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GNOME GUI

Preview Helix Code's "Evolution" 204

Posted by Hemos from the getting-it-rolled-out dept.
sigsegv writes: "The first preview tarball of Evolution is out on the Gnome FTP site. Pretty slick looking for those attached to gui e-mail clients. Personally, I still prefer mutt, but I know a few people very eager to see this. =8] "
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Preview Helix Code's "Evolution" More

Preview Helix Code's "Evolution"

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  • Re:Cool... (Score:3)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:26PM (#1077465) Homepage
    Please note that the unreleased libraries have nothing to do with Gtk+. The unreleased libraries are new components that have never been used before by any applications outside the CVS.


    The Bonobo component architecture is probably the exception to the above statement, but what you are looking at is a pretty advanced application making use of the most advanced components available for GNOME programmers, and that are stabilizing at an amazing pace.


    Miguel

  • Umm, the webpage text is a bit alpha too :)
    Gotta revise that when I finish this sawmill theme..

    /tig
  • Scriptable?? WHY? why does anyone need a scripting language in an Email/contact system?? The ONLY use for a scripting language in an email client is to spread virii or trojan horses. I really hope they remove all scripting capability, and make it impossible to run an executable from inside the email. make them download it to their userspace and then open it. that way they have to use some effort.

    I also hope that if they have to put this stupid function in they default it OFF in all installations.

    Please evolution guys/gals... make it secure, learn from microsoft's mistakes.
  • You haven't looked at the Evolution screen shots, have you? From a UI point of view, it's a direct rip off of Outlook.

    (Not that that's a bad thing - i'll be downloading Evolution tonight when I get home. I'm well impressed with Helix-Gnome (and the bulk updates that were made available yesterday)).

    ...j
  • Well, forgive (and correct) me if I'm wrong, but didn't Microsoft steal [some of] it's GUI [basics] from Apple? (It seems I've heard this many times before.) If so, then that is a more directed evolution that we shouldn't feel so bad about, because, hey, it's Apple and they're not Microsoft! (Sorry.. just had to do it)

    Getting to my point, I was thinking that, assuming Microsoft stole/"borrowed" their GUI stuffs from Apple, and since it evolved into what it is now (i.e., the little folder icons, icons in general, etc., etc.) the GNOME folks are following in that evolutionary trend by designing something similar to what people are already used to - though I will admit that the point can be made that not everybody uses Outlook nor will everybody ever. I, for one, don't use Outlook - nor do I wish to. But I can see, on one hand, how this seems to be a logical sort of progression, but on the other hand, I can see how it isn't, because I figure that it's silly to presume that everybody likes/would like the look of Outlook and would want a nice open source alternative to Outlook, which is what this looks like. I guess it's just one of those executive decisions you've got to make when designing a product, and considering the fact that I don't know what variables they had to weigh, I don't know how much of an only choice they may have had... or maybe they just had an of softie for Microsoft on their staff...heh. (just kidding)

  • Re:Gee, this looks familiar (Score:5)

    by laertes ( 4218 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @06:24PM (#1077470) Homepage

    I hate to be a downer for you, but Open Source is not the answer to every question. Many open source programs are solutions to problems no one but the developer would care to see a solution for, but reading email is something everyone and their mother wants to do. My point: Microsoft can design better user interfaces, Open Source can implement them better.

    Now I realise that is a lot to swallow, but I do have an argument to back that up. In essence, programmers in general, Open Source hackers in particular, make bad user interface designers (I know, I'm a good coder, and only a mediocre user interface designer). People who make good user interfaces are called user interface designers, people who write GUI code are user interface implementors. They can be the same people, but those people are doing two fundamentally different tasks. The one task (programming) involves studying data, processes, the user interface specification of the user interface designers and understanding, then creating an implementation that balances all of those aspects. The other task involves studying users, studying the task, and specifying a user interface. The point is, Open Source works primarily because programmers enjoy programming. Hackers may may have a day job where they get paid for programming, but hackers see it not as a means to an end (ie. a paycheck) but as something they like doing, and are lucky enough to get paid for. User interface designers are like engineers, they do it because it's their job, and no one else wants to do it.

    How do good comercial graphical user interfaces get designed and implemented? An insightful software development manager hires or directs a user interface designer to create a user interface, and the programmers write the code. How does open source software get "designed?" People who just enjoy coding get down and write it, for the joy of the job. Notice that the Open Source model has no room for usability testing, or quality assurance. Both of these happen to a small degree, but usability needs to exist from the initial stages. The only way really user friendly software gets written is by creating a design, then writing code which continuously improves from a mere approximation of the design to something that fully captures it.

    To wrap things up: I think it is a extremely reasonable position for the GNOME developers to take. Borowing GUI designs is legal, and lets the GNOME hackers do what they are good at. I think more software could stand to be written this way: a user interface is originally designed and implemented by some company. They make some money on ititial versions of the software. Later, when the software becomes commodotised (as Outlook surely has), Open Source will produce a stabler, faster, more portable, more extensible, cheaper (obviously), more interoperable (standards compliant), more customizable and generally better replacement. Open Source and Commercial software both have their strengths. Luckily, there is only a little overlap, and I see this as a model for the way they can work together.

  • Nothing beats keeping your Linux system up 24/7, and using procmail to filter mail into separate folders (mailing lists etc.) and using Mutt to read them, among keeping up with IRC, ICQ and AIM courtesy of GNU Screen. Not to mention, the ability to use 'at' to schedule downloads (using wget -q) and start a compile and leave it until your classes are done and coming back home to a freshly compiled GIMP, for instance. Calendar? Well, I've yet to find (need, rather; if I needed one I'd find it) a full-fledged calendar app, but perhaps the use of 'cal' and 'at' together somehow could do something along that accord? :>

  • Re:Look at this (Score:3)

    by grappler ( 14976 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @06:27PM (#1077472) Homepage
    And what, I would like to know, is the upcoming, never before seen, knock-your-socks-off feature in Pine that has you holding your breath? :-)

    --
    grappler
  • Heh... No worries, just having too much fun...
  • I believe OLE2 includes specs for property interfaces and propertypages.

    :).

    I realise it's based on CORBA, but corba is only the building blocks of a larger technology brought to life by Microsoft. COM's strength is mostly in it's vivid and wide range of interfaces and defacto standards for things like compound documents, persistance etc.
  • If it's a separate process it will be dog slow to use or have you got an equivalent of an in-proc server in Bonobo? Just curious.
  • The ONLY use for a scripting language in an email client is to spread virii or trojan horses.

    Don't forget scripted MUAs also allows for easier spamming. Gather up a list of addresses from usenet, write a quick script to send out an e-mail to all of them "personally" so that it passes spam filters, and if you're clever, you can write the script so that the spam starts with personal info ("Hi, Bob Doe, blablabla..."). A guarranteed favorite if your "prospects" are the general dumb masses.
    --

  • If they make it original, you complain that it's too different.
    If they make it real similar you complain it's not different enough.

    As long as you get the job done with a minimum of swearing, it has fulfilled its purpose. The real difference is in the backend, which, ironically, was not coded by monkeys. You will not have to worry about having your critical system files overwritten by viewing an attachment, or even viewing an email. You will not have to worry about the safety of your personal stored information, and, most importantly, you will not have to worry about Evolution being forced unwillingly on a whole userbase of people.

    Here's my [radiks.net] DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?

  • We will do everything withing a legal framework to provide users with the best software out there. Hopefully we will not have to reverse engineer a lot of Microsoft code.

    The sooner we can infiltrate them, and obviate the need for proprietary protocols the better. I see a bright future for you as a GNOME/Evolution contributor.

    Of course, fighthing bills like the UCITA is important for american citizens, to avoid getting more of the rights taken away.

    Miguel.
  • Please, visit the helixcode and gnome gb webpages and RTFMs. I say this as both a user of GB, Gnumeric, et. al. and a developer on those projects, I *highly* suggest reading the manuals before making statements like these. And you might also want to read Miguel's many comments already in this thread.

    http://www.gnome.org/gb/ [gnome.org] is a good place to start

    Dom
  • have you looked at pan [superpimp.org]? pan is an agent clone.

    i've been a 100% linux user since 1995, so i can't say how it compares to agent. i can tell you that it has an extremely kick-ass feature set (>1 nntp server, multi-part binary decodes, multithreaded, blah blah blah) - and weighing in at around 520k, it's a great choice for those without the latest software-monoploy-induced inflated hardware spec.

    and while i'm plugging pan, let me also plug my pan 0.8.0beta8 debian package [sickfuck.org] for potato. the off icial debian package [debian.org] is still at version 0.7.6.

    --

  • Re:It looks alright... (Score:3)

    by Tack ( 4642 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:28PM (#1077481) Homepage

    ..but I am getting really sick of this move to more and more graphical interfaces for everything.

    ... which is why text-based applications like mutt won't go away for a long time. As long as there are people who share your sentiments (such as myself), then you'll always have choices like mutt, lynx, or even bash.

    Don't feel threatened by the onslaught of GUI apps and their growing popularity. People are very interested and anxious for Nautilus, Evolution, Konqueror, KOffice, etc. The point is, in the end, we'll all have our choices. And that's a good thing.

    Jason.

  • To a great extent, the possibility for that is there already. The backend stuff (Camel) is really well abstracted from the GUI portion, so if you wanted to write a text front end that would support all the cool database-ish functions, you could.
    That said, I don't think Helix will be doing that anytime soon, since they aren't aiming to reduce the number of pine/mutt users- they are aiming to reduce the number of outlook users. As long as that remains the goal, then GUI and the associated bloat/features (pick whichever suits your POV) will continue to be the focus of Helix's frontend work.
    ~luge
  • Skript kiddies dont write things. They download a ZIP with the EXE.

    /tig

  • Re:It looks alright... (Score:5)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:32PM (#1077484) Homepage
    I am glad you pointed this out.

    Evolution is logically split into two parts (there is a process barrier between these parts).

    The first are the User Interface Bonobo components [helixcode.com]. The other part is the non-graphical part that actually drives the data back end (The Wombat process, which is also in turn a Bonobo component).

    The Wombat does not use or require a windowing system to be running, it just acts as a serializer and as the data provider for the actual user interface. The user interface can be a terminal application talking to the Wombat trough CORBA, a Web-based mailer/calendar/addressbook, a custom application you wrote that uses any of the above services in Perl (using the Perl/CORBA [redhat.com] bindings from Owen Taylor for instance) or an Emacs based interface.

    A lot of love has gone into making Evolution "right" in as many aspects as possible.

    We welcome more comments on it, and constructive cricitism.

    Miguel.
  • Don't mean to flame, but isn't there a step of usibility beyond the look and feel of MS Outlook?

    There's also other projects, like Magellan, which also looks a lot like Outlook, and is for KDE. You know, if the KDE and Gnome camps could get together, there'd be a lot of less duplication of effort. I wish I could find a screen shot, but alas, I can't.

    I really hope that programs like Evolution and Magellan allow some customization of those toolbar buttons, so that I can run then as icons only or something---the default look of Outlook and clones may be pretty, but it's not so functional.

    --

  • April GNOME? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it just me or has April come and gone with no April GNOME?? WTF.
  • Actually the only window manager I've seen that has something similar to the start button is fvwm95 (and it's a bit dated now I think). kwm might have one too; I'm not sure.

    Also, I can't think of any applications I run that are terribly similar to Microsoft's UI, with the exception of Abiword, and I suppose you could say that they copied Wordperfect and not Microsoft. I don't have anything against Microsoft's UI, but there are better ones, such as NeXT and MacOS, which you mentioned.
  • I'm not sure of whom Lemmy's speaking when he says "If you are just a programmer," but to quote from Miguel de Icaza's April Slashdot interview:
    "...for example, I receive about 2500 mails a day. Even with procmail and Gnus, filters, scoring and lots of complex scripts, I still spend about four hours a day on e-mail related tasks..."
    So, think of a high-profile open-source developer's needs as a typical business-user's needs writ large. Miguel being a smart guy, I imagine the release version of Evolution will suck considerably less than Outlook, if only to meet its developers' own needs.
  • I hope you will put a --no-basic switch in the right places.
  • Sure these shared libraries are a pain. Its better sometimes to compile the app with static linking, so its a big self-contained lump which always works. The TED rich-text editor does this.
  • It is really upsetting to see how slashdot favour GNOME over KDE. I'm really getting sick and tired of it. If we put up with it we will become victims of ruthless software marketing practices that MS are well known for.

    We are back to the M$ situation where inferior software is shoved down our throats thanks to all the arseholes at slashdot and the like discriminating against KDE.

    And don't tell me that open source will guarantee that the better product wins because it won't. Hardly any end user looks at the app's functionality and bug reports. They just download (or buy in case of commercial software) whatever everyone else uses. So in case of linux (if it ever makes any serious impact on the desktop) it will be RedHat and GNOME. And slashdot editors' attitude makes the situation even worse

    On the positive note KDE2.0 beta is out. visit mosfet.org to read about it because you won't read about it on slashdot. Way to go KDE!

    Thank you for your time.

  • If you read any of the documentation, then you clearly know that they make it quite obvious that this is not ready for release, or even serious testing. The README not only states that it's pre-alpha, but incredibly hard to compile. They cast no illusions about it's state of readiness, so what's your beef? Perhaps they are trying to concentrate more on the overall structure of the application first, before they add in email functionality. If you read the parts about bonobo, you'd know this sort of design is still experimental. And since designing things with bonobo would take precedence, considering its cool application design implications, maybe they think that's more important than releasing yet another email client.

    Here's my [radiks.net] DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?

  • Remember, Gimp was inspired by PhotoShop, and we all love the Gimp.
  • Looks like it's my turn for a mea culpa. ;)

    :wq!

  • And, as an end user of Helix Gnome, I can tell you that it is _very_ stable.

    Had a problem with a particular release of sawmill once, but reinstalled the previous version and was fine. I've never encountered any other problems, and Helix Gnome is all I use (at home, that is. Work is an NT shop).

    miguel: 'twould be nice if the updater didn't automatically remove the rpms once they were installed. I would like the option of storing them somewhere for safe keeping once the update's done.

    ...j
  • Neat :)
    It sounds very good, and thank you for all the feedback... scrolling through some of the more rescent posts, I see that you have answered a lot of questions. It is nice to see someone doing that. Thank you.
    -----
    Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
    Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
    Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
  • I thought Evolution was all made up of Bonobo components, glued together with the "Evolution Shell"

    Surely all Calendars (for example) look the same/provide the same functionality. So if you don't want it to look like Outlook, just rewrite the shell, using the nice, current Calendar (etc.) components.

    Maybe, it could be written using libglade, then you wouldn't even have to recompile to change how it looks.

    Or write your own calendar with the same programming interface as the current calendar component. You can rewrite bits without rewriting it all...
    whether you should, well, thats another matter...

    Lajorn

  • Generations of Unix geeks have been thrilled with pine, elm, and mutt.

    True. I'm one of them. (mutt)

    Generations of Unix geeks have been thrilled with pine, elm, and mutt.

    So?

    My boss wants Free Agent. He loves Free Agent. He worships Free Agent. He won't read news with any *nix newsreader that isn't an exact
    Free Agent clone. He boots into Windows just to read news. If I clone Free Agent, I have just done a great service to the free software
    community: one less instance of Windows being loaded.

    So?

    Let's ask ourselves something here - what is linux about, anyway? What is free sofwtare about? Because a lot of people think that the sole reason linux exists is to steal market share from microsoft and to take over the world. If that happens, I'm fine with it, but that is not the goal of linux as I see it. (And this is an opinion, yes) The reason I use linux is not to see microsoft topple, or to see my manager using the same OS as me, I use linux because it works for me. I don't really care if company X is moving to linux or if GNOME is easy enough for your grandmother.

    In that framework, sometimes writing applications that mimic microsoft applications doesn't make any sense. If I wanted to use a program with that type of look and feel and approach to things, I wouldn't be using linux. Maybe Miguel does like that type of environment. I don't know.

    If you go to the evolution page and helixcode, you'll find out that there is even an effort going on to write a replacement for visual basic for GNOME. Why?????? And this coming RIGHT after the love bug problem. Visual basic is one of the reasons why microsoft products suck, and people want the same thing on linux? It doesn't make any sense. Well, it does if stealing marketshare from microsoft is your only purpose, but otherwise it doesn't.

  • This looks outstanding. Does anyone know if it is compatible with the enterprise calendaring that outlook uses? On the web page it only says "iCalendar" and other existing calendering standards... It would be great to use this at work and not have to use outlook!

  • Re:Gnome Basic? (Score:4)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @07:01PM (#1077500) Homepage
    The reason you need to be able to execute VB code in Excel spreadsheets is that very large sets of code have been written for various sheets in the Excel world. Neither you nor I probably care.

    But people doing heavy-weight work with Excel do, and that is stopping them from migrating to a free software platform. Jody, one of the main Gnumeric hackers and Michael Meeks can tell you more about this.

    That being said, the GNOME Basic implementation is a sandboxed version of Visual Basic (just like Java) unlike the Microsoft version.

    Btw, TeX is a turing-complete language, and people are known to write fairly extensive TeX scripts (and yes, those appear on day to day research papers written in TeX).

    TeX while processing your files can request user input to fill in values.

    The features being copied are not being copied because we think it is "exciting" to copy the feature, or because we want to be check-to-check feature complete. They are required due to large packages that depend on that. Ask any serious Excel user.
  • Maybe its because "First you make it work, then you make it work well, and finally you make it work fast". Its just seems easier to have something to copy. If you then decide different its a false economy, though. Better to have planned...
  • I have the same problems as you. I work for a big company and everyone MUST use LookOut for emails and meetings. Having said that, I managed to configure my LookOut profile so that emails are sent to my linux box, but for meetings, I don't know any solution. It would be great to have a Linux version of LookOut for the meetings at least although I hate the stupid way M$ implemented their calendar.

    But, I don't think that a Linux version HAS TO LOOK like the M$ version.

  • OK - I've been waiting quite a while for a usable version of Evolution. Why? Because in order to cut over to Linux as my full time OS, I need to replace Outlook. Now you can all go on about how you love your Mutts and your Pines ... cool. If you get your work done that way, good for you.

    Personally, I've never seen anything better than Outlook for managing all my contacts, schedule and mail in one place. And Evolution looks like the thing I've been waiting for - a free version.

    Hey, I object to Microsoft's existence as much as the next geek, but I do think they've got some of the best UI people. Fortunately, the GNOME folk aren't short on clues in this regard either.

    So yeah - sue me. I like Outlook. I'm judging just on how well I can work with the software, not who distributes it. Pine has its place in the world, sure - but it's not on my PC.

    OK - I'm rambling a bit. But suffice it to say I think Outlook is a pretty neat package, and Evolution is going to allow me to switch to Linux as my full-time OS. Win98 can go back to being the games platform it deserves to be. Flame me - I don't care. I just like Outlook, and I know I'm not alone.
  • It is suposed to be a nice GUI Email program with several other features (ala Outlook), but the preview clearly indicates that the email part is not working, only little parts.

    That's what I find so amusing about Evolution. If you're making an email killerapp, first make sure that the email part works, then add other functionality.

    Guess I'll wait until version 1.0 comes out and maybe by then I could actually read email with this program

    Seeya!
  • okay, the one thing that so many people at work really like about outlook is that you can see other people's calendars while setting up meetings. outlook does this by accessing the free/busy database on the exchange servers (asaik, that is). i'm willing to bet that this interface is closed, but, i have to ask, are there plans for evolution to be able to access the free/busy lists on an exchange server? is this maybe what libole is for?

  • Re:Gee, this looks familiar (Score:3)

    by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @03:32AM (#1077506)
    Excellent points. Another good reason: Why make Evolution so different that it will be hard for people to migrate from Outlook? I might enjoy learning new software, but I've noticed most of the people I meet day-to-day aren't as thrilled with the prospect.

    Also, if I understand correctly from what I've read about it so far, it's divided into a front-end and a back-end. This will allow new front-ends to be built relatively easy. I'd like to point out that this type of design fosters innovation as opposed to stifling innovation. Really, to decide it's not innovative (I can barely stand to type the word anymore) based on a screenshot is unfair. Kind of like critiquing a book based on it's cover.

    Then again, perhaps he was just being sarcastic.

    numb

  • Is it just me... (Score:3)

    by TheGreek ( 2403 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:04PM (#1077507)
    Or does Evolution look EXACTLY like Microsoft Outlook with different widgets?

    Is this a stated design goal?

  • It looks alright... (Score:4)

    by the phantom ( 107624 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:04PM (#1077508) Homepage
    ...but I am getting really sick of this move to more and more graphical interfaces for everything. There are times when pretty pictures are nice, they make things more intuative, i.e. having Mozilla or Netscape around is often easier than using lynx.

    Mutt has always worked rather well for me. It handles pgp well, and works nicely with my school's new LDAP database. How does Evolution handle this? What do we gain from the interface?

    To me, it just adds a level of abstraction to a realativly simply procedure and makes it seem less solid and real.

    Perhaps I should not complain so much. This is the kind of thing that might make my grandmother go out and get a Linux box instead of Windoze, but I will still continue to use mutt.
    -----
    Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
    Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
    Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
  • Woohoo! Separate that interface from the implementation! If only every application did that, then the world would be a better place.

    Thank You.

  • Re:Neat! But ... (Score:5)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:34PM (#1077510) Homepage
    Well, we take security seriously in the GNOME project. Our implementation of Visual Basic for GNOME [gnome.org] (it is required for perfect Office compatibility) actually runs in a Sandboxed environment, just like Java does.

    The equivalent of the "ILOVEYOU" virus would generate a security exception in any application using GB in the future (no application currently uses GB, as it is still a project under development).

    Miguel.
  • but aren't you supposed to rub the genie's bottle? does he give you an extra wish if you rub him, or are you just into that sort of thing? ;-)

  • Re:Compatibility (Score:4)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:37PM (#1077512) Homepage
    That is the goal, Evolution will support the standard calendaring systems available on other products, like Exchange.

    Inflitrate the organizations from the bottom up with open source software is the way Nat puts it

    Miguel.
  • >If they have many developers, why not use some of
    >those resources to get the most important part of
    >the project working (hint: send and receive
    >emails).

    Sorry, I should have tried to explain myself
    better. What I meant was, there is an amount
    of developers you can assign to task to speed it
    up and anything beyond that will slow it down.

    >Then again, maybe evoultion is not about emails,
    >maybe it's about everything else.

    I understand that you would put a higher priority
    on the email-part, but people want to do different
    things. I would assume that they don't have that
    many developers interested in email -part.
  • yah, it's also an unter-pre-alpha PREVIEW release... just a taste, not something useful yet.

    jeezus, sum ppl r just too critical...

  • boxy but good [boxybutgood.com] is working on a nice X11 email app (TickMail), but it's a commercial app (not free). Another hat in a suddenly crowded ring.
  • oops...
  • which is great! , lots of people know how to work with outlook. this would make a conversion to linux much easier for those people
    ---
  • I am not doing free software development because I want to stand against Microsoft, but because i want to give users free software (free as in freedom). So copying the Excel user interface to me was never a moral problem.

    When I was about 10 years old my parents bought Visicalc for our Apple ][+. That was the first spreadsheet program I ever used--and I'm not sure but it may have been the first. All the future spreadsheets seemed to evolve from there. It kind of makes the name Evolution seem very appropriate to me. Gnumeric copied Excel, Excel copied Lotus, Lotus copied Visicalc. My parents copied my grandparents DNA, I copied my parents DNA. Similar in many ways, but we're fundamentally different.

    numb
  • Cats-and-Coffee-Warning

    Evolution will: crash, lose your mail, leave stray processes running, consume 100% CPU, race, lock, send HTML mail to random mailing lists, and embarass you in front of your friends and co-workers.

    Wow. I'm in awe. 100% compatibility with Outlook, and it's only at version 0.0!!!!

    James

  • I'm not sure about the released version, but the Helix version of Gnome you can set the panel size. You have to pick from 4+ sizes but one of them is "tiny" or 24 pixels tall/wide. Resizing the panel makes the lauchers resize as well. Works pretty good. Only problem is that at 1600x1280, it is sometimes a little hard to make 24x24 icons :)

    I pretty much use gnome just for the panels. It is just too easy to custimize. I can handle text config files, but why would you mess with them if you didn't have to?

  • All of the stuff that helixcode guys have put out look great, but is anyone planning on making .deb packages of any of these? I don't want to have to use alien to convert these (I tried and it didn't work).
  • Have you all forgotten already that this whole ILOVEYOU fiasco was all Outlook's fault? It does suck.

    But you're missing the point. We're talking about if it's interface is good. I.e. is it a good interface to copy for a unix program like Evolution. Obviously the security will be a lot better on an open source *nix program.
  • I tried to email you but then I ran out of stack space. If only my MUA was tail recursive!
  • >My question is this: what will happen to Linux when it is done playing catch-up?
    I'm not in the prognostication business. I would assume we would work on things like usability, improving performance, whatever. We'll do whatever our customers and our community needs.
  • Moderate this higher! Hack into slashdot and implement a Score of 6!!
    -russ
  • And what, I would like to know, is the upcoming, never before seen, knock-your-socks-off feature in Pine that has you holding your breath? :-)

    Uh, freedom from all security holes and buffer overflows? :-)

  • Maybe we could add the features that have given Outlook the nickname "The M$ Virus Distribution System".

    Sorry, had to be done... Also, through guile and just severe bullheadedness, I have proven to my company, that we might as well get rid of the exchange server, because the revolution has arrived, and the people with technologically based jobs (oops, this is a technology company) will not be using anything as dangerous as Outlook for email. Too tell the truth, I won't allow the companies source-code repositories to reside on "Windows" based machines, or even Unix based machines that have partitions that can be directly mountable by Windows based workstations. It may seem extreme, but I do fear things like someone making the mistake of opening something like the "I Love You" trojan, and wiping something important out. Yes, we keep backups, but I can't afford any unscheduled downtime at this juncture in my companies growth.

    I understand that there are not many people in companies with the type of power required to make these types of unorthodox decisions, but our numbers are increasing. As we prove that our ideas are compatible in a business environment, our numbers grow. So, there are those of us looking for replacements for tools that have the dangerous holes provided by applications like Outlook. Sure, go for the functionality that makes sense. Make the software compatible, if necessary, and safe. But, medium and large companies will use a software package that proves itself superior to the business norm, if it becomes available.

  • Re:Neat! But ... (Score:3)

    by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @07:33PM (#1077533) Journal
    One thing I've heard about Evolution is that the eventual goal is a 'groupware' application like Lotus Notes or (theoretically) Outlook.

    One thing that people like about Notes is that it's easy to build workflow routing and approval applications. One of the main points of these types of apps is that your address book gets scanned and mail gets sent programmatically.

    (Notes has a security infrastructure in place that allows a administrator to prevent the use of this feature by unauthorized users. However, most shops are configured loosely enough to allow a internal version of ILOVEYOU to happen.)

    So, the Outlook feature was there for a good reason, although the implementation was totally retarded in that there was no security sandboxing at all. With Evolution, I hope you've considered balancing the valid need to do these sorts of things (e.g. routing apps) with the invalid needs (viruses). I'd be real curious to hear your thoughts on how this would be implemented, because nobody, including Lotus, has really gotten it right.

    BTW, the programming model of Outlook is completely halfwitted, IMO, and not widely used. I'd hate to think that you'd put a lot of effort into cloning it.
    --

  • Gee, this looks familiar (Score:3)

    by _SIGKILL_ ( 170600 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:46PM (#1077536)

    Gee, it looks earily familiar... Could it be... Microsoft Outlook for UNIX? The linux community needs to start developing some real software, not just mimicing what Microsoft has already done. For a community that continues to berate Microsoft, I find it extremely funny how all the software they use looks very familiar...

    A few examples:

    • KDE
    • StarOffice
    • KDevelop
    • Now, evolution...

    Grow some nuts and actually innovate.

  • You're in denial. Just because it doesn't say "Start" on it, doesn't mean they aren't copying the start-button from Windows. KDE has one, Gnome has one, FVWM has one. And AbiWord looks much more like Word than it does like WordPerfect. Gnumeric is an admitted copy of Excel. Evolution is clearly meant to mimic the functionality and look of Outlook. These applications are environments are all taking ideas from MS software. It's not a big deal, but I wish people would at least admit that Microsoft has made some very nice programs.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • You got it all wrong.

    We are working on the Email support, the version you are using includes support for mbox parsing, indexing, and summarizing. As well as pop and kerberos-pop.

    Then, it can display your messages (text/plain, text/html, and it can display arbitrary mime-types if you have the proper Bonobo component).

    For instance, you can display/edit images sent in SVG format using Sodipodi (The GNOME Vector Drawing program), and it can also render PDF files (trough GNOME PDF) or Postscript files (GNOME GGV), or Gnumeric or Excel files (trough Gnumeric).
  • Good idea. I have requested the Helix GNOME team to add this feature.

    If you want features added to GNOME or changes made to the Helix GNOME distribution system, please use the "bug-buddy" program to submit a request (or a bug report).

    Bug buddy is available from the GNOME foot menu, or from the desktop "Bug Report Tool" icon on the desktop.

    This helps us keep track of existing problems in GNOME, and provide feedback to the users on what the status for the problem report is.

    Miguel.

  • Does this make any sense? I mean, I don't have anything against calendars and contact managers, but why are they being integrated with an email program? That's like putting a spreadsheet in a newsreader and an image processor in a web browser.

    And what really scares me is that I don't see other people commenting on it. It's like I've totally missed something that is obvious to everyone else. Am I stupid?


    ---

  • Outlook does not suck. (Score:5)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @05:06PM (#1077558) Homepage
    Well, it does, reasons of the obvious overintegration with the OS, and Exchange is fifty kinds of evil, but the Outlook client in its essentials is head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to a full-fledged PIM.

    At home, I use pine for my personal mail. It's good for straight-forward text-messages-and-tahnk-you-very-much sort of stuff. However, my work involves lots and lots of meetings and airplane trips and projects and to-do lists and hastily-scribbled notes and organization of ideas and collaboration. I travel constantly, and need a system that helps me keep on top of things. Outlook is excellent at this.

    If you are just a programmer, (or studying to be one), then Outlook is both overkill and generally a miss. Your to-do list is probably best kept on a piece of paper next to your machine, and there is no reason to integrate messaging with other aspects of your workflow. However, those of us with ties to the rest of the business world get a lot of benefit from the versatility of the Outlook client. I hate to say this, but your needs are so different from a typical business-users needs, that I don't think you could grok them.

    Note that the only other MS desktop client program I really care for is Excel. I prefer Abiword to Word a hundred-fold.

    In any case, I think that the Outlook client is an excellent bar to aim for.

  • I think one strong security aspect is the UNIX access-control itself; i.e., it's pretty hard to bork your system running arbitrary code as non-root. It would still be possible to nuke your own stuff, though. As with most open-source projects, I'm sure there will be many, many config options to choose from. (i.e. don't execute executable stuff.)

  • Re: Security issues (Score:3)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @05:39PM (#1077569) Homepage
    All the components need to know that the source is insecure (just like Gnumeric assumes that any code in a spreadsheet is insecure, just like Outlook should have assumed that a mail called "ILOVEYOU" was also an insecure source, just like Excel and Word should treat their data insecurely as well).

    Anyways, the point is that each component should assme that the data they are loading might be hostile data.

    And a full SVG implementation could also be hostile (as they can use Javascript), so that also should throw an exception.

    Miguel.
  • If I clone Free Agent, I have just done a great service to the free software community: one less instance of Windows being loaded.

    I've been using pine for a couple of years, but I used free agent for a long time. It is a great news reader. Luckily it runs great under WINE. I remember having to re-register it, but other than that it ran fine. Check it out.

  • Re:The KDE Equivalent (Score:3)

    by alhaz ( 11039 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @08:00PM (#1077573) Homepage
    My feelings for KDE have nothing to do with differences in the style of "freedom" espoused by the authors of the varous components. Or their personalities, or nationalities, or whatever.

    I've got nothing specific against KDE, not as such. I just don't like QT.

    And it's not that i don't like QT in the sense that trolltech did something that offended me, and I'm as ignorant of the programming interface as your grandmother.

    I dislike QT because it looks and feels awkward to me. It quite literally looks and feels to annoy me exactly the way OS/2 Presentation Manager does when using buggy video drivers at a very high resolution:

    The fonts always look a few points too big, the kerning always a few points off kilter, the space between menu items too wide, etc. It just looks and feels awkward and I don't like it.

    That being said, I don't use gnome either. I use icewm, but I *like* the look and feel of applications written with Gtk+

    Now, if i could just take the time to figure out how to make gnome use small icons on the panel instead of those big clunky 64x64 things, I might give gnome another shot. Maybe.

    Why is it so hard to understand that NeXTStep only looked so good because those icons were insignificant on a display that large? Some of us use notebooks with 800x600 10.4" displays . .

  • So use pine for this too!

    Here's my home setup... I use qmail, courier-imap, procmail and pine. My todo list is just another directory in imap. If I need to add a new todo I send a mail to matt-todo. procmail filters that to my todo list. If I need to access my email from around the world, I can using secure IMAP.

    Really, I see nothing that Outlook offers WRT todo lists here. There's that silly "Journal" but I don't think many people use that. The only cool thing is the automatic calendaring - the ability to have meeting rooms also be Exchange users, and check people's availability (including the meeting room's) instantly with a graph of when might be possible if not now, is just cool, and vital for growing businesses. Walking across the office and asking people if they're free just gets messy if one person isn't - this truly makes life easier (whether or not it's an innovation - I don't know - I'm guessing Lotus Notes or someone else already had this feature prior to Outlook).
  • I'm in the process of making my own right now. (The RFC822 parser is about 80% complete).

    It'll be called Birch. I'm doing it because well frankly I think all mailreaders out there suck. I'm an engineer, so I'm making my own. Whether anyone uses or not, I don't care. It's what I want.
  • I am getting really sick of this move to more and more graphical interfaces for everything. There are times when pretty pictures are nice, they make things more intuative, i.e. having Mozilla or Netscape around is often easier than using Lynx.

    It's interesting that you say that, cos I'm the other way round. I'm quite happy to use a gui mailer/newsreader, but I really really prefer lynx to most browsers. I only use Netscape/Mozilla when a page forces me to use Java[script]. I think this shows that it's a matter of personal preference. You'll always have the choice of Mutt, and I'll always have the choice of Lynx (presuming the spread of Java[script] to completely unneccessary places doesn't continue). Choice is a good thing, and adding an extra choice shouldn't do any harm.
  • Yes, I did submit it. And I've submitted magellan related stories several times. And I'm not the only one. Do a search through old comments sometime -- you'll see a lot of mention of Magellan.

    --

  • > Grow some nuts and actually innovate.
    Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

    Generations of Unix geeks have been thrilled with pine, elm, and mutt.

    My father, a latecomer to the whole computer thing, will never use mutt, pine, or elm.

    My boss wants Free Agent. He loves Free Agent. He worships Free Agent. He won't read news with any *nix newsreader that isn't an exact Free Agent clone. He boots into Windows just to read news. If I clone Free Agent, I have just done a great service to the free software community: one less instance of Windows being loaded.

    I fail to see how approaching a valid market segment is bad.
  • Miguel, what's the plan for handling security? Some data formats are safe, such as text/plain or SVG, since they don't have enough power to do anything dangerous. Other formats, such as PostScript, aren't necessarily safe to interpret. How is this handled? Do rendering components for SVG, PS, etc. have an interface where the mailer can find out how dangerous they are, or is there some other scheme?

  • Re:Is it just me... (Score:5)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @05:50PM (#1077599) Homepage
    Well, when I wrote Gnumeric, I wrote it not because I needed a spreadsheet, but because GNOME needed a spreadsheet. I have basically no interest in spreadsheets, and have never used a spreadsheet.

    Copying the design, model, and idea of an existing product that people knew how to use was better than sitting down and "reinventing" the concept behind spreadsheets.

    This turned out to be very good, as various Excel hackers joined the team, and they have improved Gnumeric a lot to suit their needs, and address problems that Excel could not address, nor could fix for them. And by being a familiar user interface, and a program compatible with Excel, we benefit more users.

    I am not doing free software development because I want to stand against Microsoft, but because i want to give users free software (free as in freedom). So copying the Excel user interface to me was never a moral problem

    Miguel.

  • Cool... (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    I heard the GNOME people talking about this, but it's good to see there's finally some code to hack on and not just vapor.

    I'd say my favorite quote from the page is this:


    Please be aware that Evolution depends on a large number of unreleased and rapidly-changing libraries. Some of these libraries in turn depend on other unreleased and rapidly-changing libraries


    This is the reason I'm ultimately not a big fan of the current style of GTK app development. This is not meant as a rant against GTK, because I will unilaterally hate any recent app that does version checking against a new version of a library; GTK is just a convenient example, because I've had that happen a lot.

    I realize everyone wants to use the latest features, and whatnot, but couldn't they start with a consistent API to begin with? Will this eventually get hashed out, or will every GTK app I ever try to install constantly bug me for a new version of the toolkit?

    I'm not a big fan of Motif, but if people could implement that API on top of GTK, lots of programs would compile, look consistent, and not bug me for the latest version of blah. This could be done with lesstif, BTW, and it might have helped the Mozilla people. However, now that they've hashed out their own, platform-independent libraries with all the features needed for a web browser, we could just use those instead, and not change the API...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • Version 0.0! (Score:5)

    by luge ( 4808 ) <slashdot@DEBIANtieguy.org minus distro> on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:07PM (#1077604) Homepage
    Folks, please be careful when running this. This isn't even alpha, really- the version number is 0.0. In announcing this, Miguel sent the following to the evolution-devel list:

    "As you explore Evolution, please understand that most of our work has been focused on the backend engine which drives the entire system and not on the user interface. We are just cresting the hill now, though, and will be pouring most of our love and attention into the UI from here out. But at least you know that you're not using demoware.
    So, time for the nerdy disclaimer. Evolution will: crash, lose your mail, leave stray processes running, consume 100% CPU, race, lock, send HTML mail to random mailing lists, and embarass you in
    front of your friends and co-workers. Use at your own risk."
    So... don't slam it for lack of functionality or anything like that yet. Wait until the developers think it is at least worthy of a version number...
    ~luge

  • Neat! But ... (Score:3)

    by truefluke ( 91957 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:10PM (#1077609) Homepage
    just for yucks they shouda had a screen shot showing 'i love you' in the del bin heh heh
  • I downloaded it (binary Linux elf)

    I ran it. Tried to find out how to hook to the Exchange server where I work. No option to do that, only POP3 and SMTP mail. Please tell me how to set it up to connect to an exchange server!

    The program looks nice, runs under FreeBSD Linux emulation (I was impressed) after you brandelf the binary. I just wanted it so I could dump Outlook for ever and ever and ever, and get on with my work. But there was no Exchange server functionality in the software.

    Sob. I thought I had found a holy grail.

  • Re:Is it just me... (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:10PM (#1077611) Homepage
    Miguel sees to know a lot about microsoft and their products... he's not shy about saying that Gnumeric emulates Excel. If the UI makes sense, and if it's what people have grown used to, then I think it's prudent to make something that's familiar. That is, if your goal is to get Linux on the desktop ready for the masses... and I think that in this case, it is the goal...

    ---
  • it's what people want! there are tons of mailers for unix.

    mh for example - you utilise it through the commandline (you're never *in* a mailer as such, all the commands to deal with your messages are run from the shell). people have then used mh as a base for building gui based mailers - the great point being that if you;re at your desktop you can use the gui, but when you're telnetting/sshing into your box you can use the commandline.

    or you can use mutt which combines a large number of features from various unix mailiers like mail, elm, and pine.

    i suspect that as evolution goes farther you'll find that it will have features unknown to outlook: security, and the ability to deal with large amounts of mail spring to mind.
  • Although I'm not in favor of all this Gnome hype, I thought I'd gather up some Karma by mentioning TradeClient [tradeclient.org], which is YAOC (yet another Outlook clone). Looks like it's already usable (no imap support). It's been recently GPLed.
    --
  • I have just spent the last two days on a stand at an exibition here in Dublin. The amount of people interested in exploring any alternative to the M$ system was staggering, and reports from stands offering training services implied that for every request for NT training, 10 requests were made regarding linux training. Given this background, I feel that the time has arrived where each and every decision M$ takes which compromises the ability for alternate systems to interoperate and co-exist will actually hurt M$ instead of helping their domination. If M$ do embark on a tactic of isolating their products from all other systems, they will simply accelerate the loss of their market share as many many users are now far more aware of the issues concerned. Perhaps the greatest side-effect of the U.S. DOJ case has been the education of populations, and this will be the real punishment for M$.
  • How about reporting on this to the developers instead of whining about it here? Not to put you down or anything, but there are so many complaining, whining and doing _nothing_ about it. Do you really expect anybody to do anything about _your_ problems if you don't come with constructive ideas? This is Open Source, you can rewrite the code/interface or come up with usable suggestions yourself. Even Microsoft have done research among their customers to get their UI done "right" (questionable in various areas).

    How about drawing some simple sketches and mailing them to the developers? I'm sure they'll be happy for such input, for they surely can't "innovate" every application out there. They're making the tools highly open and modular (bonobo), just don't excpect one company/one group of people to deliver the best all-round solution.

    This whole mess is also about freedom, in a few years there'll probably be several interfaces to the various Gnome-apps, maybe even some text-based ones? Then the whiners will whine about something else... *sigh*

    - Steeltoe

  • Re:Version 0.0! (Score:5)

    by / ( 33804 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @05:56PM (#1077629)
    Evolution will: crash, lose your mail, leave stray processes running, consume 100% CPU, race, lock, send HTML mail to random mailing lists, and embarass you in front of your friends and co-workers. Use at your own risk.

    Congratulations! It sounds like it's already providing 90% of the functionality of MS Outlook. Any progress on the few remaining features like remapping file associations and reformatting one's hard drive?

  • If I clone Free Agent, I have just done a great service to the free software community: one less instance of Windows being loaded.

    My problem is that almost all recent software developed for UNIX is a clone of an existing application from Microsoft or from Apple. Now, if there were some apps that were cloned and other original solutions, I would not have a problem. It is just that I grow tired of listening to linux zealots screaming about how horrible Microsoft is as they launch into KDE.

    This is also why Linux will never become truly successful. If Linux were to be loaded on to every desktop and Microsoft was absorbed into that whole AOL-Time-Warner deal, the Linux community would not know what the hell to do. No one left to clone. My question is this: what will happen to Linux when it is done playing catch-up?

  • Did anyone else notice the section of the 'Technology' page that describes 'Gnome Basic'? Helix plan to copy Microsoft, by producing a clone of VB (syntax compatible), and embedding it in Gnumeric documents and other GNOME office stuff.

    People! Haven't we just spent the last couple days making fun of M$ weenies who received hundreds of 'ILOVEYOU' emails? Did we really need, or want, embedded scripting in data files? What good will GB do to enhance Gnumeric or the rest of the GNOME office? Does it really justify the security risk of embedding logic in data files? I guess that's my main objection. I write most of my documents in plain text and / or TeX. A data file contains... data. That's it. It's not going to pop up any dialog boxes, query any databases, or do anything else that's completely unnecessary. It just contains my data, plus some minor formatting information (in the case of TeX / troff).

    Of all the people I know who use Word (probably several hundred), not a single one has ever used VB macros in a document. And many of them have suffered through VB macro viruses. Can anyone think of anything that justifies the inclusion of a scripting language in Gnumeric data files? I know that the GB implementation will probably be more secure, but it seems like Helix want to copy VB 'feature' for feature, bug for bug.

  • Evolution:Work to do but good start. (Score:3)

    by l0ki ( 140176 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @06:02PM (#1077636) Homepage
    After pulling nails to compile all packages in their correct locations, I've got it working and pulling my POP3 accounts in. Looks like a beautiful interface and very functional application. Obviously an Outlook knockoff, but who cares? One thing I love about the Gnome team is their willingess to embrace/copy/steal heterogenous ideas from different apps and OS's and combine them for something even better. Caveats to install: remember to read the README. RTFM. In particular, when installing the required packages it will be a lot easier for you if you are already running helix. If you are, you'll just need the gtk,bonobo,lib-unicode, and gnome-vfs packages. When doing your make on these, be sure to pass the config of: ./configure --prefix:/usr --installconfdir:/etc (it was close to that anyway) You can pull your own parameters out first with gnome-session, (ITS ALL IN THE README!!!) Anyway, this is VERY early in the apps lifetime- if you don't believe me, just read their disclaimer, it's kinda amusing. It will defineately be one hell of an app when its done though. It's crashed 4 or 5 times already- but it just dumped core, didn't actually bomb the whole app. core dump happened but app survived. I'm going to run it for day to day now and be brave. Submit some bug reports.

  • The KDE Equivalent (Score:3)

    by Amphigory ( 2375 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @04:19PM (#1077644) Homepage
    You can find the KDE equivalent (Magellan) here [kalliance.org]. However, it is about as `alpha' as evolution. Of course, KDE apps seem to usually be alpha, alpha, alpha, until suddenly someday everything gels and they are near-production.

    At risk of sounding like a jerk: this is about the third story on Evolution, without one story on Magellan. Possibly, this is because Evolution is a lot more hyped than magellan. But, possibly, it's because the Slashdot editors all seem to run Gnome.

    --

  • Why is it that every KDE app (and KDE itself) feel it has to slavishly copy MS and their look and feel?

    I'm sure magellan will be just wonderful, but does it have to look so much like outlook?

    --

  • Inflitrate the organizations from the bottom up with open source software is the way Nat puts it.

    While I wholeheartedly agree with this approach, do you think it is long-term feasibile given the legal problems on the horizon? Between DMCA's anti-reverse engineering clause and Microsoft's implicit trade-secret EULA evidenced in the Kerberos matter, does free software or open source have a chance to even be compatibile sans legal support and corresponding financial backing to pay for it?

    I don't mean to be a doomsayer, but this is the obvious tactic for Microsoft to stop future FS/OSS projects from being compatibile and thereby gain a monopoly on all future enterprise technologies.

    Obviously, you are not a lawyer, but what is your gut feeling?

  • I'd have to agree... In some cases, having the same general look and feel as a MS product isn't THAT bad. It's when you get deep down into menus, etc. that things start getting nasty - you can't see this stuff from a screenshot. What's so bad that a client LOOKS like Outlook? As long as it does NOT clone Outlook in these respects: a) Security holes b) Bloat c) UI gets *nasty* once you get down into the dialog boxes/menus. So far, I don't know about b) or c), but a) is definately improved over Outlook, and I'm guessing that b) is a vast improvement, too.
  • The reason I'm excited about Evolution is not that it's just another pretty GUI client that LOOKS like Outlook.

    No, I don't care about the looks. What I do care about is that it can get mail through an exchange server and support scheduling through an exchange server as well, with really any GUI you care to put together.

    Wherever I go, I try and use Linux clients at work. This would almost always work out OK, with one exception - I always have to dual-boot to get to my mail and schedule. I rather hate the Outlook scheduler, but I have no choice in using it - usually everyone else schedules meetings with it, and also a lot of places I've been at use it as a frontend to reserve conference rooms.

    So, something like Evolution is really the final step in freeing MANY people to use Linux fulltime at work.

  • Re:Email clients I'm drooling over (Score:4)

    by miguel ( 7116 ) on Thursday May 11, 2000 @06:24PM (#1077662) Homepage
    Evolution Model/View split (the split between the user interface and the actual data, which is running as a separate process (The Wombat)) was designed precisely to solve this problem correctly.

    The information displayed on Evolution is not actually loaded into the GUI application you load, it is all handled by a separate process (The Wombat), and the way the code works is by making notifications to the user interface process when data in the wombat changes.

    The Palm Pilot syncing tools work without even launching the GUI application, they just talk directly to the Wombat, and sync with the Wombat.

    Now, our filtering system is pretty advanced, internally it uses a Scheme like system that is evaluated at various stages of the life of a mail message (reception, delivery, archival, indexing) the rules are applied and a number of actions can take place at each stage. This is used to create the regular "folders" that people are used to.

    Another extra option are the "vfolders", these are folders constructed on the flight from a query to the mail database. For example, you could construct a folder with the last 10 messages from your wife that contain the word "Dont forget to bring home..." or all mail you have sent to a mailing list that was CCed to rms for instance.

    The possibilities are infinite.

    Miguel.

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