Re: [Evolution] feedback on Evolution 2.8.1 from a Thunderbird user

[Srinivasa Ragavan <sragavan novell com>]

Hello Mark,

We are working on a shortcut editor for Evolution 2.12. It should solve
most of your issues.

Recently I posted the same WIP patch in the evolution list. I hope to
complete it fast.

Appreciate your patience and Thanks for using Evolution.

Thanks
Srini.

On Sat, 2007-03-24 at 08:32 -0400, Mark Stosberg wrote:
> Hello, 
>
> I've been having some performance problems with Thunderbird, so I
> thought I would give Evolution 2.8.1 a shot (on Ubuntu Edgy). 
>
> I'm most concerned about the reduced keyboard usability of Evolution, so
> I'll cover that first, and then provide miscellaneous feedback beyond
> that. 
>
> Although I had to install several extensions to accomplish it, I was
> able to make Thunderbird 1.5 rather keyboard-friendly. I'd like to know
> if there are Evolution shortcuts I'm missing to match the efficiency
> I've found with Thunderbird. 
>
> (An article about my Thunderbird setup is here:
> http://www.summersault.com/community/weblog/2006/07/20/five-power-tips-for-thunderbird.html )
>
> With TB, I can quickly label messages as Important, Work or Personal
> with 1, 2 and 3. It seems to the do the same in Evo, I would have to
> type: 
>
> Shift-F10-L-M, (Important) Shift-F10-L-W, (Work) Shift-F10-L-P
> (Personal)
>
> Ouch. I'm starting to investigate if the "Important" notation and the "Flag" 
> feature are better alternatives in Evo. 
>
> With the GmailUI extension, I can use just "y" to quickly file a
> message to a default archive folder, like Gmail. Evo seems to have no
> such concept or extension.  The closest I can come is "Control-Shift-V"
> for "Move". And then *only if the folder name has been exposed*, I can
> start typing "archive" to find the match. 
>
> This limitation of only searching visible folder names this way was
> especially frustrating when searching for the "evolution" news group.
> The search feature does not good unless you have already selected "comp"
> and then "gnome", at which point you've already found "evolution"!
>
> ( I did discover that Shift - Right arrow will open up one of the triangle folder widgets. )
>
> Likewise, with the Nostalgy extension, I can type "g" and then any
> unique part of a folder name to go there. In Evo, I first need to use F6
> to go the folder pane, which I need to keep exposed for only this
> reason. Then again, only if the folder is already visible (not
> collapsed), am I able to use type folder name to search for it. 
>
> Also, the missing ability to use an external editor is a huge blow to
> keyboard-centric users. This is especially sad since someone did the
> work to integrate vim with Evo three years ago:
> http://www.opensky.ca/~jdhildeb/software/gnome-vim/
> The best alternative in Evo seems to be copy/pasting back and forth, and
> using "Insert File" in some cases.
>
> One more keyboard detail: When viewing a newsgroup list, TB does the
> sensible thing with "Control-N" in this context and opens a compose
> window addressed to the list. In Evol, there's "Post New Message to
> Folder", but there's no keyboard shortcut for that, and the concept
> seems wrong. I don't want to post to the folder, I want to post to the
> group!
>
> I see I'm not the only person who had trouble figuring out this task:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-list/2007-February/msg00104.html
>
>
> With all the keyboard grumbling out of the way, I have some other
> feedback to share, including some positive things. :)
>
> - Well, so far I have definitely had better performance. The IMAP
> performance seems to beat the pants of Claws-Mail, at least for the
> initial load. I suspect this is because Evo is only loading folders "on
> demand", while Claws-Mail tried to load all subscribed folders at once,
> bogging down on some folders with thousands of messages in them.
>
> On the other hand, sometimes NNTP performance was worse, because Evo
> doesn't seem to have a limit to the number of messages downloaded like
> TB offers, so it bogged down on some bigger lists.  
>
> - Of course it's nice that Evo integrates very nicely with the Gnome
> desktop. I'm enjoying trying out the groupware integration features including
> "convert mail to task" and sending and accepting events by E-mail. I have
> an idea to work on a little gateway script that converts natural language event descriptions
> (like Google Calendar's quick adds), and converts them into a proper ICS attachments.
> In this way, you could quickly send a new event to Evolution from your cell phone!
>
> - Evo has a real, full-featured address book. I like the sync-with-Gaim feature.
>   However, I was hoping the photos from Gaim would show up when I received a message
>   from someone who had a Gaim photo. 
>
> - The plain test formatting toolbar through me off at first (I assumed
> it was for HTML), but I like the concept. However, I quickly ran into
> missing features that real text editors have, like "rewrap this
> paragraph". 
>
> - I appreciated that my labels and colors from TB were preserved. 
>
> - I like that encryption support came built-in. 
>
> Aside from the important keyboard efficiency issues, I'm generally
> impressed with the features and ease-of-use that Evolution offers.
>
>    Mark
>
>
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