Post a Comment
not a native port? so what is it? if I have to run it in X11 then that sucks =/ (yes I could just download it and see but it's fun to ask in a forum haha)
From the README ( http://forgeftp.novell.com//evolution/builds/osx-evolution-2.6/READ... ) :
"Troubleshooting
1) My installer does not launch the app properly
Check if you have XDarwin or X11 installed on your system, if not please install them. Evolution runs by connecting to the XServer and uses X11 for display."
Oh well, Thunderbird still works like a charm :-)
Edited 2006-03-31 16:28
I really like mail.app and its somewhat decent IMAP support. Thunderbird's IMAP is even better. Evolution always gave me a bit of trouble in that respect, although I'd still love a native Evolution port to be able to connect to those pesky Exchange servers when the need arises.
Imap support in mail.app it's also somewhat odd because instead of showing the imap folders in one tree like TB, it shows:
the inbox under the main inbox tree and the other folders sparse in the inbox if you add a single account, grouping them under the account name only if you add two or more imap accounts 
What exactly is wrong with Mail.app's threading? It has always worked pretty well for me. Is there something that Evolution does that is different? If so what? I think Mail.app was the first mail app that I saw that used threading...of course I was an Outlook user on XP at the time Mail.app came out with threading so I may have overlooked something.
As far as the nativeness goes, I wonder if Evolution will follow the same route as OO.o went with NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org/) in that a separate product will be based on the original to get the native windowing going.
As many have pointed out an X11 app for OS X and does not have a native feel or integrate with some of the more advanced features of OS X. That said it should be noted that just as with OpenOffice, a feature complete X11 port is a very important step towards a fully native OS X application, so this is an important milestone for those of us hoping to see a Carbon/Cocoa Evolution.
id love to try it out, but i am in no mood to put X back in my G5... a Native verson of evolution is SO needed... don;t get me wrong. having the option to run X and all the OSS apps with in OSX is really cool. but for the OSX world at large to take any app seriously... it has got to be native! other wise... its just for geeks! and not everyone is geek... nor do they want to be!
but 160 meg download for an e-mail client? Now that's bloat . . .
this is bloat: http://temp.funtech.org/OfficeXP.PNG
Edited 2006-04-01 01:10
I downloaded the app; it installs over 600mb of files, most of which end up in /opt. The "application" launches X11. I tried it and I got an error on startup. I never even saw the evolution window. Your milleage may vary. I'm going to have to classify this as not ready for prime time.
I think the responses here are indicative of how having dual boot windows and windows vitualization on the mac will not harm Mac applications availability. Most OSX users dont even want to use perfectly fine and fully, completely and as thoroughly NATIVE as can be X11 applicaitons under OSX. Theres no way the majority of people are going to dual boot or fire up an instance of Windows unless there is absolutely no other way.
I personally enjoy having access to X11 apps and I use some (bluefish and gimp) daily. But I've straddled the Mac/unix fence since the early 90's. I do think Apple could integrate X11 a bit better into OSX so that interoperation is relatively seamless. In Tiger X11 is an optional install (though, unlike classic, it is included on the install disks). I'd like to see X11 automatically installed and more popular apps packaged similar to Gimp.app to make installations less intrusive. Non-tech users simply arent going to mess with fink or darwin ports, no matter how easy they are to use.
My biggest beef with X11 is that there isn't patch code in it to understand dfonts. Some ports of OSS like Inkscape are smart enough to figure it out, but OOo isn't and requires you to run Fondu before installing OOo (making a wasteful TTF copy of the dfonts).
Apple doesn't have much excuse for not optimizing/overhauling X11 to the point where more of its software behaves natively. A preference to move menu bars to the top of the screen and transparently translate their events back and forth would be a good start.
Apple cannot transparently move the menus to the top of the screen, because menus aren't implemented at the X11 level, they are implemented at the toolkit level. I don't think GTK+ even creates a window for the menubar --- its just some region of the X11 window that only the toolkit knows about.
I'm confused. According to the linked info, this would seem like the first time Evolution has been ported to OS X, but according to Novell
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfcontent/downloads.php/evolution/b...
there are multiple OS X compliant versions of Evolution available...some look earlier than this build.
Geez, guys: why look a gift horse in the mouth? Judging from the angry comments, you'd think some of you actually paid for this program.
There's not much chance I'll use a non-native application when Cocoa programs are available, but I like Evolution on my Linux boxes, and decided to see how well it would install on OS X.
It's a big file, as some have pointed out. But it's not as if we don't have broadband.
I unarchived the bzip and tar, and clicked the installer package. Things went smoothly.
First launch took a while. I'd never used X11, though I installed it with Tiger. There was a script prompt to launch Evolution. I clicked it, and up came the familiar configuration screen. Evolution was pulling mail a few moments later.
Once it's running, Evolution is much faster on this dual G5 than on my modest x86 workstation. MUCH faster. But I've got plenty of RAM. That's a good thing, because something is sure as hell chewing it up. I was using about 800 MB before launching Evolution. The process monitor says about a gig and a half are in use now, though X11 is only using 12 MB and Evolution about 27 MB. Apple Mail is coasting along at 16.
On subsequent launches -- even after closing X11 -- Evolution opens in a couple of seconds, though not quite as quickly as Apple Mail.
I've sent a few messages, and all is well. I did have some trouble importing an iCal file, but haven't looked to see why. Overall, the application is surprisingly snappy.
Wonder where all the RAM is going?
A native port of Evolution on OS X and Windows would be an attractive alternative to Outlook, I think.
With GTK+ and the likes, when is GTK going to be picked up and completely based upon Cairo? that would solve the issue of GTK platform availaibility, it would be simply a matter of porting Cairo to a given platform, and voila, you end up with a working GTK version for your platform of choice.
When will Novell decide to seperate Evolution functions as standalone application (like mozilla.org's decision)? Evolution is great, but if used as an Email client, it's a bit bloated. There are already some applications like planner, date, I hope I will see one like Mac Address too, and one mail client using libtinymail.




