[Evolution] Some more ideas.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel helixcode com>]

These are some snipets from a mail I sent to the Evolution hackers at
Helix Code recently:

>         vFolders.  
>
>                 You guys know what this is.
>
>                 Even if we have vFolders now, they are still hard to
>                 define and use.  I realize this is my fault, as I told
>                 Michael "Lets begin by using the Outlook interface".
>                 It needs some polishing, but I still feel like this
>                 interface goes trough a too lengthy process.
>
>                 We need to think a lot about this, and make these
>                 vFolders accessible everywhere, and we have to make
>                 sure that after a day or a week of Evolution use,
>                 people are actually using vFolders.  
>
>                 We do not want vFolders to be some obscure feature
>                 nobody understands.  Lets think about innovative ways
>                 of creating vFolders on the flight.  A few ideas
>                 follow:
>
>                         1. A menu item that says `Display all messages
>                            from...'.  An input box would then create
>                            the vFolder.
>
>                         2. Maybe a graphical "template" system in
>                            which the user is presented with a set of
>                            choices that he just needs to fill in.
>
>                         3. A search dialog box that creates the
>                            vFolder on the flight.  User fills the
>                            dialog with values, clicks ok, creates a
>                            new vFolder.
>
>                         4. 
>
>         Default set of vFolders.
>
>                 We need to ship with a set of "useful" default
>                 vFolders in the system that people can start using
>                 right away without having to define any rule or
>                 anything like that.  They should just be quick
>                 vFolders. 
>
>         Model/View split.
>
>                 As far as I know, it seems like we are about the only
>                 communications system that uses a model/view split for
>                 most of its data (mail being the major exception, and
>                 smart approaches for handling this are always
>                 welcome).
>
>                 This split is particularly useful for having multiple
>                 "viewers" of the same data: A GNOME interface, a web
>                 interface and a Pilot interface.
>
>                 Not only this, but it also fits nicely into Helix's
>                 long term business model of providing services to
>                 people (more about this on Nat's updated business
>                 plan mail).
>
>         Scoring
>
>                 This feature is present in Gnus and various other
>                 mailers.  Lets make this feature graphical, lets make
>                 this user intuitive, easy to use.  
>
>                 Like the Tivo.
>
>                 The Tivo has two buttons: thumbs up and thumbs down.
>                 we can have a similar mechanism that is simple to
>                 grasp and can be used to read your mail.
>
>                 Using scoring plus ETable grouping, and ETable sorting
>                 would allow us to quickly see relevant mail.  This
>                 plus a vFolder can be used to provide a "Day at a
>                 Glance" display on the "Executive Summary" of the day
>                 display.
>
>                 We can make Evolution more and more inteligent and
>                 adapt to the needs of people more and more. 
>
>         Scalability
>
>                 Everyone is very impressed with the results of
>                 Evolution's scalability.  I am not sure anyone was
>                 expecting Evolution to be able to load the kind of
>                 mailboxes people have thrown at it.
>
>                 Even yet, I have seen Jacob use Evolution a few times
>                 just to grep for important mail on his own Inbox
>                 because searching is so fast.  
>
>                 I believe he is the first real user of Evolution I
>                 have seen.
>
>                 Kudos go to Dan and Michael who have made this
>                 possible. 
>
>         User Interface.
>
>                 One of our goals with Evolution is raising the bar for
>                 Unix GUI applications.  It should become the
>                 "at-least-your-app-has-to-be-this-good-to-be-considered-a-real-app"
>                 in Unix.
>
>                 I agree, many ideas right now are taken from Outlook,
>                 and this will slowly change as the product matures.
>
>                 Right now we are far from a usable system.  Lets get
>                 the system up and running and usable, and I will not
>                 have any objections for playing with the user
>                 interface, and changing it and morphing it as much as
>                 you guys want until it fills your hearths with a warm
>                 feeling. 
>
>                 Lets just get this application up and running for
>                 people first, and get the foundation up.  
>
>         Ease of use.
>
>                 As I mentioned last night, I am now convinced that we
>                 need to have and acknowledge a "user level" setting in
>                 Evolution.
>
>                 This would enable some features to be hidden, or made
>                 simpler, or simpler dialogs to be shown when the user
>                 level is low, and more advanced features to be made
>                 available to the user when the user level is set to
>                 "hacker".
>
>                 I believe we can achieve a beautiful desktop
>                 integration by using GConf (and of course, we will
>                 sync with the Eazel people and the GNOME hackers to
>                 use the same setting for all the apps on GNOME).

Miguel.