As a Gnome desktop user, two of my best choices for e-mail applications are Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution, which is part of the desktop. One of the biggest differences between these two applications is that Thunderbird is a mail and news reader only, while Evolution also integrates a calendar, todo list note taking program.

Unfortunately, I think the question of if e-mail and calendar should be integrated is a bad question caused by people’s familiarity with Microsoft Outlook. As a matter of fact, I think that Evolution’s early imitation of MS Outlook is one of its severely limiting aspects. Microsoft Outlook is one of MS’s best applications and its one that has been upgraded most radically over its lifetime. The ease of being able to keep track of appointments and todo items and linking these with people and e-mails is unparalleled. Have a hot e-mail? Click it and choose “Follow Up” and pick a date. You’ll get a reminder, if you wish, as that date approaches to ensure you’ve not forgotten to do it.

Need to remember to do something in 6 months? Add an appointment to the calendar and in 6 months you’ll be reminded. This is great, and nothing in the Linux desktop is as easy to use as MS Outlook yet, but I think it’s the wrong paradigm. Instead of saying, “Should we integrate e-mail and calendar?” which really is asking, “Should we imitate Microsoft Outlook?” we should instead be asking if that is the right type of integration. The answer is, “it could be better!”

You see, Microsoft got chastised for having Internet Explorer too tightly integrated with the desktop. If MS went so far as to integrate MS Office with the desktop, people would freak out and there would certainly be a major trial. Gnome does not have to worry about that, thankfully. Therefore, instead of thinking of how to integrate individual applications, with each other, we need to think of how to integrate all applications together.

Picture this:
I get an e-mail – a link on the website is broken. However, I’m working on something much more important, so I right click the e-mail and choose to add it to my todo list – due date is the end of the day with a reminder 1 hour before. In Xchat, someone says, “hey matt, can you update the wiki theme for kubuntu to match the website?” You bet. I right click the question in Xchat and set a reminder to follow up. More e-mails come in. I realize I won’t get any work done if keep looking at my e-mail so I close the program. 4:00 comes and all of a sudden I get my reminder to fix the link on the website – Great, almost forgot about that. I fix that and start planning my next day.

I click the icon to show my desktop. There right in the middle is a folder of images representing my new concept for the download page. I can’t forget to get that done and e-mailed to Jane before the end of her day in London on Friday. That way she can think about it over the weekend. I right click the folder and set a reminder to pop-up at 10:30am Friday morning. Additionally, I’ve been specing a project for Christina in an OOo document. She doesn’t need it by eod on Friday, but I’d like to get that done this week – but before I do so, I’ve got to get information for the document from Malcolm. I open the document, click the paragraph I need help with and right click – “Reminder: tomorrow morning, voip with Malcolm and find out about [...].” Good. Now, I can leave work and not worry about forgetting anything important. At the proper time I’ll get reminded.

You see, it makes no sense to integrate a reminder and todo list with Inkscape when that functionality is in the desktop. Do I need a todo list for individual inkscape projects? Absolutely! I would also like to be able to set reminders from a terminal `add_todo –reminder=-15m –priority=1 “move ubuntu-it.org to its own server!!!”`

Is this all possible? Yes! Gnome has the technology to do it already built in. I just don’t think there are enough people interested in the daily work process of knowledge workers to get it on the priority list. Also, I think that Evolution should become a lot smaller and instead have its functionality, especially calendar and todo list, stripped out and put into the desktop. Make evolution a shell for the desktop functionality in the same way Konquerer is a shell for the khtml rendering engine.

Next step, the current todo list in both Outlook and Evolution is a putrid pile of steaming asparagus. But that is a subject for another blog post.