Re: [Evolution] User impressions about Evolution

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> > 1. I noticed that Evo is fast, really faster than MM on my 2200 Athlon
> > box; memory usage, OTOH, is much higher than I expected/remembered: is
> > it normal to reach 60Mb? why does it seem to increase with time?
> > Fortunately I have plenty of memory, but it was a mild shock noticing
> > that Evo starts a session with about 31-2 megs (in itself much more than
> > I remembered) and it might end up with almost 60 MB: is this related to
> > the amount of mails stored in the database?
>
> yes. you're complaining about 60 megabytes? that's nothing. the more
> mail you have, the more memory evolution uses. we do as much as we
> reasonably can to keep memory usage down such as using string pools,
> memory chunks, shared ref-counted objects, etc. If you know of a way to
> make it use less memory, feel free to tell us about this new trick :-)

Using vFolders on large mail folders can be a real hog, AFAIK...

 
> > 2. The UI is OK, or I'm getting used to it (waiting for Evo 2.0), but
> > there are some quirks: why can't I change accelerators/shortcuts as with
> > other GNOME apps?

Well, there is no way for the user to do it -- but you can change any
shortcut (and even quite a lot more) in the XML files that define them.
See /usr/share/evolution/1.4/ui/ for the files. I have mentioned this
with practical usages sometimes, so you even can find examples in the
archives.


> because the bonobo menu items don't allow it. only gtk menus allow it,
> and that was considered a bug. I don't think gtk2.0 allows this anymore.
> (Nope, it doesn't. Just checked :-)
>
> >  f.i. I just had the habit to press N to go to the next
> > unread message, with Evo it's a rather unintuitive ], and I have to
> > press two keys; so I'd like to change the shortcut, but it seems to be
> > impossible.
>
> just use , and . - only 1 key.

...or redefine them.


> > 4. Threads aren't displayed very well: messages that should belong to
> > the same thread are dispersed according to their date in many different
> > threads.
>
> huh? we thread according to in-reply-to and references headers. we don't
> thread based on date. this makes no sense.

Threading is perfect. I wrote more about this recently:
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution/2003-October/033108.html


> > 5. Another (minor) issue with threads: the grey/white line coloring is
> > great when order messages without threading, but is slightly confusing
> > when you use threads; it would be nice to differentiate between
> > differents threads alternating white for *all* messages that belong to a
> > thread, grey for all those that belong to the next one, and so on. Don't
> > know if the text widget allows this.

Well, you would like this, I would actually hate this. ;-)

> *shrug* might be a good idea. no one has ever suggested this before
> afaik, perhaps submit it as a feature request for the GAL::ETree widget.

Optional would be fine.


> > 6. One last note about threads (I promise :) : add a "Mark all as read
> > in thread" command, would be a real time saver.
>
> Edit->Select Thread
> Edit->Mark As Read

Ctrl-H Ctrl-K


> > 8. Import routines have their own quirks, for instance I had to import
> > manually all of my Mozilla folders because only Pine (?) was listed in
> > the "general" import dialog; and when importing Mozilla addressbooks, I
> > had to specify the format once or twice, because it wasn't recognized
> > automatically.

A hint on importing: If you have a folder, where you want to import mail
into, you even can use drag-n-drop. Drag the mbox file and drop it over
a mail folder. (This is actually a move operation, rather than copy.)


> > 9. Why is a HTML commands tool bar present in the mail composing window
> > even if I chose to not compose mails in HTML format?
>
> because it still has some tools that are useful even in plain text
> formatting.

Paragraph style Normal/Preformat is really useful, even when indent and
center text on your own. ;-)

...guenther


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0  ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}