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Preview Helix Code's "Evolution"
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] "
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
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
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.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
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? :-)
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
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 DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my 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.
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 for potato. the off icial debian package is still at version 0.7.6.
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... 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
IAAL,BIANLY
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. 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 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.
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
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!
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.
But, I don't think that a Linux version HAS TO LOOK like the M$ version.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
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?
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 this a stated design goal?
...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.
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Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
Well, we take security seriously in the GNOME project. Our implementation of Visual Basic for GNOME (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.
>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.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Moderate this higher! Hack into slashdot and implement a Score of 6!!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Uh, freedom from all security holes and buffer overflows? :-)
Babar
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.
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.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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:
Grow some nuts and actually innovate.
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"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?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.)
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.
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 . .
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
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?
I'd say my favorite quote from the page is this:
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...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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
IAAL,BIANLY
just for yucks they shouda had a screen shot showing 'i love you' in the del bin heh heh
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
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.
Although I'm not in favor of all this Gnome hype, I thought I'd gather up some Karma by mentioning TradeClient, which is YAOC (yet another Outlook clone). Looks like it's already usable (no imap support). It's been recently GPLed.
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"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
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
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
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.
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.
"You never truly understand a thing until you can explain it to your grandmother" -Albert Einstein
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.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
I'm sure magellan will be just wonderful, but does it have to look so much like outlook?
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"Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas"
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.