From: Luke A. Kanies Date: 22:35 on 03 May 2004 Subject: Evolution is a step backwards Holy cow. This is now the third time, so I'm really upset, and it was even worse this time. I have a linux box and a Mac. I sometimes have appointments. The Mac is almost always asleep (as it's a laptop) but I can bring it everywhere with me. Therefore, I'd like the ability to make appointments on either machine and be warned whether I'm at my computer or not. The Mac can email me, and thus can email my phone, which means I can get notified no matter where I am, but like I said, the Mac is almost always asleep. This is annoying, but is not the Mac's fault. Because my linux box is never asleep (I've got a dual proc box, so I couldn't even put it to sleep if I wanted to -- hate), it'd be especially nice if I could have something email me from my linux box, even if I annoyingly can't use the calendar on either machine and somehow sync the calendars. So, of course, I'm experimenting with Ximian's Evolution. I need the ability to check my IMAP email with a GUI client sometimes so I can look at pictures and such (which pine is not much good at), but I especially need its calendaring abilities (or apparent lack thereof). In both of these areas, Evolution fails quite miserably, and sometimes spectacularly. This is Evo 1.4.6 on Debian. Calendaring just plain falls down on functionality. Apparently. The two features I need are some kind calendar syncronizing capability and the ability to email meeting notices so I can send them to my phone. There is a calander syncronizing protocol (ical) but Evolution only supports it via email, not via an automated mechanism like WebDAV (like Apple's stupidly named iCal), so I can't easily synchronize between my Mac and my linux box. That part sucks. But Evolution also can't email notices. Or can it? It's there as an option, but it's greyed out. Why? I've no idea; why add it but not make it available? I can't figure it out, but apparently it's fixed in 1.5, which (of course) debian doesn't have. So apparently I could do what I want, except I can't for some reason. Even better, though, is how email functionality falls on its face. Actually, it might not; I don't know. Every time I try to send an email, I type something into the "To:" header box, and it pops up with a list of potential matches. I have found nothing other than 'pkill -9 evolution' that can get rid of that box. I select the email I want and hit return, or double click, or triple click, or dance, or whatever the hell I want, and nothing at all happens. Even better, this is (somehow) a globally modal dialig (you know, like Mozilla always does that pisses you off so much?), which means that until it goes away I can't focus on any other windows. Which means that my X session is effectively dead unless I can get in some other way. So, I have to SSH in with my Mac and 'pkill -9 evolution'. This has now happened 3 out of 3 times I've tried to use the most recent version of Evolution. Even worse, when I killed the instance the latest time, it somehow managed to move all of my windows down by about 10 pixels, on both of my monitors, which means around 40 windows. I'm very excited. Oh yes, very excited. Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? Luke
From: mjinks Date: 22:45 on 03 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:35:39PM -0500, Luke A. Kanies wrote: > > Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? Just this one: Avoid Oracle's Corporate Time as if it were a massive, bloated, rabid rhinoceros with typhoid. To be fair, the rhinoceros would probably do a better job of helping you enter events on a database-backed calendar than CT's web interface does.
From: Matthew Garrett Date: 23:54 on 03 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:35:39PM -0500, Luke A. Kanies wrote: > Calendaring just plain falls down on functionality. Apparently. The two > features I need are some kind calendar syncronizing capability and the > ability to email meeting notices so I can send them to my phone. There is > a calander syncronizing protocol (ical) but Evolution only supports it via > email, not via an automated mechanism like WebDAV (like Apple's stupidly > named iCal), so I can't easily synchronize between my Mac and my linux > box. That part sucks. Yeah. There's movement towards supporting that, but it'll probably be the 2.1 timeframe. > But Evolution also can't email notices. Or can it? It's there as an > option, but it's greyed out. Why? I've no idea; why add it but not make > it available? I can't figure it out, but apparently it's fixed in 1.5, > which (of course) debian doesn't have. So apparently I could do what I > want, except I can't for some reason. Mailing notices certainly used to work, and I'd be surprised if it's entirely broken in 1.4 since that's one of their selling points. 1.5 is in Debian if you add an experimental sources line. > Even better, though, is how email functionality falls on its face. > Actually, it might not; I don't know. Every time I try to send an email, > I type something into the "To:" header box, and it pops up with a list of > potential matches. I have found nothing other than 'pkill -9 evolution' > that can get rid of that box. I select the email I want and hit return, > or double click, or triple click, or dance, or whatever the hell I > want, and nothing at all happens. Even better, this is (somehow) a > globally modal dialig (you know, like Mozilla always does that pisses you > off so much?), which means that until it goes away I can't focus on any > other windows. If you have accessibility functionality switched on, switch it off. Evolution sucks in that respect in quite terrifying ways. Also bear in mind that the only way you're likely to be running that version of Evolution is in Debian unstable, which means there's a high probability that any breakage isn't Evolution's fault. > Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? Yeah. A combination of anything that uses flat text files and cvs.
From: Luke A. Kanies Date: 00:01 on 04 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Mon, 3 May 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote: > On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:35:39PM -0500, Luke A. Kanies wrote: > > > Calendaring just plain falls down on functionality. Apparently. The two > > features I need are some kind calendar syncronizing capability and the > > ability to email meeting notices so I can send them to my phone. There is > > a calander syncronizing protocol (ical) but Evolution only supports it via > > email, not via an automated mechanism like WebDAV (like Apple's stupidly > > named iCal), so I can't easily synchronize between my Mac and my linux > > box. That part sucks. > > Yeah. There's movement towards supporting that, but it'll probably be > the 2.1 timeframe. Hmm. I have no idea when that is, but it seems like a ways away. > > But Evolution also can't email notices. Or can it? It's there as an > > option, but it's greyed out. Why? I've no idea; why add it but not make > > it available? I can't figure it out, but apparently it's fixed in 1.5, > > which (of course) debian doesn't have. So apparently I could do what I > > want, except I can't for some reason. > > Mailing notices certainly used to work, and I'd be surprised if it's > entirely broken in 1.4 since that's one of their selling points. 1.5 is > in Debian if you add an experimental sources line. It's not broken, it's just greyed out, which means that it's effectively missing. I've heard it's available in 1.5, but... > > Even better, though, is how email functionality falls on its face. > > Actually, it might not; I don't know. Every time I try to send an email, > > I type something into the "To:" header box, and it pops up with a list of > > potential matches. I have found nothing other than 'pkill -9 evolution' > > that can get rid of that box. I select the email I want and hit return, > > or double click, or triple click, or dance, or whatever the hell I > > want, and nothing at all happens. Even better, this is (somehow) a > > globally modal dialig (you know, like Mozilla always does that pisses you > > off so much?), which means that until it goes away I can't focus on any > > other windows. > > If you have accessibility functionality switched on, switch it off. > Evolution sucks in that respect in quite terrifying ways. Also bear in > mind that the only way you're likely to be running that version of > Evolution is in Debian unstable, which means there's a high probability > that any breakage isn't Evolution's fault. I don't have it switched on; what I have is a directory server available which Evolution can search through. I've now successfully sent an email with that attempt at autocomplete, but I'm only 1/4, so I removed the directory server as an autocomplete folder; hopefully that will fix the problem. Ugh. > > Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? > > Yeah. A combination of anything that uses flat text files and cvs. I don't think that's going to happen. I might as well go back to using my Palm for everything, even though it's basically extra work, just because it's such a PITA to use the machines separately. Again, ugh.
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 01:50 on 04 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Mon, 3 May 2004 23:54:58 +0100, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxx.xxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? > > Yeah. A combination of anything that uses flat text files and cvs. Though if you're looking for compatibility with Apple iCal, Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird may be the thing: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ Talks iCalendar and WebDAV and FTP. May still be alpha-quality though. -- Yoz
From: Daniel Pittman Date: 02:35 on 05 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Tue, 4 May 2004, Yoz Grahame wrote: > On Mon, 3 May 2004 23:54:58 +0100, Matthew Garrett > <mjg59@xxxx.xxxx.xxx> wrote: > >> > Anyone got any linux calendaring recommendations? >> >> Yeah. A combination of anything that uses flat text files and cvs. > > Though if you're looking for compatibility with Apple iCal, Mozilla > Calendar/Sunbird may be the thing: > http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ > > Talks iCalendar and WebDAV and FTP. May still be alpha-quality though. I *hate* Mozilla calendar. I tried to get it to work sanely with an iCal system, for a while, and boy does it suck. A couple of the calendar download attempts didn't work. I was left with an entry in the list of calendars that wouldn't do anything, but carefully animated a little icon telling me how busy they were doing nothing. You couldn't delete them, though, oh no. Because they were busy. Yes, busy, because the download hadn't worked but some stupid internal state was wrong. Which, incidentally, happened every time the thing was restarted. So, even killing it off didn't help because it would try to grab them again the next time. I also hate the fact that the developers felt that the best way to deal with downloading an iCal file that was fully valid, but contained no events, was to pop up a dialog box containing the downloaded data. Not, say, to store the calendar with no events. Not even to pop up a useful warning like "hey, this file had no events", but to pop up the iCal content to the user, then refuse to have anything more to do with that iCal source. I hate the fact that the closest they come to modifying a calendar is to allow you to HTTP PUT the complete file after every change. I hate the fact that there is *no* way to schedule an update of a remote calendar at all. I hate the fact that it gets awfully pissy if you want to remove the local calendar, and the remote one happens to have no events, so it displays it's stupid iCal content dialog, then refuses to do much else. It could be described as alpha in the same way that, say, a pallet of bricks could be described as an alpha version of a house... Hateful software. Daniel
From: Luke A. Kanies Date: 15:33 on 05 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards On Wed, 5 May 2004, Daniel Pittman wrote: > I *hate* Mozilla calendar. I tried to get it to work sanely with an > iCal system, for a while, and boy does it suck. Hmm, I believe you've convinced me. :/ Oh well, back to not having a solution, I guess. I suppose I'll try to pull down 1.5 from testing at some point. Luke
From: Luke A. Kanies Date: 00:05 on 04 May 2004 Subject: Re: Evolution is a step backwards Oh, and signature generation works stupidly, too. Evolution doesn't set off your script with any special characters (such as, say, the traditional '-- \n'). Okay, so just modify the script to add those for stupid email clients that can't add them for me. Except you can't add arguments to the script (e.g., --evo), so you have to link it and test $0. Okay, fine. Except now Evolution automatically rewraps the signature, meaning that I can't choose the format, which means that the '-- \n' just gets put as the first three (because the '\n' gets removed) characters on the first line of the signature. So as far as I can tell, if I want to set my signatures off with '-- \n', like I do in about 3 other email clients, I have to do it individually with every email I send, which is pretty stupid. And if I ever want to have a signature whose wrapping I control, I'm SOL.
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