[Design] What is the minimum feature set we can put up with in an early release of Chandler?

[Katie Capps Parlante]

Mikeal Rogers wrote:
> I guess I just took for granted that one of our end goals was a complete 
> replacement for people's current email clients.
> 
> I think our long term goals should be as ambitious as possible and I 
> hope that one of our long term goals is a full email client replacement. 
> I assumed Sheila's email was more about short term email in Chandler, 
> and on that I agree that we should be trying to integrate with existing 
> clients rather than trying to replace them while I do believe it is 
> important that we have enough of our own email functionality in Chandler 
> that we can show off the other integrated features that tie in to email 
> as an input and communication medium. Email is just too integrated a 
> part of peoples lives that we can expect them to move completely to 
> Chandler for email unless we have everything they already use, but we'd 
> loose out on a lot of valuable users if we waited to try and attract 
> them until we were totally finished with email in Chandler.

I think we're all in agreement about the long run -- email is very 
important to the full vision of Chandler.

The short run is the harder problem.

The question I'm asking: Is there a bare bones feature set that would 
allow early adopters to use Chandler as an email client? What is that 
feature set?

We've asked this question before, and the general answer was that email 
clients have to be quite good before people will switch. The reason I'm 
bringing it up again is that Philippe had made noises about being 
willing to use Chandler as an email client even if it had few features 
and paled in comparison to other existing email clients. We certainly 
couldn't rely on all users being willing to do this, hence the "bridging 
the gap" thread.

I agree with you that there is a real benefit to having 'plausible' 
email features in the short run, to give a taste of where the project is 
headed. It would be great if those features that demonstrated 
plausibility actually enabled some early adopters to use Chandler as a 
primary email client. (Perhaps this is wishful thinking).

Cheers,
Katie