Re: [Evolution-hackers] Seeming lack of timely bug or feature request "fixes"...why?

[Carlos Gonzalez <carlos gonzalez shaw ca>]

Hi Jon, 


On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 10:17 -0500, William Jon McCann wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> You are attempting to draw conclusions from the number of open bugs 
> without considering all bugs.  Please see:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

I thought it might be something of the sort Jon.  Appreciate the heads
up on the possibility of my impression being way off based on skewed
analysis based on the bugs that are still in existence without taking
into account all the countless bugs and feature requests that have
probably been dealt with already.  

I meant no offense by the way in case anyone found my impression
offensive.  I was mostly asking so that others could help me see
differently.  

And from the standpoint of wondering how to approach making changes to
the code for my own use and that of potential business clients of mine.
Whether to participate in helping out or not based on my perception of
whether any changes would be well received or considered or not.  

> If you have a sincere desire to help, produce good quality code to fix a 
> problem.  We can never have enough people volunteering to be part of the 
> solution.

For sure Jon.  But on my end I am not so much interested in squashing
bugs as much as I am in changing the way Evolution works in some of it's
more quirky ways.  For I have settled on Evolution as my email client of
choice and will be with it for years to come. So it's worth it for me to
work on some changes.  

For example....

1. Get rid of the way the Send/Receive box takes over the screen and
does not allow one to do much of anything in Evolution until AFTER it
has finished.  Only way that I have found around this is to set
Evolution into automatic retrieval mode and then go off to do something
else on my computer.  But it would be better to get rid of the box
altogether and replace it with some kind of indicator on the status bar
unless user wishes otherwise.  

2.  Provide the means to be able to run a filter on a folder of emails
manually. Without having said filter execute on incoming emails or
outgoing emails only.  Right now there is no such mechanism and this is
quite handy, almost needful,  to have to accomodate those who don't want
all their email filtered until AFTER they have read it all out of their
inbox. 

3.  Revamp the way Evolution responds to key presses and otherwise on
the screen such that a user has a hard time telling what area of the
screen is in focus and what their key presses will affect.  For example
the blue highlight bar (under Gnome) is in the folder pane over a
folder.  The emails in that folder are being displayed in the message
pane (not the preview pane).  One presses "." to go to the first unread
message in the folder followed by the down arrow key to get to the next
one (which is intuitive).  What happens?  The highlight bar moves to the
next folder not the next message.  This is confusing and quirky.  It's
difficult to tell what pane will be affected by my keypresses.  

4. Change the little, itty bitty check boxes Enabling the checking of
email from the various accounts one has, to more standard check boxes
that are more seen to be that.  The one's that are there look like some
kind of decorative icon and are thus confusing.  I mean they look pretty
and all but for a regular user they are confusing since they don't look
like any checkboxes one normally sees in programs of any kind.  I mean
the check inside the box I should say.  Not the fact that there is a box
accepting a check.  

I could go on.....

Suffice it to say that each of these changes, while perhaps good overall
and not just beneficial to me personally, would require a lot of effort
not only to implement for myself alone but perhaps for everyone through
a more formal inclusion into the main code branch.  

I'm not sure I want to fight for these changes and take the time to so
fight for them if in the end such changes are going to be considered
invalid, of no use, or even frowned upon.  That is why I was asking
about the apparent lack of closure to some very old bugs and very old
feature requests.  Either in implementing such or definitively putting
them to rest by stating that they will not be worked on for this or that
logical reason.  All I see with most of the old one's left is that they
keep getting knocked to later or in the future.  They are never closed
if that makes sense.  

Again my apologies if my impressions are way off but please take into
account that I am feeling my way around all this for the first time with
Evolution.  

Thanks. 

Carlos 




> 
> Jon
> 
> Carlos Gonzalez wrote:
> > I was reading through a bunch of the bug and feature requests entered
> > into the Ximian bug database and was struck by how so many of them have
> > not had any resolution for years while being requested over and over
> > again.  
> > 
> > Is this because there are not enough people volunteering to fix bugs
> > and/or add features?  
> > 
> > Is this because of a philosophical lack of willingness to include some
> > of the feature requests (many of whom seem quite reasonable)?  
> > 
> > A little of both or maybe something else?  
> > 
> > I am just curious given that I am looking at starting to make some
> > changes in Evolution for my own use and that of my business clients and
> > want to work as much as possible with Evolution developers as opposed to
> > independent of them.  But I don't want to even bother helping out if
> > there is some sort of philosophical mind set against adding new features
> > or some such.  In the end I may just have to incorporate the features
> > that I and perhaps some of my clients might want in my own little "fork"
> > rather than waiting for something to make it into the main tree, so this
> > issue may be mute but I am mainly just curious as to why it seems to
> > take so long to act on a bug or a feature request.  
> > 
> > I suppose I should also take into account that I was only viewing those
> > things that were not resolved and that the context of seeing this
> > against the great numbers that may have been resolved already is
> > missing.  
> > 
> > Any insight on this would be appreciated.  
> > 
> > Thanks. 
> > 
> > Carlos 
> 
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