On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 13:58 +0530, Sankar P wrote: > On Thu, 2007-11-15 at 07:22 +0000, Philip Withnall wrote: > > We currently have the other extreme: several different applications > > each > > have their own take on the address book (and then each have their own > > different ways of integrating/syncing it with e-d-s). Why not just > > have > > one desktop-wide address book (I'm thinking Soylent here), and have > > the > > mail application use that instead? This would give us the opportunity > > to > > swap out the address book application in favour of other things if > > necessary, such as an application which would use some web service as > > an > > address book. > > > I am not much aware of what Soylent is. So I cannot comment about using > that atm. However, evolution-data-server is the system-wide address-book > that will answer your needs. IIRC, eds exposes a dbus interface which > can be consumed by any of the desktop applications, say Contacts, > Gnome-calendar, OpenOffice, etc. Evolution-Addressbook (not eds) is just > another client for the evolution-data-server addressbook. Probably Ross > Burton can explain in more detail. My poor knowledge of e-d-s' architecture is showing here; I believed it stored everything, including e-mail, but apparently it only stores the address book, calendar and tasks. However, my point still applies in that e-d-s deals with too much, and so is wasteful if you're only using the address book. Even so, something's still wrong, as applications which use e-d-s for the address book still seem to be storing wrapper data themselves. Maybe that's just Pidgin being not-properly-integrated, though. Soylent[1] is a cool "people browser" application Travis Reitter's writing, and I think it would be a good way to centrally manage all your contacts, rather than managing e-mail addresses and other details in Evolution, IM details in Pidgin/Empathy, VoIP details in Ekiga, etc. > > > IMHO a better approach will be to make the user choose what > > components > > > he want to see in his Switcher. Say if someone wants to use only > > Mailer > > > and Address-book, do not bother showing the Calendar component in > > the > > > switcher. > > > > But that's effectively like turning the components into plugins, and > > then disabling some of them; it comes back to the problem that core > > functionality shouldn't be in plugins, and you might as well split off > > such plugins into separate applications. > > > > > Atleast for me, It will be far more useful than launching two or > > three > > > applications everyday morning (Mail/Calendar/Tasks) > > > > Isn't that what your startup programs list is for? :-P > > > Yeah. I should have made it a little elaborate. Everytime I (or any > corporate user) launches evolution, what I want to do with that is: > > -> Send/receive mails > > -> Accept/Decline/Schedule appointments > > -> Mark the tasks that I have completed, so my boss knows if it is worth > paying me for. > > > In addition to these basic activities sometimes I may be publishing my > calendar etc. > > All these activities adhere to the Communication aspect of an office > worker. And I do this atleast 4-5 times a day. Rest of the times I spend > on gnome-planner, OO, vi etc. So opening three applications for this > communication aspect, each time, may not be an appealing option. > > I do not say that it is bad/evil to split applications but IMHO it may > be a better idea to have Gnome applications aligned/coupled on the lines > user behaviors, bringing similar applications in a shell, but > very-loosely tied. In the same way how OO has a Spreadsheet, Doc-writer, > Presentation-tool. Just my 0.001 Paisa(1). though :) I wouldn't be against having some sort of wrapper for the various new applications akin to the current Evolution, as I see the need for that sort of thing. I suppose it would just be a thin application which embeds the others. Regards, Philip [1] http://live.gnome.org/Soylent > > > > Regards, > > Philip
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