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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Next generation of KOrganizer / Call for help: (fwd)
From:       <pbrown () redhat ! com>
Date:       1999-04-30 4:26:03
[Download RAW message or body]

I sent this message to the internal korganizer list, but I thought others
might be interested.  If they are, please

1. get in touch with me personally
2. subscribe to the korganizer list. Instructions are on the korganizer
home page (www.redhat.com/~pbrown/korganizer).
3. do we have the kde-pim list set up yet?

---
  Preston Brown                                    Systems Engineer
  pbrown@redhat.com                                Red Hat Software, Inc. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 00:18:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: pbrown@redhat.com
Reply-To: korganizer-list@yertle.cdarchive.com
To: korganizer-list@yertle.cdarchive.com
Subject: Next generation of KOrganizer / Call for help:

* List: korganizer-list@yertle.cdarchive.com

Hello fellow users:

The time has come to start the next generation of KOrganizer.  KDE 1.1.1
will be out next week, and while I intend to continue to make crucial
bugfix additions and other "no brainers" to the KDE 1.1.1 tree (which will
likely be released as KDE 1.1.2 or KDE 1.2 in the summer time), we are
done with this source tree. That tree is dead.  It is time to begin major
work on KOrganizer, driving it into the next millenium, no joke. :)  Major
surgery lies ahead. 

I see a number of areas that need to be attacked first.  I'll list what I
see in no particular order of preference:

1. the various views pretty much all need rewriting, and we need the
addition of a datebook-style weekly view.  All the views should enherit
from a common subclass, so that interfaces to them from the outside can be
clean and make use of nice virtual functions instead of ugly case
statements and the like that are currently used.  This is largely a
self-contained project, but it will take some time.  It could be worked on
by one or two people.

2. the messaging subsystem needs to actually be written.  I know we have
some hacks in place right now, but this needs to happen if we are to drive
korganizer into the future.  There are two components to this:

  1. better integration with KDE Address Book (kab) and/or PeopleSpace.
Whoever is going to work on this is going to have to become familiar with
these projects too.
 
  2. some sort of framework independent of the transport method (email,
network connection to some server) which lets us do group scheduling.
Behind this multiple interfaces will exist to do the actual communication.
This will include iMIP and iTIP I hope.

This second project will need several people to get off the ground.

3. We need to update/rewrite the vCalendar parser to be iCalendar
compatible.  This is an incremental project that one can work on slowly
and see results.  It could be a one or two man project.

There are lots of other smaller hacks and projects.  The event editor
should be re-written to be geometry-managed instead of fixed in size, as
it is now.  This is an arduous and potentially boring project, but it is
highly important.  We need to improve the alarm support so that snoozes
and other such things are possible.  We need to improve printing support.
And more of course.

Basically, at this point, I have received lots of mail from people saying,
"I'd love to help, but I don't know where to start."  Well I think I can
tell you where to start if you are interested.  This weekend, I am going
to work hard on setting up the web site to better describe the current
KOrganizer internals, so that people will understand what is going on.  A
sort of map for the code, so to speak.  Because I understand how hard it
is to come into a project and be completely clueless.  Still you have to
remember that this project has no financial backing, so there will be some
wading into the source code to read comments no matter what.  I pride
myself on being a rather prolific commenter in the code, at least more
than most people.  I hope.

As some of you know, I have become much more intimately involved in other
areas of KDE over the last year or so.  As a KDE core team member, I have
my hands into a lot of other areas of the code.  Therefore, I don't have
time to do this all on my own anymore.  I'm definitely not stepping down
as head of the project, but what I am saying is that I would like to work
on *one* of the aformentioned project areas, and have other people help me
with the rest.  I can't do it all.

So what I want from people now is the following:

1. if you are willing to make at least a reasonable commitment to working
on this project over the next several months, or longer
2. what you are interested in working on
3. anything that you need to know about the code that I might miss
4. any additional projects you want to see I didn't mention (corba? I
would like this too but don't know where to start)

So let's get the show on the road!  No dragging your feet. As the mozilla
project said, work, and their will be flour.  KOrganizer is already quite
usable, but with help, we can make it even better.

---
  Preston Brown                                    Systems Engineer
  pbrown@redhat.com                                Red Hat Software, Inc. 

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