Evolution with mapi plugin?

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 23:27 +1930, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Christopher A. Williams
> <chriswfedora at cawllc.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 08:36 +1930, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> >> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >> > On Mon, 2008-12-15 at 09:01 -0700, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> >> >> If Evolution is so philosophically against HTML formatted messages,
> >> >> why do they then care to be able to render messages sent in this
> >> >> format?
> >> >
> >> > When did it stop having this usually-a-nuisance ability?  I've been able
> >> > to compose messages in HTML using Evolution for as long as I can
> >> > remember.  Granted that the features of HTML it supports are rather
> >> > basic, but then so are many of the mail clients that can read HTML mail.
> >>
> >> It hasn't changed. Apparently some people either think it should be
> >> more complete, or they haven't looked for it carefully enough.
> >
> > Indeed it hasn't changed. And apparently, neither has the attitudes of
> > the "why do I need to send HTML messages" crowd.
> >
> > Reminds me of the folks who fail to understand why VI shouldn't be the
> > only word processor (and I do not mean text editor) anyone would ever
> > need, or like the instructor I ran into on a Solaris based network
> > monitoring product who ranted for an hour as to why the only shell you
> > should ever use was the korn shell (because it was theoretically faster
> > by a few CPU cycles than everything else).
> >
> > Basic is a good assessment of the Evo HTML composer. No control of
> > fonts, and poor support and translation for even basic HTML tasks like
> > ordered lists (they show up as an unordered list where the number "1" is
> > the bullet).
> >
> > So yes - The Evo HTML composer absolutely should be "more complete". In
> > its current state, it is absolutely among the worst of those available
> > in Linux based e-mail clients. But I suppose if you don't care what font
> > gets selected for you, only use bold and italic from time to time, and
> > like big, round circles for unordered lists (or 1's for ordered lists),
> > I guess it would be OK or even pretty good...
> 
> Well I'm glad I made myself clear then.
> 
> IMHO Evo has a number of things that need fixing, including features
> of the UI and even basic stability, *before* the devels waste a lot of
> effort introducing another slew of bugs by trying to be all things to
> all users, especially as the people who *really* need sophisticated
> HTML editing (I accept on faith that they must exist though I've never
> actually met one) can always use an external editor, as I've already
> said.
> 
> The proper solution to this (non)-problem is to allow editing hooks
> such as Kmail has, and/or plugins. Hooks have been requested for many
> years, by myself and others, and not long ago it looked like they
> might actually happen in 2.24, but it was not to be.

I agree there are a bunch of other things that need to be fixed in Evo
besides a good HTML composer, but that doesn't make the need any less of
a problem.

I guess you have the privilege of not having to deal with "the great
unwashed" who routinely send and want to receive HTML e-mail. They also
don't know that the business norm (imposed originally bu MS Outlook) of
top-posting is also bad email etiquette. Hope you don't have to deal
with them either, but most of the one I deal with have titles that start
with the letter "C" or "V" - and they write very big checks. They are
less inclined to write one with your name on it if you openly refuse to
communicate in the language and style they are accustomed to...

I heard rumors that a newer composer plugin for Evo may be in the works
somewhere, but haven't heard anything official on it. We'll see.

-- 
======================
"Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."

-- Albert Einstein