https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387931
Ralph Moenchmeyer <r...@anracon.de> changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |r...@anracon.de --- Comment #23 from Ralph Moenchmeyer <r...@anracon.de> --- Interesting discussion and opinion exchange. So, I dare to add a comment from an experienced end user's perspective. I have used KDE/Kmail for over 12 years now. I have used it as a part of my daily professional Linux/KDE/Kontact working environment - with accounts on many different Mail- and groupware servers. So, as an end user have I followed all the ups and downs of this application. Parts of my family use it, too. And to make it clear from the beginning: I do respect respect the developers' effort. Very much so. I am 60 years old and I have worked in IT for over 30 years - as a developer, as an application designer, as project leader, as a consultant. In agile environments - and with maintainers. As an interested end user with respect to Kmail I can only express my deepest dislike of attitudes as: "So if I think that it's better to reduce menu or hide not useful feature for enduser it's my choice." No, dear maintainer, it is NOT! A maintainer has to work in the interest of both the developers AND the end users. Deciding what is useful for an end user or not is, however, a difficult process - which, of course, should involve the end user. Certainly, it is not something which can be decided upon in a nice developer chat, only. I do not assume that this was the case here, but I stress this point to make clear that it is not just simply "your" choice. Changing or even removing elementary features should be the result of a careful analysis. It would have been helpful to see how the maintainer came to his conclusions and on what basis the end users opinion was taken into account. I, myself, have worked in the interest of end users in some SW projects. And you know what? The most annoying thing for an end user is: Changes and changes and changes with an unclear or dubious motivation - and without even a minimum end user survey. (In the case of Kmail besides technical problems and not properly working features - as the search for mails with AND/OR conditions in Kmail for years.) But even more annoying is the removal of features. And I may tell you - even if some developers and maintainers may not believe it: To have a look at the structure of an email has become something elementary for security aware end users. An important thing for the success of an application is a balance of keeping up things users got used to and improvements/extensions. One key experience in application design is: This balance between conservative maintenance and innovation is a delicate one for customers. And one rule, I painfully had to learn myself, is: You do not simply remove options users were used to for years without proper replacement! In addition: CLEANING UP MENUS may be a great thing to do if it follows a comprehensible logic. REMOVING FEATURES without a replacement certainly IS NOT! You should note that you are talking about two very different things. As an end user I vote for a kind of "advanced options" menu. That is a place where most users would look for a replacement of options that suddenly have disappeared. A plugin, instead, makes life for end users more complicated. You have to know about plugins and their handling. You have to activate them and maybe configure them. In my opinion not convincing for elementary options as displaying the mail structure. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.