Re: Evolution discussion

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico helixcode com>]

D-Man <dsh8290 rit edu> writes:

> I was wondering about the design of evolution.  IMHO it is better to
> have separate programs handling the separate responsibilities of
> e-mail, addresses, and a calendar.  I would like to know why
> Evolution is instead following the Microsoft example of making a
> large complicated program that is supposed to do everything.

Evolution is not a single monolithic program; it is actually composed
of many reasonably small components that work together.  To the
untrained eye they look like a single application, but to the
discerning connoisseur, they are independent little beasts.

The main components are these:

	Shell - The main GUI wrapper that integrates everything
	together.

	Mail - GUI and backend for the mail.  They may be split at
	some point, but it is not clear what the right architecture is
	to do this.

	Calendar GUI - A bunch of views for the calendar data.

	Addressbook GUI - A bunch of views for the addressbook data.

	Calendar backend - Data repository for the calendar.

	Addressbook backend - Data respository for the addressbook.

Some of these, like the calendar GUI, expose several Bonobo controls
to be embedded anywhere you like.  Others, like the addressbook and
calendar backends, are combined into a single process that runs as the
Wombat daemon.

So you can take the individual components and use them without the
rest of Evolution.

For example, the Pilot conduits run as separate components and just
contact the calendar and addressbook data models in the Wombat,
without ever launching or touching the GUI.

  Federico