Hi Colm!

On Thursday 24 July 2003 18:07, Colm Smyth wrote:
>My name is Colm Smyth, I lead the Glow groupware client project
>on OpenOffice.org. We are a relatively new project, 100%
>open-source (LGPL), using Java and aiming to initially provide
>group calendaring, mail, IM and web folders. Our web-site
>is just starting to be put in place at
>http://groupware.openoffice.org/glow/.
I am Daniel Molkentin, Maintainer of the KDE Kontact Framework.
This will be part of KDE-PIM as of KDE 3.2.

A brief introduction: Kontact is KDE's new integrated PIM suite similar to 
Outlook and Evolution and the successor to the Kolab client. It uses some 
framework techniques as well as components (KParts of existing KDE 
applications such as KMail, KAddressbook, KOrganizer and KNotes) to achieve 
the integration.

>KDE-PIM is one of the better known (and higher quality) groupware
>client suites so I wanted to offer *greetings* from everyone
>here at Glow, and to open the door for some discussions about
>how our two projects could collaborate!
Your welcome. We are always interested in cooperation, especially in 
discussing standards and implementations.

>I know KDE-PIM supports UNIX/X11, including Mac OS;
>because we're using Java, we will also support Windows
>which might be of interest to some folks who use KDE-PIM
>but sometimes need to use Windows.
Right. The long term plan is to also provide a client for Windows, but that 
will not happen too soon from the KDE projects' side. Furthermore Kolab 
Server support in Glow is always a good thing :-).

>We use different implementation technologies, but at least a few
>possibilities that might work are to collaborate on:
>- supported open standards & formats
Most things are pretty settled here, but of there is probably some ambiguities 
in the RFCs and standards which could be subject to discussion here. 
Microsoft got some things in their ical implementation very wrong, and we 
have some workarounds added already. So those are interesting aspects to 
share, too.

Basically we are using IMAP as transport and storage layer (as you pointed 
out) as well as ical and vcard for contacts and calendaring.

>- ui design (not to copy, just to share ideas)
Sure, sharing UI paradigms is always a good idea, even though OOo and KDE have 
a lot of different approaches in some special UI aspects. Still we should try 
to share a similar overall UI design.

>- ui messages & translations
I'm not sure wether we can share much and wether it makes sense, because KDE 
basically uses gettext to translate messages. Furthermore most messages 
already exist (see below).

>- graphic art
Again, it depends. There is probably some stuff we can share, but the icons 
within KDE are LGPL anyway. KDE has to stick to a certain look&feel, as will 
Glow, so there might be only little to share.


>On the translations topic, we will make all of our ui
>message resources available to the public in a
>convenient XML format, so it should be easy to create some
>tools that could import our translations into your
>UI resource file (Sun will localize Glow into
>at least 10 languages, and since we want to make Glow
>available with OpenOffice.org, we will probably
>do several more).

Our translators do about 50, the problem is that we cannot be selective about 
our messages in Kontact, because most of the UI and therefore most of the 
strings come from the part that Kontact uses. 

>I spoke with Bernhard Reiter of the Kolab project this
>morning, we would also be interested in later developing
>a calendar provider for Glow based around the Kolab server's
>iCalendar-over-IMAP interface.

That would be really nice.

>I would like to welcome you to drop by our site to
>see where we are going; maybe we can brain-storm
>here on e-mail about some ways that our projects
>could co-operate?

I guess you are mostly focusing on supporting the Kolab Server. For the 
clients, some common sense seems to be reasonable, to avoid that people get 
delivered to two completely different UIs. If you like to take a look at 
Kontact's screenshots, see http://kontact.kde.org. The project is also quite 
new and the shots are quite old, but they pretty much point into the 
direction we are heading.

I would be interested into looking into Glow, but I currently lack the time. 
Would it be possible to provide some screenshots to give an idea?

>Again, best wishes from everyone here on the Glow
>project and I wish you all well with your ongoing
>development!

Same to you, wish you good luck with Glow!

Cheers,
 Daniel
--
Daniel Molkentin, Kontact Framework Maintainer
molkentin@kde.org | KDE - Konquer your Desktop!
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