Re: [Evolution-hackers] PIM application suite

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

On Mon, 2004-04-19 at 22:55, William Jon McCann wrote:
> JP Rosevear wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 17:08 -0700, Tristan O'Tierney wrote:
> > 
> >>i envision splitting it up into apps that are well
> >>defined
> >>an addressbook, mail app, and calendar app.
> > 
> > Well, this is kind of whats happened.  I mean the mailer, addressbook,
> > calendar all have their own separate code bases in the source tree but
> > share common things like some widgets, configuration code, etc.  In
> > reality I could write a trivial hack that shows only one component at a
> > time (just remove the component buttons and have the New button only use
> > the items for the current component).  Then just evolution-1.5 -c "mail"
> > or whatever to get the correct component.  Nothing else would have to
> > change afaik.
> 
> I think that the current design is very good in that it makes this quite 
> easy to do.  In addition to the changes you list it would probably be 
> good to also change:
> 
>   - window title and icon
>   - help files to be component specific
>   - about box to be component specific

nah, that would be silly I think.

>   - settings dialog (should only bring up settings for that component)

this is the way things originally worked, and it turned out to be a bad
idea. for example, what if I delete all my mail folders? now how do I
get to the mailer settings? :-)

>   - remove Send/Receive for contacts, tasks, and calendar (does it do 
> anything?  If it does, I have no idea what.)

yea, I'd be ok with this.

>   - remove "work offline" from non-mail components?  Shouldn't this just 
> work?  Always caching locally when possible?

couple comments on this last item:

1. "work offline" might actually apply to addressbook/calendar
components as well. or, if it doesn't yet, it probably should be done at
some point for things like LDAP and remote calendaring, etc - so this
needs to be accessible from all the components I think.

2. the main reason for "work offline" is not only to finish syncing
stuff (which in 1.5 I think continuously syncs or something...or at
least it was something we were going to try for?), but to also tell the
components that they are in offline mode such that they didn't keep
trying to reach remote hosts and knew to use limit their functionality
to only the locally cached items, keep journals, etc.

on systems like Windows, this isn;t necessary because the system has a
global "went offline"/"went online" event. with any luck, someday down
the line Linux will have a similar mechanism - perhaps with the work
that Robert Love and Joe Shaw are working on? (kernel messages that
userspace apps can listen for, etc).

Jeff