[Evolution] Notes on nightly build (vs Outlook)

[Scott Dixon <scott metaphorics com>]

I've been looking for a replacement for Outlook which is one of the few
Windows applications that I use regularly.  So far, Evolution is coming
the closest and I just have a few suggestions, comments and problems
with the latest nightly build to pass along from that perspective.
I'm an "internet only" user of Outlook so I don't need the Exchange
integration but I do need:
1) Good handling of multiple POP accounts.  I find the "delete after n
days" and "delete when purged from Deleted folder" features of Outlook
to be very handy in automatically cleaning up the POP server accounts.  
2) Multiple identities, particularly for return address and outgoing
mail server settings.
3) Good handling of MIME attachments and HTML formatted mail.  Inline
viewing of simple attachments (images, vcards, text, etc).
4) Spell checking of outgoing mail.  I've tried to get gnome-spell
working but without success.
5) Pilot syncing.
6) Good email filtering and sorting/searching.

The latest nightly build is close enough to these requirments that I'm
now moving trying to use it routinely instead of Outlook.  There are a
few problems (like lack of #4 and #5 at least in the RPMS) in the
nightly builds but also a lot of progress from the .8 preview.  In
particular, it appears that the problem I was having in .8 with the
cursor not tracking the text in the compose window is now fixed (someone
else also mentioned this so they might want to try to nightly build).
This is a major improvement for me.  However, I can't get text selection
to work in the latest nightly build.  The text gets highlighted when you
swipe it with the mouse but the highlighting doesn't "stick" after you
let up the mouse button.  So I can't see how to edit text except with
the delete key.  Also, didn't there used to be a "select all" menu item
in composer?
Another problem I had with the nightly release which someone else also
mentioned is that at first I couldn't get the address book and calendar
components to work (they dumped core) which made it impossible to
compose email for example.  Turns out that there was a ORBIT update  on
Jan 14th (found in the Gnome updates rather than the Evolution updates).
This fixed the problem for me.  Since this problem was reported by
someone else ealier in the list, they might want to try the ORBIT update
as well.
As few features which would be nice:  
1)  I share the hope that there will be a "delete and move to next
message" function with a key shortcut.  I would prefer that Ctrl-D did
that by default.  In general, a couple of keys that make it possible to
do quick reading and deleting of email messages from the keyboard would
be great.  I find I do "n", space and Ctrl-D a lot but it would be nice
to have Ctrl-D move down, eliminating the need for "n".  Actually, it
would be even nicer to have Ctrl-D but just "d" so it was easier to type
(at least it would be a nice option). 
2)  I use the "add to junk mail senders list" feature of Outlook a lot
(sadly) and would find that (available as a right click menu item) to be
a great timesaver.  I can ge the same effect in Evolution, but with a
lot more mouse clicks.  Best thing would be a right click option to add
the sender to the junk mail rule (move to junk mail folder) and apply
that rule to the message all in one click.

As far as migration from Outlook is concerned (a topic which seems to
have been discussed a lot) here are my experiences:
1)  It would be nice to have Evolution be able to read Outlook (.pst)
files.  However, I found that a reasonable migration path (at least it
is working for me) is to get the free version of Eudora from Qualcomm
and use it to import the Outlook mail.  It doesn't seem possible to get
it to read anything but the detault outlook.pst file for a given user
but that is still not too bad.  Since Eudora stores email in essentially
an mbox format (there seems to be one extra From line at the start of
each message), moving the Eudora files over to Evolution seems to work
with slight massaging. 
2)  I don't think you can export the address file into a vcard file from
either Outlook or Eudora (except one address at a time which isn't too
practical).  I ended up syching my addresses into Gnome calendar and
then using the evolution-gnomecard-importer.  This worked (sort of).
After reading all the cards, it hung up and never finished.  I tried it
a number of times and it always hung.  It did end up importing names and
email addresses into evolution but didn't get most of the addresses or
phone numbers.  Still, it gave me a useable address book in evolution
for the time being.  I'll try again when the evolution pilot conduits
are working.   It would be nice to have a more direct way to get address
and calendar information from Outlook.
Thanks for a great tool in Evolution.  It is improving fast and I'm
looking forward to the release.
Scott