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

[Thomas W. <Tho...@ho...>]

Hi,

here are my two cents ;-)

> 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?

I agree with frederik. It should be a collaboration software and not groupware :-)

> 2. What kind of functionality do we need? Chat/Calendar/File-Sharing/etc. ?

First of all (for me!) we should work a little bit more on our adressbook (ldap support...). Then I love the idea of an nice calender which I can combine with my mails in several ways.

> 3. If we create a client for several services, what are the existing
> servers we can communicate with?

For adressbook we should support vcal on local file, ldap and active directory from windows.

For calender: See frederiks statements.

> 4. How much effort should be spend on improving our framework layer, so
> other components can benefit of it?

I following frederik.

But for me our main goal is to improve and stablelize our mail client. We have many small problems which need to fix, cleanup code, change to jdk 1.5, adding more security stuff (my part :-)) ...

Regards,

waffel

> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
> for problems?  Stop!  Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
> searching your log files as easy as surfing the  web.  DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
> http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642
> _______________________________________________
> Columba-devel mailing list
> Col...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/columba-devel


---
This mail was sent with the Java email client Columba. Read more at http://columbamail.org