Re: [Evolution-hackers] functional specification for list view

[Anna Marie Dirks <anna ximian com>]

Hi Tim,

On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 20:14, Tim Lee wrote:

> Where you thinking at all of adding tasks to this view based on their
> due date?

I was waiting for the general issue of whether or not Tasks would be
displayed in the Calendar to be resolved, before seeking to integrate
them into this view. I would not be against showing them in this view,
or at least providing the option. 

> Would a meeting's status ( tentative vs. accepted vs. canceled ) be
> displayed.

Well, it certainly *could* be.

A status column for all events might be nice now that you mention it (to
let you know if an appointment has started, is finished, or what the
status of a meeting is). 

Generally, I am wary of adding too many columns (to the default view,
anyway) which are very specific to only one event type -- because the
more you do this, the more the chance that half the columns shown are
not related to half of your events.

You do still have the preview pane to in which to read all about the
event in question - my preference for the default view is to keep the
number of columns shown fairly small. (Because if the columns are too
crowded to be easily read, then what is the point of this view?)

> Would all day events be differentiated from "normal" events? Would they
> start at midnight?

My thought was that they (all day events) would start at the time that
the user has selected as the start of his or her day.

We currently have a specific icon in the "new" button for "all day
appointment". In my view, this icon is barely distinguishable from the
icon for a standard appointment. We should get a better icon, and use
that in the "Type" column to differentiate between appointment types.

> Will people be allowed to add new events in this view? 

Of course. The gui elements that I listed as being needed were only
those specific to this view; standard stuff like the "new" button was
implied to exist. 

> Will there be a way of showing meetings with conflicting/overlapping
> times? I think this will be necessary if people are going to be able to
> edit event times in the view.

There is no mechanism in the specification I provided for that.

> Under other columns I would add a meeting organizer column.

I have no objection to such a column per se -- again, my concern is that
I really don't want to add many columns (to the default view) that only
pertain to one type of event. 


> I think it might be useful to provide a means of filtering/viewing the
> list by date/time. The simplest would be to filter events occurring
> between two dates. For example only display events that occur on M-F
> this week. Though more sophisticated filters might be useful ( events
> ending after 5:00 PM, starting before 10:00 AM on Mondays, etc. ). 

These filters sound like "advanced searches" (done by using the search
bar) to me. Is that what you intended? Would that suffice for your
purpose? 

> Other useful filters/views might include:
> - meeting attendee(s)
> - my/other attendee status
> - meeting organizer

Again, when you say filters/views, do you mean "criteria that you could
use to create a search using the search bar (or advanced search
dialog)"? Or do you mean "columns that one could add to the list of
events"?

I definitely don't think that columns for attendees and attendees
statuses would work very well in this table -- simply because of the
probablity that you would need to devote the whole width of the table to
those columns in order to see all of the items within them. Those items
seem much more suited to the view in the preview pane to me. 

Now, your mail gives me the feeling that you use Evo's meeting
scheduling functionality very often. What I think we should do is try to
work together to write a usage scenario which is very meeting focused
(see the other two usage scenarios I provided for examples). Then, we
can analyze this spec in terms of that scenario. This gives us enough
information to walk through the spec with a specific goal in mind, and
see how and where it fails.


> Would events that have their time shown as Free vs. Busy be
> differentiated?

Based on my current understand of how this view is likely to be used,
I would probably not count this is important enough to have a column
added for it by default.

Was there a specific usage case that you had in mind which would require
this? It is how to weigh its importance in without one.

> Would the fields in the preview pane be editable? That might be a nice
> feature, but how difficult would it be to implement?

I doubt that they would be editable. Someone else with more of a hacking
perspective needs to comment on the feasibility of this. What I'd prefer
to do is to slim down the event editor a bit so that the way it displays
its events more resemebles the way the information is shown in the
preview pane (as I provided it in the spec). 

Anna
-- 
Anna Marie Dirks <anna ximian com>