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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Listening to KMail over the telephone
From:       Ellis Whitehead <kde () ellisw ! net>
Date:       2001-09-22 18:02:30
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I'm working on conveniently representing data from programs such as kmail, 
kaddressbook, kdict, knode, knewsticker, etc. in the form of xml, plain text, 
html, and speech.

The process involves querying an interface which returns xml data, and then 
running this data through libxslt using a certain XSL file, depending on the 
kind of output we want.

Some of the fun things this leads to is being able to:
	- check your address book via the web while out of town
	- check kdict from the console or use the data in another program
	- have news items read alout to you while eating breakfast
		(e.g. "knewticker --mode=speech | festival --tts")
	- hook up a modem interface to listen to email over the phone

My strongest interest at the moment is for accessing local data from 
a remote browser.  I've written a simple server which makes this possible to 
an extent.  Example:
From konqueror, open: http://localhost:8080/addressbook?lookup=Smith
The server sees if it has a config entry for 'addressbook'.  In this case, it 
executes "ab --mode=html --lookup=Smith".  The executable 'ab' then looks up 
any 'Smith's and returns html output.  The server sends the html back to the 
client.

Executing commands with parameters sent from the web isn't secure, though, so 
it'd be great if this could be done through a component system instead.

There are three major challenges:
1) a component system (QCom?)
2) creating pure-data components (such as a KDictData) which output XML
3) a decent XML-based GUI wrapper

Questions:

Has there been any word about QCom since Matthias Ettrich's presentation was 
posted at dot.kde?

Last Spring, there was the discussion about whether to try working with 
ORBit, and it was decided to leave it until the next non-BC release.  What's 
the possibility of creating Bonobo data components for KDE 3.0?

Other comments?

Regards,
Ellis
 
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