Bug 209283

Summary: Kmail HTML composer generates P-tags with zero margins, ignores blank lines, offers no list generation
Product: [Applications] kmail Reporter: Ralph Moenchmeyer <rm>
Component: generalAssignee: kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: normal    
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description Ralph Moenchmeyer 2009-10-03 11:21:22 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE 4.3.1)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

OS: Opensuse 11.1 64bit 
KDE: KDE 4.3.1 (SUSE rpms)

Today, I tried to use Kmails HTML composer capabilities for the very first time and I got very disappointed. I normally do not compose or send HTML Mails - but when I need to do it I would expect a minimum of formatting and some reasonable HTML code generation.   

The most annoying thing is that all P-tags generated have zero margins. Furthermore blank lines are totally ignored.

And more: The smart icons for indentation are disabled. The Kmail handbook talks about several list options. None is present.

The worst is that whilst writing an email you rely on the layout in the composer - but the receiver of the mail sees something quite different.   

Maybe I have not seen or missed something fundamental in using the HTML composer - but if not: 

How about integrating something like TinyMCE into Kmail ? 

Or at least offer the user a possibility to set and change some CSS-like definitions of how a P-tag should look like ? I did not find any hint where I could edit or change some of the definitions. And as one cannot trust the layout in the composer - how about offering the possibility of a rendered preview? 

Of course one could say that I could edit the HTML code befor sending. But as the P-tags are generated with explicit zero margin definitions in a style attribute, one would have to edit all the P-tags. Pretty much of a waste of time..... 

In summary: The HTML-Editor is useless in the present status. A user who must or wants to write HTML emails is forced to use an external editor.
Comment 1 L_V 2009-10-12 15:07:29 UTC 
The possibility to view and edit the html code while writing a message is a must.
At least editing with embedded kate would be fair.
The global setting to choose an external editor for ALL messages is not the good solution.

See "EditHTML" extension of Thunderbird.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/756
Comment 2 Laurent Montel 2015-04-12 09:52:31 UTC 
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.