Bug 91658

Huh - I can confirm last part of bug - I time to time receive those error messages "Unknown host FOO" (That's OK - no network connectivity) and they have to be closed in RIGHT order (starting from Error with largest number) and those messages tend to stack in wrong order. I see only one error message and can't close it, because it is first error message, all other 4 error messages are hidden under. When I move away all upper error messages, I can get to active error message to start closing them. 
This really sucks as 1) error messages w only OK button should be closeable in any order;
2) error messages should not completely overlap (don't know how in English is called feature, when windows are positioned in way when only they titlebars don't overlap, but that's a one of solutions for this problem).

Maris, what version of KMail are you using?

Sorry, forgot to add technical details ;)

kmail 3.5.5-0ubuntu1 (deb)
KMail Version 1.9.5 (app)

(Am I a victim of Debian policy "Use old software to suffer from long a go fixed bugs"?)

On Thu Nov 9 2006, Māris Nartišs wrote:
> (Am I a victim of Debian policy "Use old software to suffer from long a go fixed bugs"?)

Nope. That's "debian stable" policy, not ubuntu's ;)
3.5.5 is pretty recent.

Uhm. Maybe this bug report should be split up?

There are a number of issues I reported all mixed up, and there is at least another related issue to consider:

1: The "Cannot connect to host" message does not provide enough information to fix the problem.

2: The messages stack in the wrong order, making it difficult to close them.

3: (This is a new consideration) I think the "cannot connect to host" message is too common and not important enough to be granted a blocking confirmation dialog. Here at least, the network connection can go down quite frequently, and a pop server can be unavailable or just slow frequently enough. using a passive popup or the status bar for this kind of error should be enough.

Should three different bugs be posted, instead of just this one? The stacking order for popups may be a KWin problem...
 

The right fix would be to change the way errors are handled in kmail.

1-Make an internal floating error window.
2-All errors stacks inside (like downloads or plugins update in firefox).
3-Each error can lead to explanation/details with a button
4-Errors can be removed/cleared
5-The window can be accessible with icon (red if errors) and show number of errors. This in status bar.
6-The window should popup only when if empty (on first error, so recurring/multiple errors will only result in icon notification and not on annoying popup)

-----------------------------------------X---
|-------------------------------------------|
| [!] Can't connect to... [details][close]  |
|-------------------------------------------|
| [!] Can't connect to... [details][close]  |
|-------------------------------------------|
| [!] Wrong password for..[details][close]  |
|-------------------------------------------|
|                        [clear all errors] |
---------------------------------------------

Created attachment 23598 [details]
Kmail network errors window proposal

Kmail network errors UI window proposal

Another error message that needs more information:

"The server is not responding properly:

220 eastrmimpo01.cox.net bizsmtp ESMTP server ready"

That looks like a pretty normal server response to me.  Apparently the message withholds the *real* problem from the user, which is unacceptable.

[In that particular case, the server seems to have been having temporary issues (happens all the time, but I usually just get a "cannot connect" error) since it began working again a little while later.  But I would have never been able to guess with a poor error message like that.  This was right after a "certificate has expired" error, despite looking in the cryptography information and seeing the certificate having well over a month before expiry--not sure if that was related or not.]

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.