Bug 83585

Version:           1.6.2 (using KDE KDE 3.2.2)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages
Compiler:          gcc version 3.3.2 20031218 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.2-r5, propolice-3.3-7) Thread model: posix
OS:                Linux

Admittedly unusual circumstances, but very important to resolve nonetheless.  I lost about 6 hours worth of work composing a draft email message because KMail didn't do what I think it should have done.

Circumstances:
1) KMail configured as client for Cyrus IMAP server;
2) A message has been composed and stored for additional revisions in the drafts folder of the IMAP server and KMail has been configured to save draft messages to that IMAP folder;
3) Kmail is launched, draft message is opened for editing (which seems to cause the message to be deleted from drafts folder which in itself is fine IMO);
4) While editing the message that had previously been stored in the drafts folder, the partition on the IMAP server that is used as the mail store for the drafts folder fills up completely;
5) After completing some editing of the draft message (but it's still not ready for sending), one uses the "Message->Save in Drafts Folder" menu command to store the message in the drafts folder again, but the mail store partition on the server is full so KMail cannot save the draft message there.

In these circumstances, KMail just throws away the draft message.  It does pop up an error message informing me that it cannot access the file, and I can acknowledge the message by pressing the "Ok" button, but KMail makes no attempt to keep the composer window open (so that I could save the message somewhere else or decide how I should save the content in some other way), or to save the message to a dead.letter file in the user's home directory on the client computer, or to do anything at all to attempt to save this content.

I see that as a big problem.  Draft messages are frequently documents that the author has already spent (or will spend, or both) many hours composing.  As such, I believe that KMail should take extra precautions on how to try and make sure that this content is never lost.  If KMail crashes, it should be saved to a dead.letter file (or draft.letter or something) ASAP while KMail is still resident in memory if at all possible (as Emacs does with unsaved buffer contents), and if some attempted action fails that would otherwise lead to the loss of the content of a draft message, then KMail should go to extraordinary measures to ensure that the content is saved somewhere, somehow, and if all methods to save the content fail and KMail has not crashed, then the composer window should not be closed no matter what or else the content is lost irrevocably.

I see this as a bug but I suppose one could also see the behavior that I'm describing as a really valuable feature.  In any case, I think it's a really important thing for any mail client to do.  I'm interested in feedback from the developers on this notion.

Thanks for making a mail client that (in just about every other way) is truly delightful.  You folks do amazing work and if I knew anything about programming I would love to help out by writing code to implement this notion above or some other stuff.

-Kevin