I've just recently returned to using KDE since GNOME went the way of the (insert unpleasant thoughts here). The last time I used KDE for my desktop environment was in the 3.5 days with Mandriva/openSUSE. Anyway, things are looking much nicer with the current version (4.8, on Debian Wheezy), so I'm glad to be back.

The main question for now is how do I increase the font size for an HTML message? If I double-click on the message to open it in a separate window (where I get a font/size pair of combo boxes) and change the font size, it only changes the font for the header & subject; the font size of the HTML message remains unchanged (and extremely small for my poor eyesight). Is there a way to once-off zoom (and override!) the font in an HTML message?

I assumed the Kontact/KMail would be using the Konqueror rendering engine underneath and could zoom without trouble?

Thanks

Hi marcfearby

There are few things to note.

1. Debian Wheezy uses really old KDE PIM package (4.4, which is more than two years old right now). There has been some discussions about it on kde-debian mailing list and Debian maintainers decided to upload 4.8.4 packages of KDE PIM for brave users. They will probably end up in semi-official repository (http://qt-kde.debian.net/). Not sure if this will happen during, or only after Wheezy release (probably in January or February 2013, but there is no strict deadline). You should be aware of that.

(I am using Polish KDE and will translate option names on the fly. English names may be different.)

2. In KMail configuration, in Security tab you can uncheck "Prefer HTML over plain text". It is suggested to leave that option unchecked. All mails will be text-only then. You can still use View → Show message structure to enforce HTML parsing for certain messages.
If you prefer plain text over HTML, then you can use "Look" tab in KMail configuration to enforce certain font size. All messages will follow that setting.

3. HTML messages will follow font settings as well, unless they have font-size specified in their source code. KMail will use that setting, potentially producing unreadable messages.

4. I also would like to see "Zoom" bar for messages. I am not sure if that was implemented in KMail2. You can try to post your idea in Brainstorm section here on forums.

Unless the font size is hard-coded in some way, you can also use ctrl-mouse-scroll-wheel to temporarily zoom in.

Thanks Mirosław for giving me the background. I was using Squeeze up until I had to replace my motherboard and was forced to upgrade to Wheezy to get Atheros LAN support (but I was using GNOME/Evolution under Squeeze anyway, so kdepim 4.4 on Wheezy seems a vast improvement over Evolution, even if it is a little out-of-date by modern standards). Debian has always been known to be behind other distros when it comes to the latest and greatest packages, but I prefer its stability over cutting edge improvements. I'll wait until kdepim 4.8 makes it into wheezy.

Thanks also, annew. I tried Ctrl+/- and looked for a menu option to zoom and neither worked. I didn't think to Ctrl+MouseWheel.