[Columba-devel] calendar/chat prototypes and future directions

[Frederik D. <ma...@fr...>]

Hi developers,

I'd like to discuss our future direction with you all!

First questions we should ask ourselves includes:
1. How do we define groupware or collaboration or pim software?
2. What kind of functionality do we need? Chat/Calendar/File-Sharing/etc. ?
3. If we create a client for several services, what are the existing
servers we can communicate with?
4. How much effort should be spend on improving our framework layer, so
other components can benefit of it?

Here are my thoughts on this:
1. I don't like the term "groupware". I'd rather go with something like
collaboration suite or PIM. Its a tool which lets people collaborate.

2. I'd like to see calendar as the most important first. I've added chat
because its very easy and adds a more interactive nature to Columba.

3. Our calendar client should be able to upload iCalendar files to a
WebDAV server, just like the old Mozilla Mail or Evolution. Additionally,
it should support the CalDAV protocol which works nice with Hula Project
Server or Cosmo (links can be found in the wiki).

4. I'm not for investing much time in the framework. We should keep things
as simple as possible. For example, the plugin framework should only be
used to do little things. It should never become a sophisticated framework
as seen in Eclipse. Additionally, we should try to stick to basic
principles, so new developers can join us easily. For example, history has
proven that its usually not a good idea to add an extra abstraction layer
on top of Swing.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

As you might have noticed, I've already started on prototypes for the
calendar and chat components. You can find all the documentation here:
http://www.columbamail.org/confluence/display/CO/Prototyping

Those should be particulary interesting to you:
-
http://www.columbamail.org/confluence/display/CO/French+Vanilla+Calendar+Prototype
-
http://www.columbamail.org/confluence/display/CO/Altura+Chat+Client+Prototype

So, I hope you give those a try and we end up with a visually and also
functionally pleasing prototype which shows off where we are heading to.
I would be cool to release those plugins alongside the 1.2 release. This
should help us getting more new developers to join us hopefully.

The calendar is more interesting for the visual pleasing, the chat client
more for the functional side ;-)

So, let me know what you have in mind!

Cheers,
-Frederik