Re: [Evolution] Comments on Evolution

[Dan Winship <danw helixcode com>]

> Is there a reason evolution dos not use a standard toolbar?

You mean the toolbar at the top or the shortcut bar on the side? The
toolbar at the top IS a standard toolbar. If you're referring to the
fact that you can't drag it out of the window like you can with a
normal toolbar, that's because there was a bug in gnome-libs/bonobo
interaction until recently that would make all of the icons disappear
when you dragged it out of the window. It wasn't until after we put
the snapshot out that I remembered that we were requiring a newer
gnome-libs version now. So it's fixed in CVS, but not the snapshot.

If you meant the shortcut bar, it's quite a bit different from a
toolbar, although many of its features aren't enabled currently,
because there was a major rewrite of the shell just before the preview
and it's not quite done yet. As for it not looking gnome-like, that
will be fixed (making it track the theme rather than always being
Outlook-colored, and making the icons prelight rather than having the
boxes around them).

> 2) TO button in compose window:
>
> Should this do something :o)  I know it's a pre-breakfast release but I
> kind of expected this to look up my contacts...  I bug on my system?

It doesn't do anything in the preview. (Long ago, it brought up a
contact manager mockup thingy, but that's gone now, and the real
contact manager integration hasn't started yet, although it will
soon.)

> I know, hack it in yourself :o)  but configurable headders, or a view
> header menu item might be useful.

Yup. Planning to do that. (With a right-click menu on the headers to
get "show all", and you ought to be able to configure additional
headers that you want to see all the time.)

> And while on the subject, I really like outlook 98/2000's staionary

Well, you'll notice that Evolution can correctly display
Outlook-generated messages with backgrounds and inline graphics and
such ("multipart/related" is the relevant technical phrase). Yes,
you'll be able to generate stuff like that eventually.

> I know many think HTML e-mail is the root of all evil

I think a lot of this hate comes from mailers that send HTML-only
mail. Evolution will always send either text/plain or
multipart/alternative (unless it somehow knows that the recipient
doesn't want the text/plain version).

> When will [vFolders] be working?  It would nice to see how all the stuff we
> have read will look and feel...

A month or so hopefully?

> AS many have said already, it's looking real good.  How long have you
> guys been woking on it? 3/4 months?  

Bertrand started Camel (the mail backend library) over a year ago now.
Miguel and Damon started working on the widgets last fall, I think,
and the rest of us joined in around December or later. (And of course,
the calendar is based on GnomeCal, which has been around for a while.)


Thanks for you comments/suggestions.

-- Dan