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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE PIM Roadmap (Call to action)
From:       Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-06-15 0:09:42
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On Thursday 14 June 2001 02:18, Mike Pilone wrote:
>
> I was recently talking with Greg Stern (of abbrowser conduit fame)
> about the state of KDE PIM. In our discussions, we started to through
> around some ideas of redesigning the entire KDE PIM API.

That's great. I'm happy that you took this initiative. KDE PIM needs 
some more activity to be successfull.

I mostly agree with your analysis of the problems and the solution 
steps you suggested. There should be an abstraction of the method of 
data storage, there should be a single library for doing 
syncing/conflict resolution and we need a server implementation, at 
least for storing calendar data.

What we shouldn't forget is that there are plenty of standards in this 
area that help us. There is IMAP, LDAP, vCard, iCalendar, SyncML etc. 
What we also shouldn't forget is that we already have a lot of apps 
that work quite well and some code that at least provides some 
functionality (e.g. kab2). Let's base the developments on what we 
already have. It might also be worth to look at other projects, e.g. 
how Evolution does this.

Let me take KOrganizer as an example. It uses iCalendar as data format. 
This works and has various benefits, especially regarding 
interoperability. What is missing is a way to store calendar data on a 
server, providing (concurrent) access to multiple clients, including 
proper user authentication and a generic way to sync calendars from 
different sources. I don't see any benefit in reinventing another data 
format for calendar data in XML, but an implementation of a server to 
handle iCalendar data and the corresponding transport would be a 
tremendous improvement to the KDE PIM suite.

Let's try to make this productive. Can we define some steps, which can 
be realized with a resonable amount of time on the way to a grand 
unified solution? I think it is important to actually create working 
code and not fail to deliver something, which is useful, because the 
goals were to ambitious.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@kde.org>
 
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