Re: [Evolution] Any suggested workarounds for yet one more interface quirk?

[Evolution List <carlos gonzalez shaw ca>]

Hi Pete, 

> ...(Evolution) It is designed to be used with a mouse & little pointy
> arrow.  

Yes I can tell :).  

> I would be quite disappointed if the developers spent vast
> amounts of time on trying to shoe-horn in keyboard functionality into
> the interface design that, to be honest, 99% of the users will not use.

Well that depends Pete.  99% of the users I know in Linux like to use
the keyboard as much as possible without having to constantly resort to
the mouse.  It's more efficient that way once you get used to how to
work with an application using the keyboard.  

> I have no problem with there being such functionality, nor with people
> using it, but I just don't think it should be a major design feature.

I can understand that.  I guess it depends on who the target market is.
Given that Evolution is purportedly a Microsoft Outlook replacement I
can see why the powers that be would want to make it mostly mouse
dependent.  I've never really used Outlook but I am guessing that it too
is very mouse centric.  

As a side note I just can't believe it would be that hard to revamp the
way Evolution handles the UI to be less mouse centric (while still
retaining mouse centricness for those that want to work with it that
way).  I mean it is my impression that not everyone involved with KMail
is a computer programmer by trade yet that applications UI is much
better than Evolutions I think.  It's not perfect mind you but to me
it's much more intuitive.  Surely Novell and what I perceive to be the
more professional class of developer working on Evolution could do
better than KMail with respect to the UI and it's use of hotkeys?  

> A lot of your gripes are to do with Evo not mimicking the way you are
> used to doing things.  

True enough.  But I would go a step farther Pete in saying that some of
the ways I have been used to doing things are just better.  Not because
of me and how I like to work in particular but more because the
applications that I have used, that do things differently, are just
better at their UI I think.  

> Perhaps, instead of wanting Evo to be the same as
> some other package, you investigate the new and innovative things that
> Evo can give you - for instance vfolders that I see you have been
> pointed in the direction of - then perhaps you can see how Evo can be
> more efficient.

Well I must admit that now that I have started using a VFolder to see my
unread email without needing to mouse click anywhere to see them and
without needing to drag the scroll bar anywhere and now that I have the
Backspace and Space key scrolling to look through the content of a
message, my efficiency in using Evo and my enjoyment of it is growing by
leaps and bounds :).  

I see these as work arounds though Pete.  For quirky and dysfunctional
ways in which the Evolution UI is set up.  One should be able to read
unread email in any folder easily without extraneous key pressing or
scroll bar gymnastics.  One should be able to traverse the content of an
email more intuitively with keys like Ctrl-downarrow and Ctrl-uparrow
instead of using Backspace and Space (which I don't consider to be very
intuitive).  One should be able to tell where the focus is at any
particular point in time without ambiguity.  

If you sat fresh users down in front of Evolution, having never used the
program before, and coming from Eudora or KMail for instance, I bet they
would get rather frustrated with the UI.  At first.  Just as I have
been.  And for good reason I think. 

The best thing of all I think would be if Evolution allowed one to
change keyboard mappings to suit what they thought was best.  It's
really nifty in some Gnome applications to be able to change the hotkeys
by selecting a menu item and just pressing whatever keys you want to use
for that menu action.  It's a GTK+ thing I think.  I guess that is one
area where Evolution has not yet integrated with Gnome in.  Perhaps in a
future version.....

At least I now have effective work arounds for the quirks that I have
found to be very frustrating and for that I have suggestions from list
members to thank for :).  

I was getting so frustrated with Evolutions UI that I was either ready
to dive in and write patches for the code to change it or to dump
Evolution entirely and go back to using KMail.  I think I will stick
with it at this point. Perhaps I will still write patches too if I can
ever find the time and if changing UI sections of the code does not
prove too difficult to do :).  

Carlos