My system:
Linux 2.6.27.25-0.1-default i686
openSUSE 11.1 (i586)
KDE 4.3.00 release 155
Kontact/Kmail 4.3.0-154.1

My problem is that the options for changing the persistent headers have disappeared from the menu in Kmail.

My menu looks like this:


After trying to solve this problem, I went to a clean config of Kmail, on the same computer but as a different user. Everything is as it should be and all the menu options regarding the headers are where they are supposed to be.

The menu looks like this:


So I set out to configure Kmail as I like it, checking after each change to see if the menu had changed. When I get to the Layout, and choose "Do not show a message preview pane", this is when the menu options for headers disappear.

OK, so it seems logical enough just to select "Show the message preview pane " and assume everything goes back to normal. Well, it doesn't. Everything goes back to normal with the layout, except that the header menu options are still missing!

Being who I am, I looked at the kmailrc file to see what happens when I make this change to the layout.

When I start up Kmail for the first time, when everything is as it should be, there is no code in the kmailrc file for the location of the preview pane.

When I select "Do not show a message preview pane" a new line is added to the kmailrc file readerWindowMode=hide. This is when the menu options disappear, though I cannot see the connection because this line does not have anything to do with menu options.

When I select back to the default "Show the message preview pane ", the line is changed to readerWindowMode=below, but the menu options are still not there.

In order for me to get the menu options back, I deleted this line completely, so the kmailrc is as it was when I first started out. The menu options are back and the preview pane is in the default layout position.

So I got everything back to normal, except that I don't want the preview pane!

As long as I choose my preferred header style before I choose the layout it is no problem. If I want to choose another header style later on, I have to deleted the readerWindowMode=hide line, choose the header, choose the layout, and off I go.

Any solution?

If you make the change needed to hide the message previewer, then open the message, are the options displayed on that window?

The case of them not re-appearing after re-enabling the message previewer is a bug that needs to be reported at bugs.kde.org if it hasn't already.

Yes, the options are displayed in an individual message window, but these are not persistent.

Reported as Bug 204494 on bugs.kde.org

The non-persistent nature of that setting is also a bug in KMail and indicates duplicated code also.

I can confirm that this is not confined to opensuse, as I've tested it in fedora. However, there is logic in the behaviour, apart from the fact that it doesn't reverse correctly, which must surely be a bug.

When you choose to show any kind of header it shows in the preview pane, by default, and that is where most people would expect to see it. I guess the logic might be that if you haven't a preview pane you can't see them either. All the same, once those settings disappear from the menu you can't reverse, so that's back to the bug.

Where I'd really argue, is that it is reasonable for the choice of header in the separate viewing pane to be non-persistent. That would really be useful when you want, for instance, to view the full headers of a particular message. I would consider this bit to be not a bug.

annew wrote:Where I'd really argue, is that it is reasonable for the choice of header in the separate viewing pane to be non-persistent. That would really be useful when you want, for instance, to view the full headers of a particular message. I would consider this bit to be not a bug.

I have to agree with her here. It may be considered a bug, but it is a very useful "feature" that I would not be so excited to see disappear.

However if the header type selection for the preview makes an indefinite behaviour, then how do you set an indefinite behaviour for the viewing window?