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Application: Evolution

Ximian Evolution is an email client program, like Microsoft Outlook. It also manages addresses, takes, and other contact information and can manage one of more calendars. Like many other programs described in this chapter, it is freely distributable and has an open source code published under the General Public License (GPL). Evolution is available for the Linux and UNIX operating systems. It does not run on MS-Windows.

Evolution can be opened either through the GNOME through Menu -> Internet -> Email, or by typing 'evolution' on the command prompt. When this is done for the first time, the application creates a directory called 'evolution' in the user's home directory, where it will store local data. Like Microsoft Outlook, Evolution has a title bar, menu commands, a preview pane and a graphic toolbar for composing, sending, deleting and otherwise manipulating messages. A shortcut bar is part of the default layout, however it is better to use the folder bar instead (View -> Shortcut Bar, View -> Folder Bar). Under the folder bar the options displayed are Summary, Local Folders (Calendar, Contacts, Drafts, Inbox, Outbox, Sent, Tasks and Trash), Other Contacts and Vfolders.

The summary page provides weather and newsfeeds and a summary of mail, appointments and tasks. These can be modified from (Tools -> Summary Settings). Unfortunately there is no weather report website to link to for East Timor (yet). Recommended newsfeeds include the Slashdot, a popular news service for changes in computer technology and the Red Hat Errata page, to keep your operating system up-to-date. From the summary page, the menu commands File, View, Tools and Help are available. The File menu includes commands to make new appointments, new contacts, new contact lists, new mail messages and new tasks (File -> New -> etc). Folders can be manipulated (moved, copied, deleted, renamed) through this menu as well (File -> Folder), the screen can be printed (File -> Print) and mail and addresses from other programs can be imported as well – however, as mentioned previously, not from MS-Outlook and Outlook Express. The Tools command menu also contains a setting for connecting hand-held organizers to Evolution (Tools -> Pilot Settings).

The Calendar folder has an extended menu, which includes File, Edit, View, Actions, Tools and Help. The Graphic Toolbar provides the options for adding a new appointment, new task, printing, deleting, moving to particular dates on the Calendar and display options (Daily, Work Week, Week or Monthly). The same comments apply here to that in the section for Microsoft Outlook concerning what sort of display is best. These can, and should, be modified through the command menu instead (View -> Current View), which also provides the navigation options (View -> Go to Today, Go to Date). Here, the Edit command menu appears for the first time. The commands are the familiar Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete (Edit -> Cut, Edit -> Copy, Edit -> Delete) and appear through all other folder menus. The Actions command menu includes creation of new appointments, all day tasks, new tasks and the useful "publish free/busy information", which opens up a mail message to send calendar information to others. The Tools command includes some rather simple setting options for the Calendar (Tools -> Settings).

The Contacts folder is very simple. Establishing new contacts has already been discussed as part of the File menu command, where a window opens to enter pertinent information on the contact. New contact lists are also created through the File menu command. The Action command menu simply allows the user to forward contact information or to email a contact. The Tool command menu simply has the options to Search for Contents or access Addressbook sources.

The Draft, Inbox, Outbox, Sent and Trash folders all have similar menu commands. The Edit menu is substantially increased to include selections of all items (Edit -> Select All), inversion of the selection (Edit -> Invert Selection) and manipulation of the folder items (e.g., Mark As Read, Mark As Unread, Delete, Undelete). Note that Evolution does not directly delete items; rather it marks them with a strike through. To delete the items permanently, the user must open the Trash folder and empty the trash from the Action menu (Action -> Empty Trash). The View menu has the addition command for message lists by thread (topic) (View -> Threaded Message List), modifying text size, headers (View -> Message Display -> Show Full Headers, or Show Email Source) and the order that messages are displayed (View -> Current View).

The Action menu includes commands to contact the email server and send and receive message (Action -> Send/Receive), composing a new message (Action -> Compose New Message), to go to particular messages, to reply to senders, list or all, to forward messages, to forward as (either as attachment, inline or quoted – inline is probably the best), to move or copy messages to folders, to add senders to the users address book and to apply filters. Filters are established through the Tools command menu (Tools -> Filters, Create Filters from Message) and allow the user to ensure that particular rules are obeyed according to a message or according to the subject content or sender.

When composing a message, Evolution opens a separate window with it's own command menu (File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Security). The File options allow the user to send the letter, to save or save it as a draft, the Edit options to undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, find/replace and spell check the message. TheView command menu provides the option to Show Attachments and various fields, the Insert menu for including attachments, images, links and so forth, the format command menu for some fairly simple text modifications and finally, the security option to sign and encrypt messages according to PGP encryption.

The Tools menu includes the very important Mail Settings command. This determines what server or servers you receive your mail from (Accounts), display and composition options and, under other, the PGP binary path for encrypted messages. Also under the Tools menu is the option to create "Virtual Folders", which allow the user to create a folder on the result of a search. Their contents are updated regularly without user intervention. This is particularly useful for users who receive a lot of emails and store them in many different folders, yet still find themselves looking for particular items.

Being Organized: The Simple Alternative

The author thinks that having multiple folders, subfolders and sub-sub-folders and constantly searching where a particular email or email content has ended up is not a particularly good way to organize things. Rather the author uses 1 directory for all emails sent or received in a year (e.g., 2003, 2004 etc) and 1 plain-ASCII text file for each month in the year (Jan2003, Feb2003 etc). That way a simple text editor can open the file and search for regular expressions, which is usually very quick.

The Help command menu is a number of shortcut links to websites, both internal and external. This includes a thorough User's manual, of which the chapter headings are displayed in the menu (stored internally), a Frequently Asked Questions list about Evolution (stored externally) and the option to submit problems to the authors.