Hello everybody,

I've been using Kmail for ages now, and I'm now starting to find some limitations in it. It may well be that I started to expect a lot because I rely on it heavily.

Anyways, some of the main gripes I now have regard printing. So here's a list:

• Is it possible to print a thread? Printing a long series of short emails individually can be tedious at best. I tried to select a full thread, but then the print option is grayed out.
• Is it possible to highlight quoted text? On the displayed version, in my case, quoted text is in italics, and in color. In the printed version all text have the same appearance.
• About attachments: that is maybe a genuine bug: regardless of whether I check the Inline or Hide boxes, some attachments (e.g.: some EPS figures, some plain text attachments) are always printed, and others are not. Couldn't yet find a systematic behaviour though.
• Is it possible to configure the appearance of the printed version, for instance by adding maybe some label, or changing the default one (the current date)? The only configuration I could find in the way a message is printed is through the print menu: Printer friendly (B/W or color, really), Print images, Print header. And these options not always work for me (see the previous one).

The first issue is the most serious to me, and it seems also one of the longest standing issue in the KDE bug tracking system (reported as far back as 2001!).

The second and third issue may also be related. I had in fact the notion that Kmail would preserve the appearance of the displayed message, and so I could just configure the display and get the same result in print. But that's not the case, it seems.

One way through these issues I thought would be to save an message as an html file and then display it in a browser. But that's also not an option.


I've searched the KDE bug tracking system, and I found that these issues have indeed been reported in one form or another (bug/wishlist), but sometimes regarding quite ancient versions of Kmail. So, it may be that there is indeed a way to do these things within KDE 4.x. Just I can't find how.

Any tips, suggestions, advices?



Using currently KDE 4.3.5 in openSUSE 11.2

Your effort to save as an html file was a sensible guess, I think, so I'm going to suggest something similar. In recent versions, if you highlight a whole thread then hit the Forward button it will ask if you want to send as a Digest. Forward it to yourself, as a digest, and you should then be able to print from it. You can always delete it after printing, or save the digest and delete the originals.

annew wrote:Your effort to save as an html file was a sensible guess, I think, so I'm going to suggest something similar.

I was indeed wondering whether it would be easy to implement an Export to HTML next to Print or Import Messages in the File menu.

annew wrote:In recent versions, if you highlight a whole thread then hit the Forward button it will ask if you want to send as a Digest. Forward it to yourself, as a digest, and you should then be able to print from it. You can always delete it after printing, or save the digest and delete the originals.

Thanks! That suggestion goes a long way to solving my problems...

There is however still a problem with this approach: I do not want the (dummy) header of the forwarded message to appear in print. In principle, I guess that checking off the "Print header" option in the Print - HTML options dialog should do the job of printing the "Digest", leaving out the header of the "container" message. Except that it does not seem to work for me...

In fact, I still have that problem with images I mentioned earlier. Maybe both issues are part of the same problem: many of the options in the Print dialogs do not always take effect. For example: I also tried to add a Banner page, or a label, or borders, but none of those options work either.

I am wondering whether the fact that I can't switch off printing the header of the "container" message, and in general the fact that many of the Print options do not seem to work, is just my problem, or a genuine bug (possibly not limited to Kmail). I found some similar bug reports, although pretty old (e.g.: bug #79594), so it's likely the latter case, but there might still something wrong with the way KDE (4.3.5) is packaged in the distribution I use (openSUSE 11.2), for instance.


Almost forgetting: quoted text is still not highlighted...