I'm trying without much success so far to understand how to configure the receiving accounts for kmail2. I have two interrelated questions.

1. When you create a new account, you immediately have the choice of several account types, including Maildir, KMail Mail Folder, and Pop3 Email Server. There are others too, but I'm only asking about these three.

My main question is that you would normally want to specify both a receiving folder and a mail source. With the Pop3 Email Server choice, you get to specify the mail source but not the receiving folder. With Maildir it's the other way around: you get to specify the receiving folder but not the mail source. So how do you get to specify both? And what is the difference between Kmail Mail Folder and Maildir, since both have the maildir format?

2. The account Local Folders seems to be very special, since it's created automatically with various subfolders such as Inbox, Outbox, Trash, etc. And when it's created, it has a Maildir folder but no mail source. If I try to create an account named Local Folders by myself, I get two accounts with that name. So how can I control the properties of the real Local Folder -- the one that kmail2 actually puts the mail into?

I'm running the 4.8 RC1 version of kmail2 right now, but I think these questions apply to any version, The Kmail Handbook says that when you create a POP3 account, the Akonadi Resource window appears -- but it doesn't.

Is there anything I can read that might answer these questions?

Once you have added a POP3 recieving account, a dialog should open up in theory. Have you checked the Task Manager (part of the Plasma Panel) to see if it is hiding there, minimized below the KMail window?

If you don't, and the configuration window is not greyed out, then there should now be a POP entry. Select it, then press Modify and the configuration window should now show up.

You can configure where you want POP accounts to deliver mail into on the Advanced tab of their settings. This can be changed at any time. This is why neither of the two Maildir options offer mail sources - because POP resources take care of this.

Maildir and KMail mail folder are similar, but quite different - as KMail mail folders were what KMail 1.x used - and contained a variety of special metadata. Normal Maildir's do not contain this - and are not compatible.

The default local folders structure is where email will be delivered by default - but as noted previously this can be changed. It cannot be deleted however, as it contains the all important Outbox folder.

Thanks - I now see how to handle the non-default accounts. But I'm still having a problem with Local Folders. It seems to be created automatically as a Maildir account, with Inbox, Outbox, etc. as folders. But I still don't see how to provide Pop3 information for it. Or is it not supposed to be used as an account for retrieving mail? And if that's the case, why does it have an Inbox and an Outbox?

POP3 accounts are created seperately. By default they are configured to deliver into Local Folders/Inbox. You can change that on the Advanced settings tab of the POP3 account settings.

Local folders just happens to be the default set of folders supplied by KMail2 - POP3 resources are completely independent and can deliver into any local set of folders you configure.