Actually, in this case, what Mike describes isn't really the problem. It is
actually pretty hard to implement in dynamic database view like we have.
It's not too hard in the case where you thread the messages once, but to
keep the threading correct as messages are added/removed/modified is hard.
It's on our list of things to do but hasn't made it to the top yet because
we've always found more compelling things to do with that time.
If you find news reading totally unusable without date-sorted threads, all I
can do is recommend other news readers at this point.
Dan
On 1/8/01 4:08 AM, "Michael W. Wellman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I already use MT-Newswatcher, and it is very complete. I wouldn't need
>> MacSoup. I would have liked to switch my newsreading to Entourage so that I
>> use only one app for PIM, e-mail and newsreading, but that's not likely to
>> happen.
>
> I understand the desire.
>
>> I was told that it simply doesn't support threaded views with dates when I
>> asked someone from the Entourage list. I would like to think that it is not
>> necessarily difficult to implement such small functions, but hey, I'm not the
>> MS guy in charge of such decisions.
>
> There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little features that
> would are relatively simple to implement.
>
> The difficulty typically isn't in actually implementing them. The
> difficulty is in choosing those changes that most leverage your resources.
>
> If you're managing a product, you've got a near infinite number of feature
> requests, hundreds to thousands of bug reports, your own design agenda, your
> management's gripe list, and pet bugs and features of your developers.
>
>
> Out of this list, you'll typically attempt to address all the high priority
> bugs. That one is a no-brainer (although defining "high priority" is always
> an interesting dance).
>
> You'll give in to a minimal subset of your developer's pet changes (because
> if they lose interest, you lose staff...and without staff, there's no
> product).
>
> But these two categories have just consumed 50% of your available resources.
> So, given the time available, you have to start picking and choosing on the
> basis of what can be done by the oftentimes arbitrary date you've been
> handed.
>
> What changes *can be done* and will most expand your customer base or will
> most impact your current customer base? That's the primary question.
>
>
> As a programmer and a software designer and a software user, I want
> Entourage to be a messaging interface. Because to me, email and news and
> schedule reminders and task reminders are just messages. But, having
> written Internet software that was targeted at a similar market, I am fully
> aware that less than 10% of my paying users are actually using news.
>
> I'm also aware that those 10% of my customer base are often using other
> software that is way, way better at news than I can hope to be without
> substantial reworking of my news client. And I've only got enough time to
> tweak things for this next release...
>
> Of course, this means that new support becomes a Catch-22. The lack of
> effort is reflected in the software, the lack of support is clear to the
> clients, so you tend to do just enough to get by... News support enters a
> nebulous region where you never quite fix it but you never quite remove it.
> This is never enough to make the news client world class; there are *free*
> world class news client. And, what's the point of writing a world class
> news browser when there's no revenue attached to doing so? [Ironic that
> Microsoft and what little remains of Netscape (I *hate* Netscape) are
> partially sowing that which they reaped when they devastated the commercial
> TCP/IP marketplace by giving away Mail and Web software.]
>
> Anyway, my point is that news doesn't provide any marginal revenue. In
> fact, we used to have to do custom builds for many of our Fortune 500
> clients in which news was completely disabled. No marginal revenue, very
> little additional support.
>
> mikel
>
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