Re: [Evolution-hackers] functional specification for list view

[Tim Lee <tim ximian com>]

Hi Ettore,

A few more thoughts.

-- Tim
On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 16:33, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 20:14, Tim Lee wrote:
> > Where you thinking at all of adding tasks to this view based on their
> > due date?
> 
> Hmm, that's an interesting idea...  However we are already showing the
> tasks in the same view, on the right of the calendar, so it sounds like
> it might be a bit too much.
> 
Would we be keeping the side calendar and task list in this view? I'm
not sure that the side calendar would serve much purpose. The three main
functions of the side calendar that I'm aware of don't seem very
applicable to a list view:

1. Navigate to a date in the day view. 
- I'm not sure what would this mean in a list view, especially if you
had the list sorted by something other than date. Highlight events
occurring on that date?

2. Select dates to display in multi-day view. 
- To implement this for the list view it seems to me that the result
would be similar to my suggestion to filter events by the dates they
occur on.

3. Show what dates you have events on.
- Still useful I guess, but seems redundant since we're already
displaying all of the events anyway.

With a six column, and potentially 10+ column, view I'm not sure the
side calendars are worth the loss of screen real estate. Though I
suppose you could always resize the list panel to obscure the side
calendars. An other consideration, would leaving off the side calendars
simplify the implementation?

> > I agree that grouping would make this view much more useful. I think a
> > list does not lend itself to showing time relationships well. Being able
> > to group events by the day, week or month they occur in would help.
>
> That sounds a bit complicated to implement...  I think we can leave this
> to after 2.0, although it does sound like a good idea.
> 
Too bad, why would it be so hard? We already have the "By Company" view
in the address book. 

> > Would a meeting's status ( tentative vs. accepted vs. canceled ) be
> > displayed.
> 
> I guess we could have a column for this, and handle it the GalView way.
> 
> > Would all day events be differentiated from "normal" events? Would they
> > start at midnight?
> 
> This I don't know, what does Outlook do?
I don't know, does Outlook have a list view for calendars? Outlook 2002
treats them just the same as Evolution, displays them in a header above
the times in the day view.

> 
> > Will people be allowed to add new events in this view? 
> 
> Yes, the "new" button would still work normally.  Although, I don't
> think we can have a "click here to add" interface since this is supposed
> to be a read-only list...
Have we decided how we are going to handle new events when the view has
multiple calendars displayed? Will the event just always go into the
default calendar?

> 
> > Will there be a way of showing meetings with conflicting/overlapping
> > times? I think this will be necessary if people are going to be able to
> > edit event times in the view.
> 
> The main purpose of this list is to simplify searches.  People can still
> use the normal view to check for overlapping things.
I was thinking that one advantage of being able to see all of your
events in one view would be the ability to quickly find any conflicts.

> 
> (Anna, this reminds me: I think you have to specify in the spec that the
> same item needs to be kept selected when you switch views.)
> 
> > Under other columns I would add a meeting organizer column.
> 
> Probably not a bad idea, and it should come for free...?
> 
> > I think it might be useful to provide a means of filtering/viewing the
> > list by date/time. The simplest would be to filter events occurring
> > between two dates. For example only display events that occur on M-F
> > this week. Though more sophisticated filters might be useful ( events
> > ending after 5:00 PM, starting before 10:00 AM on Mondays, etc. ). 
> 
> I don't know, this might need further UI work...  I think we should keep
> it simple for now though.
> 
That's too bad I think the real strength of a calendar list view would
the ability to manipulate the view of one's events in ways that the
day/week/etc. paradigm doesn't really allow.

> Actually this reminds me of another question.  How does the side
> calendar interact with the list view?
> 
> It should probably:
> 
>       * Not show any day selected when the view is in "list" mode.
> 
>       * Switch to day/week/etc. view when a day/week/etc. gets selected
>         in the calendar.
see my notes above. I'm not sure that changing the view is the behavior
that I would expect when selecting a date in the side calendars. Also we
already have buttons in the tool bar to change views.

Speaking of which I think if an event is selected in the list view when
one of the view button in the tool bar is pressed, then I think the view
should open to the day/week/etc. that contains that appointment. 

Not sure how Evolution should behave if multiple events are selected in
this case. Which brings up an other point, will we allow multiple events
to be selected in the list view? The current calendar views do not allow
multiple events to be selected as far as I can tell. 

> 
> Something like this should be added to the spec.
> 
> > Would events that have their time shown as Free vs. Busy be
> > differentiated?
> 
> This could be another custom column I guess.
> 
> > Would the fields in the preview pane be editable? That might be a nice
> > feature, but how difficult would it be to implement?
> 
> We are not planning to make any of the fields in the preview panes
> editable.  Maybe we should have an "edit" button in the preview pane as
> well?
>
> -- Ettore