I do prefer the UI.  The UI is identical except for how it deals with
filtering.  Instead of having a button for each type of filter, FC gives
you a generalized list of filters.  FC's filters may include the usual
participant and subject filters, plus a new "category" filter to replace
the top-left pane of classic Celeste.  The custom filters are still
there, but they've been renamed to "named filters".

That's it.  This UI is still fast to use for the usual case of one
category filter, one named filter, and one subject or participant
filter.  Now, however, you can have multiple filters of the same kind if
you want.

I actually envisioned FC letting you combine multiple filters with AND,
OR, NOT.  In particular, it's lame to resort to a "code" filter just
because you want to do a participant filter on multiple possible
participants, e.g. to filter out all email that is addressed to any of
your personal email addresses.  Sadly I don't have time to work on stuff
like this.

Aside from this there are a lot of small goodies that I don't think ever
got into the main image's Celeste.  From the top of my head:

	- It is speedy on large folders

	- It interacts correctly with image snapshots

	- It lets you open multiple windows at once on the same mail database

	- It does some save's more quickly, due to putting Daniel's (I think?)
logging idea straight into the index file


Then again, I'm sure a patch or two has gone into main Celeste but not
into FilteringCeleste.


I never intended for there to be a fork.  The thing is that no
individual is able to make major changes to the "main" Celeste.  There's
no designated maintainer, Squeak Central doesn't maintain it, and the
harvesters are too conservative.  So FilteringCeleste has become my own
release of Celeste, much like Snail on Hot Asphault (SHA) was my own
release of the Unix VM back when Ian Piumarta was busy doing other
things.  I happen to think I've done a great job on it :), but it's up
to the community what to do next.  I'll personally keep using FC until
there's a better alternative.

IMHO it is a waste of time to do non-trivial work on "main" Celeste.  FC
is superior in many ways, and even the UI can be switched if it is a
real roadblock for people.  Celeste only gets modified right now by
going through the harvesters, and this is not a process that allows
major changes.  If some maintainer does step up and start working on the
main Celeste, I still think the best thing would be to start by
integrating the improvements FC makes.  However, that effort will
probably be more than the effort of adding a classic UI to FC.  FC is
simply much more about non-UI things than UI things, despite its name.


I never thought I needed to say it explicitly, but I'd certainly be very
happy for FC to be considered "the" maintained version of Celeste.  I
would integrate patches -- or negotiate with people until I would accept
the patches -- and I'd make an occasional release.  Celeste hackers
would love this, I think; even with my limited time, it should be much
faster to get things posted through me than through the harvesting
process.  Further, I can allow much bigger changes to go through than
will make it through into the main image.

Let me put this another way.  Having a single maintainer is a good for
an open source project.  A maintainer can move things along more
quickly, and a maintainer can keep the program coherent.  I don't insist
on the maintainer being me, but I'm a natural choice and a good choice. 
Natural, because I got Celeste into Squeak to begin with and because
I've been maintaining it ever since then.  Good, because I know the code
extremely well, I have a good design sense, and I think I'd be pleasant
to work with.  While my pickiness (to be kind) about design would irk
some people, I'm quite willing to go through iterations with people.

On the other hand, I have limited time.  If someone more eager wants to
jump in and take over FilteringCeleste, that would be great.  I'd like,
however, to at least see some patches from them before handing over the
baton, and I haven't seen a single patch as yet.


In sum, both general users and more devoted hackers should be much
happier with Filtering Celeste than the Celeste in the main image. 
Switch over, already.  :)  Squeak Map makes it very easy.


Lex