On Jul 14, 2006, at 3:37 PM, Ted Leung wrote:
The short run is the harder problem.
The question I'm asking: Is there a bare bones feature set that
would allow early adopters to use Chandler as an email client?
What is that feature set?
Ok, so after yesterday's discussion, I started to think about
exactly what the feature set would be for me. When I "came in"
this morning, I watched all the operations that I did as I
processed all three of my IMAP accounts.
Here are the actions that I actually did:
* view messages by thread
* delete a message
* select a message and execute an Applescript/zsh script suite to
kill comment spam postings off my blog - I think we can safely call
this an outlier feature
* select messages and use Mail Act-On! to execute an applescript
that examines each message and files it correctly by looking at
combinations of the mail headers - call this "filing"
* click on a URL embedded in a browser
* mark some read messages as unread for later re-processing - give
me a triage based workflow for this
* reply to messages, including editing the to/cc lines because our
default list reply to is wrong, i did work on several replies
simultaneously.
* send new e-mail messages (to remembered previous recipients)
That's it.
There are a few more actions which I do less frequently, which I
didn't do this morning:
* paste text from the clipboard into a composition/reply window
* verify/decrypt a PGP signed/encrypted message. Bear and Heikki,
I blame you... - consider this one very optional
* search for a particular message
* look at the raw source of a message - as a way of doing an
antiphishing check before deleting
* work offline
* send again
* download an attachment
* attach a file via a standard file dialog (I don't do drag and
drop attachments)
Things I don't do:
* compose HTML mail
I think this is an important point. I don't know too many people who
compose HTML email, but.. and this is a big one.. most of need to be
able to read HTML email.
We've asked this question before, and the general answer was that
email clients have to be quite good before people will switch. The
reason I'm bringing it up again is that Philippe had made noises
about being willing to use Chandler as an email client even if it
had few features and paled in comparison to other existing email
clients. We certainly couldn't rely on all users being willing to
do this, hence the "bridging the gap" thread.
For the work that I am doing, being able to triage and effectively
organize my mail would be a big enough gain to compensate for the
loss of "full featuredness". I know that I am not everyone, but I
am saying that my information management problems are pressing
enough that I would be willing to try before we could match
Mail.app or Thunderbird on feature checklist scorecard.
Yeah, I think stamping and triage in exchange for giving up composing
HTML email is a trade-off I would make in a second! :)
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