1 Reply by frankp

  • frankp
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Re: Vim in Outlook Tasks and Scheduler

Dear Jon,

wow, a couple of weeks ago I thought that it would be a great market niche if somebody wrote a program like ViEmu and now I accidentally found it. Excellent idea and program!

As we use Word and Outlook at work, your program could prove very useful. It seems that it's not easily technically feasible to include vim not only in Outlook emails but also in Outlook task entries (we have to do many complicated tasks :-)) and maybe appointments. Or is it smile?

Regards,
Frank

2 Reply by Jon_Symnum

  • Jon_Symnum
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Re: Vim in Outlook Tasks and Scheduler

Hi Frank,

I will have a look at task-entry editing, but it's most probably a completely different type of control/editing context (Outlook mail uses Word by default, by external launching up to Outlook 2003 and embedded in the process in Outlook 2007). This means I would need to write a completely separate and new integration to get it to work there. If you have a look at my latest blog post, you can have an idea of the complexity of this - it can easily take 15,000 lines of code and 4 months of work to get integration working with a new environment. I'm not really sure this kind of work is warranted.

In any case, I'll have a look at it and let you know about the specifics - but most likely, the answer is "too much work for too little reward".

Thanks for pointing this out and for the kind comment, and best regards,

  Jon

3 Reply by frankp

  • frankp
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Re: Vim in Outlook Tasks and Scheduler

Hi Jon,

thanks for the quick reply, I read your blog entry before and almost expected it. Unless it's possible with custom Outlook forms to include Word it's not worth the work. It might be the cherry on the cake once your company has more than 100 employees smile

All the best,
  Frank

4 Reply by Jon_Symnum

  • Jon_Symnum
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Re: Vim in Outlook Tasks and Scheduler

Hi Frank,

I've had a first look at it. It would be doable, as it's using the RichEdit20W control class, which is somewhat documented. But it has all the hints of a nightmare-in-the-making: it can only notify events to its parent window (requiring double interception to do anything), there is no event to notify changes to the text, it has a solely character-range based interface (no lines- or paragraph-based indices), which will surely cause performance problems that will require quite smart caching around it, etc...

Even before reaching the 100th employee, this would be a wonderful exercise for a first hire to get acquainted with ngvi (my retargetable template-based vi/vim emulation core) and heavy-duty Win32 interception. But right now, I have to invest my time in other areas which will get the company to that first hire quicker!

So, don't discard this for the future, but it will take some time.

Thanks again for your interest and feedback,

  Jon