On Die , 2004-04-18 at 11:42 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote: > doesn't seem to bother the average user, if it did... there wouldn't be > Outlook or GroupWise or Lotus Notes or... a zillion other groupware > suites. There aren't a zillion other groupware suites. There are the few you listed, and maybe a couple other ones that are less-known. And yes, they would use them. They end up living with it, because that is what IT gives them. Home users don't typically use groupware suites. They use Outlook Express or something simple and direct. If an IT department deploys Exchange, then their users are most likely going to get Outlook. Similarly with Groupwise and Notes. > in fact, you seem to be the only one (or, at best, one of a handful) > bothered by this. And you seem to be only one of a handful that are bothered with the idea of actually splitting up the components into completely separate applications. :) > how hard is it, really, to say "I want to make an appointment. I need to > switch to calendar because obviously mail doesn't do that" It's not. But that isn't the point. > you're saying the average user can't handle that, yet you want to split > the applications which forces these users to have to know which > application does what? it's the same bloody decision. There's no reason to get angry dude. The same decision made through a different UI mechanism can often be easier to understand. > > it makes interfaces scary and bloated. > > ah, bloated. the most overused and least understood word used when > describing software. So what does it mean to you? Requiring full feature address book and calendar applications to be running, in order to press "Send/Recv" in your mail app, sounds like a good definition of bloat to me. > > i'm > > not sure why you can't understand this. > > I'm not sure why *you* can't understand this. I know you are, but what am I? Really. This is just ridiculous to do. > > the key to a > > good application is focus. > > there is focus. where is there not focus? how is there not focus? There is focus. But the focus is more spread out than concentrated. Which is, I believe, what he was trying to say. > > there's something to be > > said about an app that does ONE thing well, and > > strives only to do that one thing. > > ah, the good ol' "do one thing, and do it well" argument. the most > widely used and yet least understood statement used by non software > developers when trying to argue something. How can bloated and "do one thing, do it well" both be the most widely used and least understood of arguments in the software community? I am a software developer, and it's a damn good argument to use. :) > for a loose definition of "ONE", everything does ONE thing well and > strives to only do one thing. We try to do many things well. For loose definitions of one, one is equal to five. That's not a very good argument against doing one thing well. One is pretty well defined to be a single entity. > if we split out the mailer, for example, would it really only be doing > "ONE" thing? depends on how you define "ONE", obviously. It replies to > mail, it composes mail, it forwards mail, it filters mail, it fetches > mail, it sends mail, it displays mail, as well as numerous other things. > That's not one thing... so I guess by your definition each of these > functions should be a separate application too? :-) One thing is mail. Composer might be 0.01 of 1. So by definition, one can be comprised of a very large subset of smaller values. Since all of these things are "do something with/to mail", then "one" is "mail". So, 1 can be infinitely large for values of infinite that are in the range of 0 <= x <= 1. I say 0 can be equal to 1, since the binaries "true" and "false" succeed and fail and doing nothing. :) > > this doesn't mean > > this independent app can't fully integrate with other > > related applications (like a calendar or contacts > > program integrating with a mail app). > > if you completely split them, then yes, it would mean that. No it doesn't. Seriously. Stop that. The fact that GNOME works at all, directly disproves your argument that we can't integrate by having things in separate apps. The entire point of evolution-data-server is to allow some integration like this. Of course, it doesn't allow the full spectrum of possibilities, since it is not entirely separate yet, and doesn't do anything GUI-related. > > , and there should be > > several evolution-pim scripts installed by default as > > evolution-contacts, evolution-calendar, and > > evolution-mail. > > no, if a distributor wanted this, then they could make separate menu > entries - one to launch each of the components. that would be the proper > way to do it, not writing shell scripts. average users don't use the > command-line. If a distributor wants this, they can install evolution, because it will have separate menu entries to start the different components. There's no need to make them do extra things to get this very simple functionality that we practically already provide. We already do this in XD2 anyway. -- dobey
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