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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Design of PIM, etc. (was Build KMail only?)
From:       Kevin Krammer <kevin.krammer () gmx ! at>
Date:       2011-07-11 12:32:00
Message-ID: 201107111432.00675.kevin.krammer () gmx ! at
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On Monday, 2011-07-11, Ian Wadham wrote:
> On 11/07/2011, at 2:00 PM, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > On Monday, 2011-07-11, Ian Wadham wrote:
> >> Surely, PIM could be designed around a shared data source (a relational
> >> database if you must) in such a way that the various applications can
> >> exist independently of each other, in a loosely bound form.
> > 
> > This is exactly how the new PIM applications are designed. Previous
> > incarnations had dependencies on each other for certain tasks, e.g.
> > KAddressBook and KOrganizer depended on KMail for access to certain type
> > of groupware data and I think KMail vice versa depended on KOrganizer
> > for handling events/invitations attached to email.
> > 
> > The new architecture allows each application to retain their
> > functionality without depending on each other running or even being
> > installed. It's good to see that other people also find this decoupling
> > to be a worthwhile goal.
> 
> True.  Akonadi does not call for other *PIM* apps when you fire up KMail,
> but it does call for Nepomuk (I know where that leads) and some things
> called "resource agents" that I know nothing about.

True, it warns when Nepomuk is not available since, as a explained earlier, 
the assumption is that most users want the associated functionality.
This can most likely be improved by detecting the absence in applications and 
disabling related functionality there.

As for resourcee agents, those are part of kdepim-runtime, used by Akonadi 
"under the hood" for the actual data access.
Decoulping, separation of concerns.

> >> KMail could even survive without the
> >> data source.
> > 
> > Definitley. KMail might be overly assertive in that regard, normally PIM
> > applications will indicate the unavailability of their data source by
> > having a semi-transparent error overlay over their normal UI [1].
> 
> KMail has such an overlay too, but I cannot get past it to use KMail.
> Only a few menu items activate and Preferences does not work at all,
> so I cannot set up accounts.

Assuming KMail version 1, not an ideal reaction. In KMail 2 the right thing to 
do (no data to access).

> > Actually KMail is not involved in this at all (remember decoupling?), a
> > helper program is telling Nepomuk about emails and changes to email
> > folders. This helper is enabled by default since we assumed that quite
> > some users of KMail might actually be using its search for email
> > functionality and would like to continue to do so.
> 
> Fair enough, but I have been quite happy with occasionally using the search
> facilities within KMail itself and have felt no real need for anything more
> powerful on the desktop.

As I have said it might make sense to have just search disabled for people who 
do not want to need it or have only used it occasionally and can do without.
The assumption until now was that searching for emails was a core feature of 
KMail and should always be present, hence the explicit warning when search is 
not available.

> > The immensely improved separation of concerns will allow a far greater
> > tunability than any previous version could have ever achieved.
> > It's just that the main focus up until now has been to provide as much of
> > the established functionality as possible.
> 
> OK.  One must proceed a step at a time.  But there are some very nice KDE
> apps that do work well on an Apple desktop and it would be nice if KMail
> was one of them.  I am already using KMyMoney and maybe will use Digikam.
> Some of our games look good on the Macbook too, but maybe I am biased ...

As far as I know there are people using the new Kontact version on Mac in 
their daily work routine.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring

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