Hi,
I just read this article and would like to comment on the individual
ideas. Some of them are pretty good. Others are OK, but have some
simple flaws. I'll take their ideas in order, as they come. :)
1) Floating PIM Pane
This is something we definately need. It shouldn't really be
"in" the application, per se, so much as a separate tiny desktop
app, itself. Something more akin to Konfabulator/Karamba would
be great. It would be a quick easy way to see what appointments
and tasks you have for the day, as well as perhaps a quick
summary of the amount of mail you have in selected folders. Or
perhaps this could also be integrated as a module for GKrellm.
2) Split-view Message List
Not sure why they say "in-box" here. Inbox is the correct english, and
is a special folder, so unless you are dealing with
multiple IMAP accounts that aren't just converged into the same
"Inbox", such as Mail.app on OSX does things. This would
probably be a good thing for Evoluton to do as well, and would
simplify the UI a whole lot. Adding multiple trees for e-mail
folders at the top of the UI would not be hard to do, but could
be rather ueseless without the new-style Outlook list widget.
3) Built-in Instant Messaging
This really doesn't belong in a groupware client. The proper
thing to do, would be to provide the necessary integration with
an external IM client. Or, more preferrably, have a standard way
of doing the integration so that any external IM client could be
integrated. Shoving more crap in an already large and bulky UI
is typically a surefire way to scare people off. Though, most of
the things that are talked about here, could be done with an
external app for IM. I'm surprised that Video Conferencing isn't
mentioned here. It seems like something that would be very
useful, and should be integrated as well... For what it's worth,
I'm working on an IM client, specifically designed for total
integration with Evolution, as well as working with the
GnomeMeeting hackers to integrate with it, and to integrate it
with some of the functionality in Evolution.
4) Calendar-linked Auto-reply
This sounds really neat. I would love to see something like this
go into Evolution. It probably wouldn't be very hard to do,
either, especially with the calendar abstraction and nice
filters.
5) Integrated PGP Encryption
Evolution already does most of what is mentioned here. What we
really need is to integrate key management into the addressbook,
and maybe integrate some of the existing stuff a little better.
This would make it pretty easy to manage keychains and encrypt
and decrypt mail quickly and with the right keys.
6) Spam Auto-reporting
Evolution can be integrated very easily with spamassassin which
can do pretty much everything listed here. The only place where
an issue of integration stands, is with providing a nice UI to
do the Bayesian classification, and manual spam reporting, as
well as white/black-listing addresses and things. Though I would
love to see us get some UI in for this, with a backend
abstraction, to allow those people who want to use bogofilter or
something else, for their filtering. It would not be that hard
to do, either.
7) Mouseover Contact Information
Adding the ability to pop up a tooltip with basic information
from a VCard, when the mouse is over an address in the "Sender"
column is pretty simple. Extending on what was said in the
article, we could pull a VCard attachment from the mail, if the
person is not in your addressbook, and the mail has a vcard
attachment.
8) Smart E-Mail Notification
This is something that I hope I can do some things for, for the
2.0 release of Evolution. The ideas in this article, are
something that would be easy to do. The "Important" thing,
depends on the mailer getting support for priority flag headers,
though. Hopefully, I can get an external app to handle this,
written pretty soon.
9) All-powerful Right-clicking
Evolution already does pretty much all of this. Evolution also
has VFolders, which doesn't actually move the mail, so the
menus are more bulky than typical. Even without the VFolders,
the context menus are still pretty large. I think it a better
idea to work on simplifying the UI as much as possible. The
context menus can still be powerful, even without as much stuff
in them.
10) Easy-access Message Templates
The e-mail templates in Evolution currently are only available
for HTML e-mail, and you can't add your own, IIRC. Solving these
issues, adding the ability to do the stuff mentionend here,
would be pretty easy.
Bonus) P2P Document Sharing
This is probably done better with some combination/integration
method with Rendezvous, MultiSync, and possible one of the open
p2p protocols.
-- dobey
On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 15:55, Chris Woodruff wrote:
> I am new to the Evolution Hackers group and have been quietly reading all
> the posts for the last couple of months. In this time I have been trying to
> find time to ramp up on Evolution development and standards. I had this
> link saved from a while ago and thought it might have a few good points on
> the perfect email/PIM client. Hope it helps. I am also hoping to find a
> place in this project soon. If anyone has any suggestions drop me an email.
>
> http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-5020956-1.html?legacy=cnet
>
> Chris Woodruff
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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