RE: [Evolution] "Why I hate Outlook"

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeffrey Stedfast [mailto:fejj stampede org]
> Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 7:59 PM
> To: John; evolution helixcode com
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] "Why I hate Outlook"
>
> Is there anything wrong witht he way Pine "guesses" the address?

If anybody can, check out Novell's Groupwise.  It's email address checking
algorithm is brilliant compared to the one that Outlook uses, and the
implementation is also nicer.  

> eg, you type: "fejj", hit return and pine replaces it with
> "fejj stampede org"
> or something very close to that

If fejj is in the address book as fejj stampede org, sure.  If stampede.org
is the domain/host portion of the sender's email address, sure, as long as
you can turn that feature off.  

> Now, obviously that's not perfect either - and I'd have to 
> play with Pine
> to get a better fel for what it does exactly
>
> but it's possible that fejj stampede org and fejj gnome org 
> might be in the
> contact manager, which should it choose?
> it could prompt, but I find prompts very annoying...

Ick, no prompts while I'm trying to type in email addresses, please.  

> what if, when it "saw" that there were more than 1 possibility for an
> expansion of an address, then perhaps it would do nothing
> this way, the user would have to type enough of it out to distinguish
> between any similar addresses.

That's how Outlook and Groupwise do it, seems to work fairly well.  It
shouldn't check only by the email address field in the address book, but
also by full name/nickname. 

> but then, perhaps this isn't a great idea either
>
> I suppose it could pick the first in the list (sorted in some 
> way, either
> by entry or more likely by alphabetical listing)
> which is kinda similar to the way gnupg is when you go to export a key

I don't like this way all that much, I'd rather it waited until it was
unique.  

> anyways, this obviously needs some thought  -the way I feel, 
> is the fewer
> popups, the better
>
> I'm also thinking that a user should have to hit enter in 
> order for the
> mailer to try and autocomplete the address, else it assumes 
> the user knows
> what he/she is doing and that the address specified is correct (unless
> later discovered not to be when it tries to send it - if no 
> @host.com, then
> it could autocomplete with whatever domain the system is on)

I would have it try to complete the address UNLESS the user hits enter, but
that should be configurable as well  (two radio buttons, one for "match
email address on enter" and the other for "match email address some other
time which I can't define".  If Evolution is going to be smart enough to
check email addy's automagically, then it should also be able to check them
on-demand.

As a side note, has anybody done anything on plain english to vfolder
translations?  I.E.  you tell Evolution "Put all messages from
nobody example com into the Jokes folder" and it filters incoming mail
automatically?  
        Greg

[snip]