I think this sounds like a really nice capability to have. Perhaps the vFolder concept could be extended to Contacts to provide something like this. Ximian?
Dan On Wed, 2001-10-24 at 08:24, scott carle wrote: > I used to use a contact manager that was shipped with an early version > of the Wordperfect office suite before corel bought them. I would still > be using it if it had only integrated email. I would even be tempted to > keep my contacts on a windows system still if they had integrated a > decent email program into it. It had what i consider the most innovative > interface i have every seen or used. It was addictive to use. > It allowed you to specify relationships between objects in the database > and keep track of them in a graphical manner, a very very simple and > easy to use graphical manner. > > what would happen is that there was a pane in the program that had a few > basic categories showing by default. it would look something like below > > +contacts > +work > +school > +projects > +scott carle (a basic category in which you were the category > +etc (basically any group or category you could think of you could > create. > > > if you clicked on the plus under scott carle it would look like this > > -contacts > +friends > +family > +work > +projects > > if you then clicked on family it would look something like this > > -contacts > +friends > -family > +jill > +john > +judy > +work > +projects > > and if you expanded the information on one of them it would show you > who/how/what they were related to. this worked for projects, business > contacts etc.... and if you double clicked on any name it pulled up > their contact info etc.. like their vcard type information. > > with this if i had forgotten someones name i had talked to a few weeks > ago or a year ago that worked for a particular company i could just > expand the link for that company and it would have a category for > employees.. and that person would show up as an employee..... or in > reverse if i wanted to know what company they worked for i could expand > their information on one of categories would be company and it would > show me name of company. > > Basically any object such as a person, organization, project, etc.. > could be created and then linked to any other object in the database > with a relationship which you could specify. and the GUI interface let > you follow the relationship links rather than having to know those > already to find someone. if i wanted to know my friends sisters husbands > brothers name all i had to do is follow the link from him to family > under which his sister would show up and then under her to family under > which her husbands name would show up and then under her husbands name > would be a family link that would show his brothers name. > > a search such as that would take about 3 seconds just clicking with a > mouse on the + signs next to the names and relationships. > > most likely i still have a copy of that program floating around if > anyone is interested in seeing it. if this type of feature is of > interest then you probably would want to see it so you could use it as a > pattern. It is hard to describe verbaly. > When i first saw it i thought it was the most intuitive and flexible > system for contact management that i had ever seen. Since corel bought > out wordperfect from borland it disapeared. they went to the corel > central product which sucked. and i ended up going to outlook which did > a good job of basic contact management and email and calandering. Now i > use Evolution. > > I think that if you could add in the ability to view and link > information in the contact database like this that you would go from a > killer app that is like outlook..... to a revolutionary product that is > the next generation of contact management. you wouldn't even need to > change the outlook like features and interface that you already have. > just add another window like the summary window that offers the ability > to follow relationships in it. > > Scott Carle > Carle Enterprises, Inc. > Carle Computer Consulting > Cell 843-995-0533 > > May we live life with open minds open source and open standards! > > > _______________________________________________ > evolution maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution _______________________________________________ evolution maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution
