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List:       kde-pim
Subject:    Re: Addressbook UI
From:       Rik Hemsley <rik () rikkus ! demon ! co ! uk>
Date:       1999-07-07 20:57:17
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On 08-Jul-99 Don Sanders wrote:
> 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.

Agreed. It's.. er, shit :)

> 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.

Again, agreed. I was thinking of having some kind of GUI that lets you do this.
Perhaps it was in that dream last night...


> 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).

Good. I have now seen both and the Outlook version is much more powerful, if a
little complex and scary (for certain people).

> 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.

No, I'm not going to start duplicating work. I hacked up my dialog creator in
about half an hour, because I was getting sick of hacking on my ldif + vCard
stuff (lack of namespace understanding was causing me a headache). It works,
but I only really wanted to see if it was possible without spending much time
on it. It's just something I'm interested in for another time.

/me enjoys trying to create a fully working system within half an hour. I think
my brain enjoys the occasional burst of creativity. See the ldif parser and
count the time spent for evidence :)

I'm eagerly awaiting your dialog work. If it's anything like the Outlook UI
I'll be impressed !

> Don,
> (Feeling a little frustrated)

Lay off the coffee and be a little less paranoid ;)

More status:

I've now got a working, fast, base64 codec. Glen Parker has given me some code
that does the work a slightly different way too, and if possible I'll be trying
to get this to work properly as it seems to be slightly faster.

This means if you look at the vCard or ldif parsers, you'll actually be able to
decode any base64 data you see in cards. Quoted-Printable is next.

Cheers,
Rik


--
KDE - Colour outside the lines  : http://www.kde.org
[[without]] - software for KDE  : http://without.netpedia.net

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