[Evolution] UI choices

[Andrew Cowie <andrew operationaldynamics com au>]

On Tue, 2003-02-11 at 05:24, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> it only ever makes sense to put the cursor at the bottom if you wanted
> to FORCE people into replying YOUR way (which not everyone agrees with)
> and if the only type of reply anyone EVER wanted to do was a summary
> reply to the whole message (which is clearly not the case).

Uh guys, rather than arguing about the correct way to do it, why not
follow your thought to its logical conclusion?

SOME people want it one way. SOME OTHER people want it a different way.
So add the power to the interface to choose between them. 

Flexibility is, after all, the hall mark of the Open world, and opposed
to the "though shalt only do it this proscribed way" which is what
pisses so many of us off about Outlook and friends. Outlook is great
software, but you can't *control* it! Please don't make Evolution like
that.

I realize one doesn't just magically whip up a piece of UI. I also
realize that any feature wouldn't be implemented for a long time (I know
how release cycles work). But it WAS a valid feature request (even if
the poster cited a bogus RFC claiming it's necessity). Someone wants it,
there are two valid behaviours, and no good reason to choose between
them.

Don't want to confuse novice users with additional configuration
options? [Yes, I know GNOME is trying VERY hard to make things simple]
Then pick an intelligent default but create an "advanced" mode or some
such where such options can be tweaked?

The power under the hood is what brought so many of us to Unix; if we
can't control it, make it do what we want, then what's the point? We all
just accept that such control is not offered in the Windows world; but
to most users who have been around a while, the power of Unix is in it's
ability to be configured to our tastes. Open Source gives us the ability
to work with the code, yes, but we all know that hacking a particular
project is beyond most people [Evolution is, after all, the hardest
thing EVER to build :)]

Unix is about letting people make choices. I should like to encourage
the Evolution developers to give choices to their users whenever
possible.

Not a rant, just a feature request ;)

        Andrew

-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie
Operational Dynamics Consulting Pty Ltd

Australia +61 4 1079 6725  North America +1 646 270 5376

andrew operationaldynamics com au