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List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: Addressbook UI
From:       Don Sanders <dsanders () cch ! com ! au>
Date:       1999-07-08 0:21:24
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Rik,

I looked at the NS address book entry editor (ABEE), I think it is inferior to
the MS Outlook Express ABEE which is significantly inferior to the MS Outlook
ABEE. The MS Outlook ABEE includes important fields like birthday and
anniversary and manages to make many fields available for editing in a single
tab without being overly complex, in fact it makes the other ABEEs look crude in
comparision.

As I mentioned earlier I think that 'templatizing' an MS Outlook style ABEE
will be significatntly more challenging than 'templatizing' a simpler ABEE like
the one in Outook Express (or NS). I also think that for the average user
providing a GUI for adding new fields like Outlook does is preferable to
requiring the user to go outside the program and use a text editor to add new
fields.

I do agree that being able to customize the design of the dialogs is a
nice feature, and I can see that it would be very useful for companies and power
users. But I think that the benefits of providing an MS Outlook style ABEE are
of a larger magnitude than those of providing a customizable but simple ABEE
style. I have found having a good look at Outlook to be very informative and it
is a result of doing so that I come to this conclusion. I did make a conscious
decision to drop developing an MS Outlook Express style ABEE and develop an MS
Outlook style one instead (I announced my decision to do so on this list).

If you really want a customizable ABEE GUI then great, but I think it should be
capable of handling an ABEE of MS Outlook style complexity. You could do this by
either starting to code a customizable MS Outlook sytle ABEE (which would mean
you will be duplicating the 2 1/2 weeks worth of work I have put into my ABEE)
or you can wait a day or two for me to get my code into a state that is
suitable for peer review and send it to you.

Don,
(Feeling a little frustrated)

> -------- Addressbook UI ------------
> It looks like we're pretty much agreed that the kab UI is pants and should be
> replaced in some way.
> How should the addressbook UI work ?
> These are our options:
> -------
> 
> 1. No UI.
> 
> 2. A UI that only accepts fields we decide upon. This would have some tabs
> for entering common data plus a spreadsheet-like tab to edit less common
> fields. Don is currently working on this.
> 
> 3. A UI that is built from a specification and adaptable. This could be built
> from a KConfig file (Rik has some example code working that produces a dialog
> identical to Netscape Messenger's). This might be more tricky though...
> 
> -------
> The UI SHOULD be used from every KDE base application to provide consistency.
> The UI MAY be used from every KDE base application but may also be ignored.
> This way apps get to make their own.
> A UI that is adaptable so that an application can ask for the kind it wants,
> doing something like specifying the fields it wants to be available to edit.
> -------

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