Re: [Evolution] Advice

[Andrew Cowie <afcowie shadnet shad ca>]

On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, troy hakala wrote:

> [ A really well considered, insightful email]

Without wanting to start a flame war, I have put a fair bit of effort into
studying the dynamics of the software development process. Open Source
projects can be so responsive and dynamic, it's amazing. But they can also
suffer from the sort of myopia that Troy describes plaguing his former
co-workers.

I don't know of *anyone* in our office who likes using Outlook. Believe it
or not, even my hard core Sys Admins have started using Outlook. It really
leaves a lot to be desired as a mail client. But everyone uses it (in
conjunction with an Exchange Server) because it does a few things really
well:

* Invites to meetings

        People have talked about this a bit, but missed it's significance,
I feel. It is *brilliant* (hats off to Troy and his former colleagues) that
you can schedule a meeting, invite others, see their schedule, adjust the
timings if necessary, then save the appointment causing invites to be sent
in the process. The invitees can then accept or decline as they see fit.
And, (here's the crucial part) it all ends up in everyone's calendars.

        Then, I come along with my Palm, sync up, and Ta Da! I've got my
schedule, completely up to date - *** with those meetings that I've been
invited to.

        Where I'm going with this is two recommendations: first - efforts
to create this functionality with open standards (calendar et al) are
really important. But second (and this is burn-at-the-stake stuff) we
really need to come up with a way to make Evolution talk to Exchange -
not just getting mail via IMAP, but specifically to the calendaring
application and achieve the degree of integration between scheduling and
email that Outlook does so well.

        If we could do that, then I would be able to stay Unixen side at my
desktop (suiting my preferences) while interacting with a wider,
heterogeneous office environment (making all the normal people happy).

* Launching applications to view attachments. 

        I somewhat MS Word - not anything against MS, just I happen to
prefer be a long time Corel Guy. But I've got to admit that the way that
MSWin is able to seamlessly launch the right application to look at a
document someone sent you is really important. PDFs with product
literature, Spreadsheets containing sales quotes or engineering test
results, it is a tremendous boost not to have to save the application
somewhere and launch a new program to view it.

* HTML email

        I know. Everyone in the purist world hates it. I used to. But you
know what? It's quick, simple, easy to use, and :) I *like* using italics.
Evolution seems really far on the road here; that's one of the reasons I've
decided to line up behind you guys.

* Controllability

        This is what Outlook lacks so much - so few aspects of its
behavior aren't controllable. Open Source software can be very very good
at this - I'm not talking about skins, but just intelligently making many
options available. Something to work towards

        [personal pet peeve - Outlook will let me put '>' chars into a
reply, but doesn't let me 1) select the character and 2) doesn't let me put
the quoted text at the TOP of the reply instead of below it. Cut&Paste. Sigh]


As you go about guiding the development of evolution, I encourage you to
perhaps consider these things.

My $2.0 x 10^-45 ($0.02, adjusted for post internet crash deflation)

                Andrew

--
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Director of Operations
Upoc, Inc

afcowie upoc-inc com
mobile: +1-917-217-4578
http://www.upoc.com

"Order; counterorder; disorder"