(Please CC me on replies, I'm not subscribed to debian-kde.)
I use the KOrganizer reminder system to pop up task alerts for various
things that should be done on a periodic basis. It's worked well for me
for a number of years.
Earlier this year I switched out my aging CentOS5 install for Debian
Jessie, and KDE3 for KDE4. I've found stable fixes or workarounds for
most of the nuisance changes. However, I haven't found fixes or
consistent workarounds for some issues with KOrganizer reminder popups.
I have just recently, once again, accidentally dismissed a reminder that
should still be "active", by dismissing another, unrelated reminder.
This particular problem boils down to a cluster of changes in how the
reminder popups are handled. Previously, each event would pop up its
own reminder window/dialog, and in the event I wanted to defer the
reminder (for tasks or events that do not nedd to be dealt with
immediately), changing the defer time would only apply to that reminder.
(Possibly that *instance* of that reminder; either way it didn't
clash with my expectations.)
Now, all reminders are added to a list in a single dialog box, with a
flaky interface that makes it difficult to be sure you've deferred the
reminder you thought you were deferring, or worse, dismissing "all
pending reminders" even though you only wanted to dismiss one. Worse
yet, the latter issue is inconsistent; about a quarter to a third of
the time all reminders are dismissed (when they shouldn't have been),
and the rest of the time it at least behaves as expected (only acting on
the selected reminder(s)).
Possibly related, selecting a specific reminder in the list in this
dialog is also flaky; again, *usually* it works as expected, but
occasionally it glitches out and won't let you select a specific entry.
Or there's a mismatch between the apparently-selected entry and the
reminder details shown below.
The defer time is also shared between reminders; if I have one reminder
pop up, and defer it for 45 minutes, the next one to pop up will
incorrectly inherit that defer period by default. To put it another
way, the selected deferral period is not a per-reminder data field, but
shared across all reminders.
Am I just Doing It Wrong?
Is there a better tool to (ab)use to get individual popup dialogs with a
brief text blurb, with all of the scheduling and time-related handling
baggage?
-kgd
