Re: Usenet/GMane users and the (lack of) future of KNode

Kevin Krammer <[email protected]> Thu, 11 Feb 2016 11:40:08 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.kde.users.pim,gmane.comp.kde.mac
Organization	KDE
Message-ID	<2724694.JRpN9nh6VR@persephone>
Hi,

On Thursday, 2016-02-11, 10:50:48, René J.V. Bertin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just learned that KNode is a fossil in suspended animation that won't make
> it to KF5.
> 
> The impression one could get from the blog post I was pointed to when I
> reported a KNode crash the other day is that this decision was made by a
> single developer who felt he wasn't in a position to do the porting of
> unmaintained code that isn't his in the first place. I can relate to that,
> but KDE (PIM) isn't a single person's effort (nor is it intended to serve
> the needs of only those who're developing it actively - I'd hope).

KNode hasn't had an active maintainer for quite some time, so there is no 
single person deciding on not porting and anyone can decide to do the port.

Porting KNode is not as easy as porting other applications because its Qt4 
port, i.e. the current version, is making use of Qt3 compatibility classes 
(Qt3Support module) which are no longer available in Qt5.

So a port would probably require to first port away from the usage of that 
compat module.

> I'm sure I'm not the only one on here who has an interest in this kind of
> feature that increases productivity by avoiding distraction (no temptation
> to take part in all kinds of "passionating" but otherwise irrelevant
> threads).

I think most people found those to be very valuable when they were using 
Usenet (I know I did), and I always thought it would be nice to have them for 
email as well.

> I'm completely unfamiliar with KNode's code myself, and don't exactly have
> KDE/KF5 experience beyond adapting existing code to my needs and/or OS X
> specifics. I cannot asses therefore how (im)possible it will be to port
> KNode to KF5, but I'd be willing to help where I can.

As I've written above, the difficulty is not the port to Qt5 itself, but first 
porting away from some really old code or removing all the features that need 
that old code.

> Alternatively, how feasible would it be to implement a comparable filtering
> feature in KMail?

I have no idea, but I would really like that :)
KMail is also actively maintained.

I think at some point there was even an NNTP resource for Akonadi, which would 
have allowed to use any "message" UI (e.g. KMail) to present Newsgroup 
postings.

> Provided that expiration still works on messages
> that are not being shown.

I am pretty sure expiration does not depend on messages being shown.

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring

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