Using the Evolution with an external editor?

I seek for using LibreOffice Writer or a similar tool as a mail composer and reader in the Evolution.

In Windows Outlook I have used Microsoft Word directly for writing mails. Evolution default mail editor does not enable easy and precise HTML formatting (see comments). One month without answer shows that there is probably no possibility how to configure my present Evolution version (3.2.3) in Ubuntu 12.04 to use the LibreOffice Writer for writing mails and the same Writer or gedit for writing calendar appointment descriptions. I think that many people need it; maybe somebody has so adapted the Evolution source code for his purpose; it would be far more than worth of a bounty of all my reputation. Or, more attention to it will motivate the developers to adapt it in near future.

(I am trying to return to my original question meaning.)

Solution 1:

There is a plugin to do this - you should be able to install the plugin with

sudo apt-get install evolution-plugins*

You then need to enable and configure under 'Edit' > 'Plugins': You can set this to the command libreoffice --writer which will launch libreoffice --writer, but you could leave it as the default gedit.

Once set up, you simply need to open the compose window, and then open it in the external editor:

You can then edit the message in Libreoffice, and when you save it and exit the message will be in Evolution:

The only real problem with this is as it seems to use a text/plain format, no formatting is saved from Libreoffice.
Works with Evolution 3.8.5

Also, if just want a format when you can use links and formatting, set the type to HTML: This can include formatting, embedded images, emoticons :D , and also has a thing that can be used to create and test links.

Solution 2:

Thunderbird does what you want. Instructions are here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_%28Thunderbird%29#Send_HTML_messages

As the content is copyrighted I won't duplicate it here.

Thunderbird also integrates with a local calendar via an add-on called Lightning.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/lightning/

Here's an image of an event being added. You can see that it's fully featured

It fully integrates with thunderbird. Here's an image without my email setup to give you an idea. You can see the scheduling in the right hand column. If I still had my email account setup it would show this list in the body of the main screen.

For information on how to use an external editor with Thunderbird see here