having the inbox subfolders at the root level, with "shared". Even worst if inbox also contains a subfolder also named "shared"...

Comment #33 says that the developers wanted to fix this with KDE 4. In the meantime KDE 4.2 is out, but I no longer use courier IMAP. Can anyone verify, if this has been fixed?

With my current IMAP Account I cannot verify this.

No, still not.

(In reply to comment #45)
> Comment #33 says that the developers wanted to fix this with KDE 4. In the
> meantime KDE 4.2 is out, but I no longer use courier IMAP. Can anyone verify,
> if this has been fixed?
> 
> With my current IMAP Account I cannot verify this.

No still not in KDE 4.3.1

In OpenSuSE 11.2, KDE 4.3.1, kMail 1.12.2 the folder tree is still below inbox - but in between the IMAP server here is cyrus ...

In OpenSuSE 11.4, KDE 4.6.0, kMail 1.13.6 regardless of the personal namespace the folder tree is still below inbox.

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

KMail2 was released in 2011, and the entire code base went through significant changes. We are currently in the process of porting to Qt5 and KF5. It is unlikely that these bugs are still valid in KMail2.

We welcome you to try out KMail 2 with the KDE 4.14 release and give your feedback.