Re: [Evolution-hackers] PIM application suite

[JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>]

On Mon, 2004-04-19 at 19:08 -0700, Jakub Steiner wrote:
> I very much share the sentiment of dropping the
> one-application-does-it-all model. There is a limited number of tasks
> than an iterface can be designed to fulfill well. Separate applications
> can work together better than a monolithic beast like the old
> staroffice. Apple's iApps are a good example of separate apps working
> together (and, well, so is the gnome desktop).
> 
> The reason to have evolution split and have individual components behave
> like separate applications is that the interface can become a lot more
> simple. I'm very excited about the e-d-s concept and applications
> getting access to evolution data. 
>
> As an example, take a look at the File>New menu. Right now you get a
> different shrtcut to bring up a new message depending on the active
> component. If we had separate application windows we could take
> advantage of consistency. Use sameshortcuts to do similar tasks. If the
> user ran an "addressbook" he wouldn't expect to open a new mail there.
> It is a lot easier to follow the Gnome HIG guidelines like that. 

I'm not sure this is a good example, we could just take this out right
now and only show the items in the New menu that are related to the
displayed component.  We could also easily not switch to Ctrl-N for the
default action of the current component if this is the right thing to
do.

> It is hard to design an interface to "do a million things and do them
> well."

Which is why we modularized things a bit more.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>
Novell, Inc.