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Evolution 0.3 Released 199

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-to-keep-an-eye-on dept.
aleksey notes that HelixCode announced Evolution 0.3. With all the Napster-related news flooding us lately, it's nice to see some good news. Evolution is making great progress, and I'm probably not the only one itching for just enough stability to use it for a few days.
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Evolution 0.3 Released More

Evolution 0.3 Released

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  • I can't tell if the mailer is just a pop/imap front end from the pages though... or is it something "special"...

    Either way it looks pretty damn good.
  • I WILL READ MY MAIL WITH MUTT [orgmutt.org] FOREVER. Or until I can use Evolution remotely as easily as i can mutt (or elm or pine)

  • I'm sorry... (Score:3)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:36AM (#898067)
    But I visited the website, and I can't quite figure out what evolution is, or what it has to do with napster. Something about GNOME? Perhaps CmdrTaco should give a little bit more background on his stories. Just another sentence fragment, like "..evolution, the automatic animated background generator for gnome, .."
    ---

  • Screenshots? (Score:4)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:36AM (#898068)
    Where are the pics?

    As I understand it, Evolution will be a Outlook replacement--that is, you can use Evolution on Linux to connect to an Exchange server. You can see your email, your contacts, your schedule, etc.

    I'm very very interested in this. From my sig (today and over the past couple of months) you can tell that my company has a server that runs on Linux (and Tru64 and AIX) that you can connect to from Exchange and Outlook on Windows. Unfortunately we can't do the Outlook specific stuff yet (contacts, task list, calendar/schedule, etc). Hopefully being able to use/view/test the Evolution code will help us there.

    Actually, all that Outlook-stuff is really done in the MAPI driver. The server doesn't really have to know anything (except for the workgroup stuff like sharing schedules). My question for the Evolution team is: Are you going to release a separate "MAPI driver for Linux" piece?
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

  • File format? (Score:5)

    by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:37AM (#898069) Homepage

    There doesn't seem to be much mention about how this stores mail. One of the (very few) things that was nice about Balsa was that it used libmutt to store mail. So, I could access my email from either Balsa or Mutt, without worrying about one even subtly messing it up for the other, and it working seamlessly from both. Which is nice when I had to ssh to my box from work (and I send most email from xterm -e mutt in X anyway...).

    Is there any hope of accessing Evolution's data files from a console-based program with any grace at all? Or, once I start using it, do I always have to have an X session available to use it?
  • You bring up a good point,and I would like to use Evolution for remote purposes. However, there are a few things you can do.
    First off, you can setup remote X sessions so you can have your X server running at work, and use Evolution at home, from work.
    Second, there are interests for Evolution to have a web front-end that would integrate into Evolution. I could see them doing this really well because it would call wombat, the same stuff which Evolution itself calls. From what I know, there isn't development on this...yet. But I'm sure someone will spare the code.
    I will switch to Evolution in the future, but I do feel very much the same way that you do about this.

  • This is wonderful news. Having worked a year at my current job, I can definitely say that anything that replaces Outlook/Exchange with something better is welcome here.

    I just want to be sure of one thing: Evolution can show me the full mail headers easily, right? (The main reason, other than server problems, that I don't like Outlook; some versions I can't find the full headers, and other versions make me jump through hoops to get to them.)

  • Try reading the first link [helixcode.com] on the announcement page. It gives a pretty decent explanation.
  • First off, you can setup remote X sessions so you can have your X server running at work, and use Evolution at home, from work.

    Seriously? Good luck getting an X session through your corporate firewall (you have to be able to access the IP of your workstation from your home machine - not only does this imply that your workstation actually has to have a public IP address (and not just a 192.168 internal IP), but you also have to convince your sysadmin to open up the firewall just so you can use thier bandwidth to run a remote X session from home.).

    Just ssh there and use mutt/pine/elm...
  • Oh, there are the pics. Follow the link to the main Evolution page, then follow the links to the various pieces (Mail, Calendar, etc).

    Also, no MAPI. I thought Miguel's interview from a while back mentioned that Evolution would support MAPI, but obviously I'm mis-remembering.
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

  • It'll help Linux in the office (Score:4)

    by Dan Hayes ( 212400 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:46AM (#898075)

    Much as Outlook comes in for a lot of flak here on /. thanks to its interesting way of dealing with security, it is a very nice piece of software which makes dealing with work a hell of a lot easier. With all of the "productivity" features that it includes it couldn't fail to be a hit with PHB's everywhere and since it's PHBs that get to buy the software (unfortunately) many of us have to use at work, any alternative is going to need to give an equivalent set of features.

    From what information there is on the website it appears as though this is what Evolution provides. What does this mean? It means that it's another piece of software which contributes to the possibility of your boss choosing Linux instead of Windows for their desktop machines. We now have an office suite and a "productivity" mail client, and these are two of the most essential elements of the modern office desktop.

    So despite all of Linux's other strengths, this program is likely to be one of the things that gets Linux into offices. Which, in the long run, can only be a good thing.

  • I hope you are taking the piss.
    Well if you have never heard of evolution where have you been?

    I fully understand the subject of this story but i can see your point. A news article should be easy to read and understood by anybody.

  • We like the Linux clones of MS products though.

    Not sure why. They're generally an imitation of a half-assed interface, rather than just the original half-assed interface...

    It probably has to do with the fact that up until now, Netscape Mail has been the premier X Email client.

    I think you can understand why people are looking forward to this.

  • Re:File format? (Score:3)

    by battery841 ( 34855 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:48AM (#898078) Homepage
    From my experience with CVS releases of Evolution, the file format seems compatible with other applications. I have copied my mbox (very important to me, 2000 some emails), into the Evolution directory so it was in a folder called Read. I loaded Evolution and loaded the Read folder, which displayed that file. It showed my 2000 some emails perfectly. I was able to read some old emails. It even thread them for me (threading isnt properly working totally right now). I haven't taken an Evolution email box and had mutt open it. But let me try that now. When I try to load it, it says "Mailbox is unchanged". I am not totally sure what that means. I will look into this, and possibly pester the developers to make it compatible :)
  • Very nice looking. Infact its pretty much the same looking at Outlook.

    Hang on. Is that all we are doomed to thesedays? Having Linux programs that look the same as Microsofts? What I mean is, can't we go for a different look at all?

    Yes, MS have pilfered ideas from other people and applications - but do we have to go writing Linux applications that look *exactly* the same as Microsofts?

    Don't we have any good designers of our own that can come up with something a bit more original? Or are we doomed to just following whatever Mr Gates' company does?

    At the end of the day I don't mind it looking the same as Microsofts efforts, but sometimes it would be nice to see a bit of originality break through.

    --Silver

    --

  • For all you Debian fans (Score:4)

    by Carl ( 12719 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:50AM (#898080) Homepage
    Add deb http://spidermonkey.helixcode.com/evolution/distri butions/Debian/ ./ to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

    Do apt-get update

    And apt-get install evolution

    (Assuming you have already installed Helix Gnome. Just add deb http://spidermonkey.helixcode.com/distributions/de bian unstable main to sources.list otherwise.)

    Have Fun!

  • Obviously, you've never used SSH. It enables X forwarding over secure channels. Hopefully your firewall admin allows ssh outbound. Once you have that, you can ssh to your home machine (possibly through a bastion host/firewall) machine and then open an X windows session. At that point , you can run anything from an xterm to gimp (ghad that would be slow!).
  • On my version of Lookout (98), you have to go to Tools->Options and the headers show up in a little read-only text window inside the dialog. It does make it kind of a pain in the butt to forward spam to Spam Cop.
  • On my version of Lookout (98), you have to go to Tools->Options and the headers show up in a little read-only text window inside the dialog. It does make it kind of a pain in the butt to forward spam to Spam Cop.

  • Talking to Exchange (Score:5)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:58AM (#898084)
    Much as I hate Exchange, I hope that a high priorty for Evolution is to talk to it using it's native/proprietary protocol. Many companies run it in this mode with IMAP turned off, leaving people like me who run Linux completely out of luck for email. We really need an application for Linux to access an Exchange server running in this mode, fetchmail seems to have some sort of support for Exchange, but it is not well documented and I think it is targeted at some sort of buggering that M$ has done to IMAP.

  • Out of all the current applications in development, Evolution is probably the one which I'm most eagerly awaiting. In day-to-day usage, I'm stuck with Lotus Notes, which increasingly is a)chewing up my memory (40MB+ at startup) and b) keeping me tied to Windows NT, although I have plans to investigate running it under Wine - I have seen it done successfully so there is hope there.

    But that doesn't remove my major gripe with Lotus Notes - that of its rather painful UI. While it manages to provide better functionality under the V5 client, an option to move my calendaring and email off that platform onto something like Evolution would be a godsend. Having played with Unix for the last 10 years or so, and having gravitated from a platform where small was beautiful (RiscOS) before that, the idea of large monolithic everything-in-one packages (like Lotus Notes - database interogator, mail, calendaring and web browser) really doesn't make any sense to me. In my opinion, these large packages are more an excuse to lock the user onto one platform whereas most experienced users simply want their applications to be able to work happily alongside each other and exchange data.

    So seeing Evolution supporting RFC 2445,2446 and 2447 looks like being a good start for interoperability. If this can interface seemlessly with MS Exchange and Lotus Notes servers, it will free legions of users to choose the platform they want to use.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • In the FAQ, they mention that they're working on open protocols first, and hope to introduce support for proprietary systems like Exchange and Domino later.
  • You're right, copyright infringment is not theft. But it's a distinction that makes no difference. Both result in financial loss to the owner of the property.
    --

  • I did not know that. But the key question now, is how can I get this working on windows, trying to run a remote Linux application =) Is there an X server app that supports this?

    (Forced into using Word and Scrotus Notes...)
  • er, Notes.

    Sorry 'bout that

  • How about Novell GroupWise as well? While not the most popular mail/task/schedule client, it has quite a few users as well.
  • hope to introduce support for proprietary systems like Exchange and Domino later.

    This might be a mistake. There are many who would finally make the switch from win9x/NT on their desktop to Linux if they could have full access to the Exchange Server. I can get my mail from exchange through POP3, but I have to go to the exchange web gateway to update my calendar manually, when I get meeting requests.
    --

  • How about work on GNOME instead? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't see what the point of Evolution is, if Gnome is going to be flaky as dandruff. No, this isn't flamebait, but right now Gnome-1.2 crashes at just about *everything*. I can't even change my window manager because Control-Center dies before I can do anything. The guys at KDE at least got it stable before working on an office suite. So did Microsoft. When will Gnome developers stop putting fluff in the project and finish the damn thing first?
  • My company uses Microsoft Exchange (or Lotus Notes). Will I be able to replace my Windows machine with a Linux machine running Evolution?

    We will support as many (useful) open protocols as we can, but the first release will most likely not be able to interoperate with all of the features of various closed proprietary systems.

    Beyond that, I have no idea. Personally, I use Exchange webmail to access my mail from OpenBSD and Be, so I'm content to wait until they have something worthwhile to download.

  • Re:Outlook vs. Evolution (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    check out Bynari's TradeXCH and TradeServer. TradeXCH is a replacement for Outlook that works with MS Exchange servers, and Bynari TradeServer is a Exchange server replacement for Outlook. The LGPL client TradeClient is for TradeServer too! They are all for Linux. http://www.bynari.com

  • Re:Screenshots? (Score:5)

    by Griim ( 8798 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:18AM (#898095) Homepage
    As I understand it, Evolution will be a Outlook replacement


    Does this mean it will allow email the ability to delete stuff and make disastrous, system-wide changes, or will this still be based on the Honor System?

    • Wanna run Linux but gotta support Exchange?
    What if my company runs an Exchange server, and I'm looking for an Outlook alternative on my (company imposed) Win32 box?

    That is, are there any other mail clients for win32 that can understand the Exchange mail protocol? Or, wishfully thinking, will Evolution be ported to Win32 some day?

    Alex Bischoff
    ---

  • VNC (Score:2)

    by / ( 33804 )
    Check out VNC [att.com]. It does support [att.com] ssh, and it doesn't have a lot of the overhead you'd expect it to.
  • Just how the hell is this a financial loss to them?

    Simple. You didn't buy the CD those songs came from.


    --

  • Unreleased libraries? (Score:3)

    by Roast Beef ( 2298 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:24AM (#898099) Homepage
    I like this: "Please be aware that Evolution 0.3 depends on a large number of unreleased and rapidly-changing libraries." "If you happen to have Helix GNOME installed, then most of these packages are already installed for you." Ooh, that sounds stable.
  • In Evolution 0.2, I couldn't find a way to view the headers (and I didn't see anything in the 0.3 announcement). Of course, it's got that open-sourceness thing going for it, so if it's not a feature by, say, 0.5, I'll put it in myself..

    I was really impressed with 0.2 (though I never got it to compile..). I just hope some packages pop up soon on helix-update..
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
  • Why is it that no software project can be a project unless it incorporates at least five different tasks, one of which must be reading mail?
  • There is no way to deny many (most) of the interface choices were built on copying outlook.

    Maybe microsoft really did innovate some stuff, and as much as we hate to admit it, it's not bad (good enough to copy)

    hopefully this will end up as a great email program which is better than outlook because it's open source, and has actual security, not just some ripoff made to be "almost" a product everyone claims to hate.

    ________

  • They really need to do something about their website. I'm not likely to buy any product based on zero information, and just a claim that it will work. Digging a little deeper, it would appear that their Exchange client requires a component to be installed on the Exchange server, which makes it largely useless to most people, who are unwilling/unable to make changes to their server.
  • Well, MAPI is a proprietary protocol. Adapting our Free email clients would require a bunch of reverse engineering (remember Samba ?) and would be of little use, since we already have nice and open protocols.

    If you want to use Evolution (or pine, or whatever) with an Exchange server, you can spawn the POP3/IMAP/SMTP "connectors" on the server. You can use Outlook this way too.

    As for the extra features you might miss, I think it'd be smarter to use other tools. ;)

    --
  • I just went to check it out. No screenshots or real features list. Only a link to buy for $59...hmmmm...
  • This is likely being done for good reason, mostly that they want to get something useful out to the masses before they invest effort in implementing complicated, proprietary, and likely (un|mis)documented protocols. After all, while a large number of people have Exchange access, there's an even larger number of *nix hackers who don't need that.
    ----------------------------
  • First of all, everyone wants an outlook clone so they no long have to run Windows at work (I have to have access to the scheduling, and the need for Outlook is the only thing that keeps many tied to Windows).

    Secondly, first you copy a program exactly, and then when it works fiddle around with look & feel!

  • Too much hassle!! (Score:3)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:35AM (#898111)
    Evolution also requires the latest versions of GtkHTML (0.5), Bonobo (0.16), OAF (0.4), GNOME VFS (0.2), GConf (0.5), GNOME Print (0.20), libunicode (0.4) and ORBit (0.5.3).

    I mean, c'mon! Can't some of these libraries be a little more integrated. It really does get a bit much to wait for all these to compile, not to mention the dependencies that *they* have. This is my main criticism with Gnome. It's just too complicated to compile and install. KDE is much cleaner in this respect.
  • I don't know what Evolution is either, and all it would have taken was five or six words to keep me from wasting my time (or hitting a gold mine) by clicking on an external web link.

    Every time Slashdot posts a software release without even the slightest hint of what the software is, what it does, or where it's from, I laugh. It's like a birth announcement in the paper that looks like this:

    "6 pounds, 3 ounces. 11:42 AM. Healthy. Red hair. Missing right index fingernail."

    There's something missing there - the name of the kid! That's about useless to me, because I have absolutely zero idea whose kid it is. The software equivalent is NOT the manufacturer, it's the purpose of the software. Don't overwhelm me with useless information.
  • be sure to check out this picture [widomaker.com] - small but funny, you'll enjoy it.
  • The latest versions of Fetchmail understand MAPI, and I think it's been ported to cygwin, so it will compile under Win32+Cygwin. That will at least allow you to transfer your Exchange mail to a different mail server.

    Alternately, if it's important enough to you, Fetchmail is GPL, Evolution is GPL, it's a SMOP to port the MAPI code from Fetchmail to Evolution. Go for it ;-)

    ----
  • I think you have just demonstrated the problem and point of the whole issue with your one shout. Napster and Gnutella (forgive my ignorance on Scour) are not thieves! They may be aiding and abetting thieves but that is a very different issue, and if they are so are ISPs and backbone providers (to name a few) so why don't we just shut down the net and stop this thievery once and for all? While we're at it lets also ban:
    1. Evolution, you can attach copyrighted material and route it over the internet to another mail user or a newsgroup.
    2. Search Engines, they can help you find information on everything from cracking to explosions.
    3. Baggy clothes, easier to shoplift in
    4. Bags, easier to carry the takings from the bank job
    5. Matches, easier to set your boss on fire
    6. Newspapers, easier to discover where the President will be to assasinate him
    Pure and simply, the problem is not about whether it is legal or not (and it is NOT) to download and/or distribute the copyrighted music of an artist with no permission. The problem is whether or not we will let a corporate industry dictate how we can use our computers, the US DOJ is rejecting the concept of Micosoft having this kind of control (and at least they are computer people), why are they considering handing it to a conglomerate monopoly instead? I guess it must be about the money again, either the massive revenues the RIAA members generate or the massive revenues the RIAA's lawyers generate.

  • Some Proof? (OT) (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "This is a genuine e-mail from the main receptionist from Sun Microsystems, and went out to all corporate employees."

    To: All Corporate Employees
    Subject: Copier!
    Date: Thursday, July 24, 2000 12:48pm

    PLEASE PLEASE please please please - I am begging - keep any and all paper clips away from the copier! We have had two service calls in the last few days to remove paper clips, staples and a binder clip from the innards of the copier. PLEASE be really really really careful around the copier. Especially the document handler, which seems to suck clits like a vacuum cleaner. Thanks for your help.
  • Yes, since if the person looking for a client has the authority to change the Exchange server configuration, they could turn on existing POP3 or IMAP support in Exchange, and avoid having to buy any additional proprietary software.

    ----
  • Perhaps it would be a good idea for IBM/Lotus to look into helping these guys out. There are a lot of people (including me) who get mail through Lotus Notes. (actually, I've set up a forwarding address, so the Notes server sends mail to Sendmail on my box. No retrieval necessary..)

    Anyway, even at IBM, there are a lot of people on AIX or Linux who need to run some sort of VNC-ish program to access mail through an NT box running somewhere deep inside the building.

    Just a thought.
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
  • It's not a final release. All of those libraries will be a part of Gnome soon enough. Once Evolution is in a final release you'll just have to run helix updater and click on Evolution.

    --Ben

  • Re:Why is is that. . . (Score:3)

    by Stephen VanDahm ( 88206 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:53AM (#898127)

    if (($#tasks >= 4) && ($reads_mail == 1)) {
    $program = "project" ;
    } else {
    $program = "hobby" || $program = "toy";
    }




    ========
    Stephen C. VanDahm

  • Evolution / Exchange (Score:5)

    by CountZer0 ( 60549 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:01AM (#898130) Homepage
    This is a common mis-conception.

    Evolution is a groupware package, just like Outlook, Lotus Notes, et al. It has mail, calandering, contact management, etc... Therefore, some people call it an Outlook replacement... It is. IF you don't use any proprietary Exchange features.

    It is NOT Outlook/Exchange compatable any more than ANY POP-3/IMAP and SMTP client is Exchange compatible. It does NOT impliment the "native" Exchange protocols. It WILL NOT import free/busy information, contact lists, network folders or any other "Exchange only" features from an Exchange server. It does NOT interact with Exchange in any way other than as a simple SMTP/POP-3/IMAP client.

    It uses it's own OPEN protocols to deal with the groupware functionality.

    It also happens to LOOK a lot like Outlook.

    Again, Evolution is NOT "Exchange" compatable any more than ANY POP-3/IMAP/SMTP mailer.

    So... If you want a good standards based groupware suite, Evolution will be a good bet. If you want an Exchange client, your gonna hafta stick with Outlook till someone reverse engineers the proprietary protocols.
  • Exchange's native protocol is, if I recall correctly, basically a bad IMAP implementation with a proprietary authentication scheme called NTLM. NTLM is supported by Fetchmail [tuxedo.org], which is under the GPL just like Evolution. Expect to see someone (maybe even you ;-) port Exchange Server support to Evolution in the not-too-distant future.

    ----
  • Having Linux programs that look the same as Microsofts? What I mean is, can't we go for a different look at all?

    You mean, like Enlightenment? Or the GIMP? Or CSCMail? Or Blackbox, Mozilla, or numerous other Free Software projects? Give me a break. There's plenty of innovation.

    At the end of the day I don't mind it looking the same as Microsofts efforts, but sometimes it would be nice to see a bit of originality break through.

    Is it much of a surprise that many GNU/Linux apps close MS ones when tons of people say "I'd switch to Linux, except I need (Word|Outlook|Excel|IE5|Dreamweaver|Quicken)". Besides, it's much easier and faster to clone existing technologies than to invent something yourself. Last but not least, if you think Linux needs more innovative applications, get off your ass and go code them yourself! That's what I'm doing!

  • Lotus has apparently never been particularly interested in making their crappy software interoperate with anything. And IBM has been less particularly interested in helping the internal people in having it interoperate with anything. They pretty much made it clear that hell would freeze over before they turned the imap support on. If you were an internal UNIX user, your only choice was Notes 4 for AIX, which has an even worse interface than the Windows and OS/2 versions.

  • Re: Talking to Exchange (Score:3)

    by fireproof ( 6438 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:27AM (#898152) Homepage
    I hate being forced to use the horrible monstrosity! I sincerly hope that MAPI (MS version of IMAP) goes the way of the Macarena!

    Might I point out that if it indeed does go the way of the Macarena, it will start appearing at wedding receptions everywhere?

    Of course, it might fare better in the hands of drunken revelers than it does in the hands of MS programmers . . .

    -------

  • My #1 Absolutely-gotta-have-it mail feature (Score:5)

    by DG ( 989 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:28AM (#898153) Homepage Journal
    I will switch to Evolution - no matter how flaky and unstable it might be - if it supports seamless and invisible PGP encryption.

    Here's what I want:

    1) Store all my mail PGP encrypted in the mail file. If I get unencrypted mail, then encrypt it BEFORE it hits the hard disk.

    2) When I start the program, prompt me for my pass phrase, and cache it for this session or for a user-definable timeout period.

    3) PGP sign all outgoing mail

    4) Add public keys to my keyring as seamlessly and invisibly as possible.

    5) If I send mail to someon for whom I have a public key, encrypt it BY DEFAULT.

    The biggest problem with using mail encryption is that the interface is such a pain in the ass. If Evolution hides all the dirty details, then I can start encrypting my mail on a regular basis - and if the encryption support is really good and enabled BY DEFAULT, then we get the "fax machine effect".

    Are you listening, Evolution developers?

  • Evolution stores mail in any of a large number of ways, including as Unix mbox files.

    --
    Ian Peters

  • Re:File format? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, Evolution can use mbox format, but it can also use its own fast searchable database format (actually, I'm not sure whether it's really "its own" or borrowed from something else. But in any case, it's not Mutt, MH, mbox, or some other quasi-standard for mail storage).

    But you should still be able to use a console-based program: Evolution is totally componantized, and should eventually have a console front-end to the backend componants (there are already people looking into creating one, although I only heard about this from a previous slashdot post so who knows).

  • True. If I were in a position to dictate corporate IS policy, I would certainly try to find a better, more modular solution. As it stands, and as much as we might dislike it, Outlook/Exchange is a very good corporate communications system. It is one of the only reasons I haven't switched my desktop to linux/freebsd.


    --

  • Evolution is currently available for Debian from Helix Code (see another message which gives the apt lines), and will be available for the RPM distributions we support within the next few (be lenient on what few means, please!) hours.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I've always had misgivings about the idea that charging for support is morally superior than charging for proprietary software. Personally, I'd rather pay for software that works as it supposed to and is well documented than to get something for free (or even for Free) and then have to pay unexpected costs to get it to work. It seems to me that the Red Hat model creates a disincentive to make and package software properly in the first place.

    I apologize if I'm wrong about this but -- isn't that possibly part of what's going on here? Gnome needs to be excessively difficult to install now that Helix, the project's leader's company, has built a business model around providing an easier installation. Certainly, there's no incentive for Miguel to make basic Gnome installation easier.
  • When I try to load it, it says "Mailbox is unchanged"

    All it means, if I remember correctly, is that mut opened the mailbox and did not find any new mail there.

    So, I guess you may say that you successfully proved the inter-operability of Evo and mutt.
  • Evolution is far more than just a pretty front end. Evolution is actually a shell which embeds several bonobo components, including including mail, contact management, a calendar, etc. It uses gtkhtml to compose your mail, giving you the choice (not: optional!) to send HTML formatted mail. It has highly advanced filtering, including the vFolder, a psuedo-folder based on a query of your mail (allowing you to create a "folder" with mail that matches certain parameters, gathered from other actual folders you may have).

    For more information, please read the website at http://www.helixcode.com/apps/evolution.php3

    --
    Ian Peters
  • This doesn't help me, as I don't use packages (see my post below). This isn't a complaint directed Helixcode or Evolution in particular. I think that Gnome just suffers from bloat in general. There are just so many libraries needed to compile even the most basic applications, and Gnome itself. Plus the fact that libraries get used while they are still in heavy development and then later get scrapped (gnorba(?) and oaf spring to mind here). It appears to me, as an end user that just wants to use a few Gnome apps, that Gnome is not very well organised in it's use of code and libraries.
  • Evolution is actually a shell which embeds several bonobo components, including including mail, contact management, a calendar, etc.
    Maybe I'm a dinosuar, but I do not at all understand why people want a mail program, calendar, et, all in one application. I want a good mail program - that's all. (I use exmh, which is pretty good.) If I wanted calendar or address book programs (I actually find dead trees better for my purposes, YMMV), I'd want programs that did just those things, not mail too.

    Integrated programs are like Swiss Army knives - convenient, sure, but the saw on my SAK is not as good as the big-ass saw in the tool cabinet, the screwdrivers don't compare to the dozens of different sizes and shapes in the toolbox, the knife isn't as big or sharp as the chef's knife in the kitchen. Tools which do only one job can be much more powerful.

    Good programs do one thing and do it well.

  • Re:Too much hassle!! (Score:3)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @06:06AM (#898175)
    I won't tell you you're wrong, of course, but there are different ways to view this. In our minds, code reuse is a good thing. So we do take advantage of the different libraries written, and increasingly, the different components available through bonobo.

    Unfortunately, we do have to use development libraries from time to time. Evolution is in many ways a test of the basic bonobo architecture, which will be used increasingly in the future. By heavily testing it, we can find flaws in the design, and fix them, before large numbers of applications run into the same problem, and thus produce a better product in the end.

    Some of the other libraries, although written with evolution in mind, are useful for other projects (I'm thinking of GtkHtml when I say this). Thus, it makes perfect sense to develop it in parallel, but make it available in a separate package, which allows other application authors to use it during their development, without having to track evolution.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I agree with you. Code reuse is always a good thing. I understand *why* it is this way. All I'm saying is that it doesn't make for a particulalry pleasant experience when compiling and installing Gnome. I guess a lot of people use packages, and aren't affected by this. If everyone had to compile, I'm sure you'd get more complaints. As it is, I seem to be the only one. Oh well, nothing new there... ;)

  • Re:Evolution looks pretty good... (Score:3)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @06:14AM (#898183)
    Good programs do one thing and do it well.

    I understand where you're coming from, because I've had to use far too many large, bloated programs in the past that attempted to do and be everything for me, and it sucks.

    Where Evolution is different is its use of the bonobo component architecture (something that more and more GNOME programs will begin to do). With Evolution, the different features are actually separate components, which communicate only through a well defined interface. If you only use the mail features, and not the calendar and addressbook, those components aren't loaded. However, when you're writing a mail message and need to look up an email address, an address book is a logical place to look, and a component architecture gives the level of integration required to let the two communicate, without forcing bloat onto users.

    --
    Ian Peters

  • Lotus has apparently never been particularly interested in making their crappy software interoperate with anything.

    I'd normally agree with that whole-heartedly. But intriugingly the main proponent of the RFC's mentioned is from the Lotus Development corporation. So I'd guess that Lotus Notes will almost certainly speak this RFC. Which makes the hopes for a client to communicate with the Lotus Notes servers that much more likely.

    If you were an internal UNIX user, your only choice was Notes 4 for AIX, which has an even worse interface than the Windows and OS/2 versions.

    Don't get me started on Notes AIX ...

    Also I'd like to see a native linux program speak to Lotus Notes servers in order to send a metaphorical rocket in response to the lack of a native Lotus Notes client for Linux.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • http://www.helixcode.com/imagewrap.php3?image=apps /evolution-screenshots/evoluti on_inbox.jpg [helixcode.com]

    Look at the handshake icon for the Contact list! What the hell is that?

  • Re:Talking to Exchange (Score:3)

    by rcw-work ( 30090 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @06:35AM (#898190)
    I sincerly hope that MAPI (MS version of IMAP) goes the way of the Macarena!

    MAPI is not an over-the-wire protocol. It is an API that Windows software uses to hook in with the MS Windows Messaging dlls.

    The thing is, the only current implementation (AFAIK) of the Exchange Server wire protocol is in a gaggle of MAPI dlls, so for Windows apps you have to use the MAPI (Mail API) to get to any Exchange Server.

    Anyway, the Exchange Server wire protocol is RPC-based (MS seems to be following this pattern for a large number of things now, SMS, most remote admin through the MMC, etc...).

    RPC-based protocols aren't exactly easy to figure out, they're basically a set of function calls that you'll have to snoop on and reimplement one by one.

    Blame Sun :)

  • be sure to watch that ./ in the end of the /etc/apt/sources.list file, i.e. the line you are adding MUST be this:

    deb http://spidermonkey.helixcode.com/evolution/distri butions/Debian/ ./

  • I agree with you mostly, but unfortunately I work in a large corporation and am but a lowly engineer with no control over our IT department's decisions. I have Linux running on my computer at work (with Win98 in another partition), and have gotten everything I do here to work under Linux (even PowerPoint and Word work under WINE!), except Outlook. And this company makes extensive use of Outlook's integrated calendaring for scheduling meetings. It's actually a pretty handy feature; too bad Outlook 2000 and Win98 make such an unstable system. If I could just get a program that lets me do that integrated calendaring like Outlook, I would never have to boot into Windoze again. It's not that anyone really loves Outlook, it's that we require its features. It's the same reason Samba exists; there are much better ways of sharing files over a network, but we're forced to work with the MS hordes.
  • My question for the Evolution team is: Are you going to release a separate "MAPI driver for Linux" piece?

    If you actually looked at the Evolution website, you'd have the answers to your questions. NO, Eveolution will NOT allow you to connect to an Exhcange server (at first). It is NOT just a mere replacement for Outlook.

    ---
  • I really don't think that MAPI is just IMAP + NTLM. There's just far too many Exchange-isms in MAPI that don't have any parallel in IMAP.

    BTW, if someone has coded an open version of NTLM, it sure would be nice if they submitted it to Mozilla.
    --

  • Re:My #1 Absolutely-gotta-have-it mail feature (Score:4)

    by LetterRip ( 30937 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @06:44AM (#898196)
    One of the hackers already has GnuPG mostly working 'automagically' with Evolution, it might even be integrated by the next release. (See the mailing list archive of evolution-hackers@helixcode.com)

    LetterRip
  • It didn't get all the mail that was in my Inbox. When I click New Message nothing happens. And then it segfaulted.
  • I don't think this is really an issue as the really smart ones don't use Exchange at all, the medium smart ones at lease enable IMAP so that it is accessible to different clients or from the Net, the stupid ones install it out of the box and leave it in it's native mode. The problem is that there are far too many stupid ones out there and it's them that most of us have to deal with. A lot of places will let you get away with using Linux if you do it quietly and don't rock the boat. Unfortuately going to your IT department and saying "Please enable IMAP on your mail server so that I can get at it from my Linux client" falls largely under Rocking the boat :)
  • Really, the only thing Outlook/Exchange brings to the "corporate communications" market is a pretty user interface, and a nicely functional calendar module.

    Beneth the skin, the mail functionality is only so-so, the search engine sucks eggs, it's virtually impossible to effectively customize Outlook or develop your own applications, the security is braindead, and the server is unstable and doesn't scale worth crap.

    Unfortunately, because of the lack of calendaring software options (NetWare-specific Groupwise, "legacy" iPlanet/Netscape, and expensive/complex/ugly Lotus, and nothing from the open protocol world), lots of shops end up *having* to buy Exchange.

    But the only way you can cost-justify any of these things is to effectively use the groupware functionality, which is so braindead in Ex/Out as to almost be worthless. Microsoft has lots of big plans for this market, but to date, they've really delivered squat.

    Anyway, lots of people use Exchange, but it's just one of those things that nobody is totally happy about, except for Microsoft who gets an easy sale in many shops.
    --
  • Where Evolution is different is its use of the bonobo component architecture (something that more and more GNOME programs will begin to do). With Evolution, the different features are actually separate components, which communicate only through a well defined interface. If you only use the mail features, and not the calendar and addressbook, those components aren't loaded.

    With the VM system in Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, BSD/OS, OpenBSD, and pretty much all the comercial Unixices code pages that are not touched are not loaded (or at least give way to other pages that are touched). Making that pretty much a non-issue.

    The real issue is, how hard is it to make a new component that has the address book's interfce, and make Evolution use it? And is the interface loose enough that that address book can be signifigantly diffrent from the default one?

    I'm guessing the answers are "Yes", and "We hope so". But it would be nice to have something other then my guess...

    without forcing bloat onto users.

    There are many kinds of bloat. A big memory image is only one of them. Big source code is another (having well defined interfaces helps this a lot - not by making the code smaller, but by reducing the amount you need to understand to fix a little bug that's been bothering you, or add a feature you really want). Large numbers of little clicky widgets up on the screen that one might feel they need to klnow about, or lots of docs to read to find where they document the "delete messages with duplicate Message-IDs feature".

    Bloat also has it's upside. Like having that delete dup messages feature. Or having fewer features one feels the need to add.

  • "Maybe I'm a dinosuar, but I do not at all understand why people want a mail program, calendar, et, all in one application."

    The main reason, is that it gives context to your appointments and todos. Thus, you email me a request to add feature foo to project bar. I schedule a todo and due date for it, with action needing to be taken one month from now (scheduling a reminder in calendar...). One month from now a reminder pops up to work on foo. With a single click, the original message pops up, giving me complete information on what I am supposed to do.

    If you only have one or two tasks, deal only with a few people, and they are all fairly long term, then your method works fine. If you coordinate with a couple of hundered people a month (or more), tasks are scheduled days, weeks, months and even years in advance, and the time commitments for tasks varies from half an hour to weeks or months, then a more advanced and integrated methodology is prefered.

    LetterRip

  • Do It Yourself: CFD (Score:3)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Friday July 28, 2000 @07:07AM (#898206) Homepage
    If you want your entire mailbox encrypted, then I strongly suggest you install CFS. See Cryptographic File System under Linux HOW-TO [ailis.de]

    Illustrating:

    • Install CFS.
    • You'd then decide on a directory in which to store the encrypted data. Let's say /home/cbbrowne/Mail/
    • Turn it into a CFS directory, via cmkdir /home/cbbrowne/Mail .

      You'll be asked to make up a password.

    • Then, mount it, via cattach /home/cbbrowne/Mail Mail

      Use the password you made up.

      This mounts the directory on /crypt/Mail If you look in /crypt/Mail, you'll see plain text. If you look in /home/cbbrowne/Mail, you'll see gibberish.

    • Modify your mailer to use /crypt/Mail as the place to store data rather than /home/cbbrowne/somewhere
    This methodology is not entirely flawless; /crypt/Mail is generally accessable to anyone on your host. Some time in the future, Linux may offer Plan 9 style namespaces that would allow mounts to be local to a process, so that the cattach would be local to the process and its children.

    But the overall result is that by having the encryption take place in the separate layer, the mail client doesn't need to have a "security layer," you don't need to debug it, and you don't need to worry about it getting breached.

  • Hmm..

    Unfortunately, there are organizations that disable POP/IMAP/SMTP functionality (well, I know that IBM, for instance, doesn't run POP or IMAP on their Notes servers). What should people in such organizations do? I suppose someone could make an intermediary program to translate between protocols, such as POP<->Notes or IMAP<->Exchange, but that requires Yet Another Dæmon running on your system..
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
  • Whoops.. I see from reading some of the other comments that the Evolution guys plan to support a reasonable number of other protocols. Things will move more smoothly, of course, if the protocols are open. Someone mentioned [slashdot.org] that this may be easy for Notes. I believe that the protocols used by the Pegasus mail suite are also open. (The server costs, and the clients are gratis).
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
  • Actually there are RPM's available. You can use the Helix Updater to get them. They'll be available under "Evolution Preview" in the Helix Updater Mirror list. Or if you want them now, you can scroll down to the bottom of the mirror list and use the Evolution Testing Mirror. I am not responsible for the consequences of your actions, should you choose the latter option. :) If you don't want to use the updater, you can ftp directly to the mirrors. :)
    ----
  • Right now, the libraries you list are somewhat in flux. ORBit probably less so, but the others are pretty much "works in progress."

    If they were "more integrated," then what you would actually have to do is not to "get the latest versions of these libs," but instead "get the latest version of MondoGNOMElib (version 2000.07.28) " which would involve compiling the same, entire set of code.

    By not integrating the libraries, this allows them to "evolve" independently towards stability.

    Thus, if GConf gets stable pretty quickly, then it can do so, the version numbers can stop changing, and you get at least one component that is visibly stable.

    In contrast, by "integrating" them all together, the whole thing becomes a jumble of instability, and you can't tell which pieces are stable and which aren't, because all you know is that the program demanded that you install MondoGNOMElib version 2001.04.01

    KDE is not terribly much cleaner; with the "not quite stable ABI" of G++, you're left with potentially needing to recompile the whole tool chain any time either:

    • G++ gets bumped a version level;
    • libg++ changes versions;
    • libstdc++ changes versions;
    • STL changes version;
    • Qt changes versions;
    • libkde changes versions.
    There is potential that GCC 3.0 will resolve some of this by providing some additional promises as to the ABI interoperability, but that's not there yet.
  • The days when you had to worry about what file format is used to store your mail are over. IMAP is designed to allow you to access your mail folders anywhere, anytime, from any program. In short, IMAP is nothing less than the definitive answer to client lock-in.

    For more information on IMAP, you can read this Linux Gazette article [linuxgazette.com] I wrote two years ago on the subject. It's a bit dated but still mostly relevant.

    Evolution, of course, supports IMAP. I switched to mutt after the 1.2 release added decent IMAP support. I urge you, if you are at all concerned about getting at your mail, to switch to IMAP today and put all those worries behind you forever.

  • "Gnome needs to be excessively difficult to install"

    Gnome is excessively easy to install. Just to helixcode, get helix updater, and it automagically does it for you. Even installing by hand (via ./configure, make && make install), isn't all that difficult. Just read the README, and follow it...)

    as I've been writing this, a bugfix release of evolution has been put out - .3.1 (bandaged jellyfish), so I'm gonna go install the newest version,

    LetterRip
  • right now Gnome-1.2 crashes at just about *everything*. I can't even change my window manager because Control-Center dies before I can do anything.
    Have you sent in bug reports to HelixCode/GNOME describing these issues? I don't have problems like the ones you describe with GNOME 1.2, or even really problems with it in general, but then again my setup is probably not the same as your setup. In the same vein, your setup is probably not like any setup at HelixCode, so I'd bet they're interested in your bug reports.
  • MAPI is *not* a protocol. It's an API (thus the name) for programmers to use messaging systems under Windows, and allow other applications to access their messaging systems. And some other fun stuff.

    Exchange uses it's own protocol for it's groupware and email functionality, but that protocol is not called MAPI.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • "Evolution is the GNOME mailer, calendar, and addressbook application."

    I find it really frustrating to have slashdot articles saying "FoobarWare Version 0.0.2 Is Now Available!" without saying what the FoobarWare project is. By the time something's been out on the street for a while, most people know what the name is (e.g. you don't need to explain what GNOME is), but for early development releases, the developers probably haven't done a big PR campaign and word-of-mouth hasn't spread much beyond the initial crowd of developers and their friends, so nobody knows if FooBarWare is a calendar program or a dessert topping synthesizer.
    So either you skip over the article, or read the first few comments (invariably about the need to fix the bug in the frobnifier routine), or you go slashdot the development site to find the one sentence summary that'd tell you whether you care about the two-paragraph description that gives you a good idea whether you want to read the detailed docs or download the code and start hacking on it.
  • Also, remember that MS has spent a lot of money to figure out what people want. If there is a right solution, maybe it's just possible that MS has gotten close to it. They should have gotten close with the amount they've stolen from everyone else!! Copying an interface isn't necessarily bad, if it is what people know and like.

    Now, when projects start copying the M$ "Damn-the-stability-we-need-features" attitude is when I'll have problems.

  • Should encryption support be pervasive inside applications?

    I would consider that approach less than safe; it is vulnerable to someone deciding that they need to write Yet Another Config File, or otherwise writing out a message in plain text form, thus destroying the would-be security. That's a mere fd = fopen("./tmpmsg", rw); away.

    Furthermore, this does absolutely nothing about securing your AbiWord documents unless the developers thereof go through a separate process of building APIs that integrate in PGP or GPG. Ditto for Gnumeric, and GNote, and Dia, and GnuCash, and, and, ...

    It is quite possible that making your system secure will require doing some things to all of these applications, at some point.

    But it seems to me that it is a wiser move to use encryption at the filesystem level, so that once you log out, access goes away, and where protection is pervasive.

  • Currently Evolution does not have any Exchange support, but we are planning on supporting Exchange in the future.

    We realize this is important and there are a number of ways to fully support Exchange that can be done. We will implement the one that makes most sense. We are aware that the lack of support for Exchange protocols will hinder the adoption of Evolution.

    Miguel.
  • Uhh it's not as great as you make it out to be. All it does is shift responsibility from using a standard mail format into using a standard mail protocol. You gain network capabilities, which is nice, but that is all.
  • If everyone had to compile, I'm sure you'd get more complaints. As it is, I seem to be the only one.

    Isn't it fair enough? If you want *very* easy installation, you use packages. If you want to compile stuff yourself, you live with the difficulty of that process. That sounds like a reasonable choice to me.

    Or, why don't you try *BSD? Don't they have a "make world" that can automatically update *everything* from source in one go?

  • It uses gtkhtml to compose your mail, giving you the choice (not: optional!) to send HTML formatted mail

    Other than this is sounds really good, but PLEASE rethink that crap. HTML is not a suitable or legal format for email. It's bad enough to have all these windows lusers flooding the net with this crap, the absolute LAST thing we need is *nix users doing it too! Come on, we should be setting an example, NOT mindlessly adopting every screwed up so-called "feature" that MS decides to tack onto their bugware!

    Even in the windows world the better email programs (Eudora and Pegasus Mail for instance) do not encourage this nonsense! If you really must have email that is formatted beyond the capabilities of text/plain, the proper way to do this is by sending text/enriched (see RFC 1896 [ohio-state.edu]) NEVER by sending HTML.

    Please, please, reconsider this "feature." This is BAD. For whatever it's worth, I personally, and many people I know, do not think this is a joke. This is a very serious matter. I've been a supporter and a user of the GNOME project and the software it's produced for over a year now, but I will definately have to rethink things if you continue with this, and I know for a fact that I am far from the only one that feels this way. Text/enriched is bad enough, but at least with it the output is still readable in standard mail readers like PINE (if barely.) HTML is over the line.

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