PROPOSAL: Evolution for GNOME 2.6

[JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>]

The Evolution team would like to formally propose Evolution
(http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution) for inclusion in the GNOME 2.6
Desktop release.

Currently this includes the following modules:
evolution
gtkhtml
gal
evolution-data-server

We are however endeavoring to remove gal as a dependency at this time.

We are moving to a 6 month release cycle to match the time based
releases of GNOME.

It is our intention in the future propose evolution-data-server for
inclusion in core platform.

There are two major parts of evolution now, the client (the UI) and the
data server.  The client lives in the evolution module while the data
server lives in evolution-data-server.  This has allowed us to make
calendar and addressbook data access available to any GNOME application
via a separate development package.  Some of the possible benefits of
this can be seen at http://www.gnome.org/bounties.

The data server has some useful features:

* LDAP, DB3, flat file backends for the addressbook (VCard)

* Flat file, webcal/http, groupwise backends for the calendar
(iCalendar)

* Pluggable architecture for backends 

* A per-user daemon that provides concurrent I/O and change     
notifications, with C client libraries 

* Synchronous C client with multi-thread support and devel docs

* C# bindings

We have also worked on improving the client portion:

* Simplified UI and HIG-ification.  We have been moving away
from the classic Outlook "folder tree + shortcut" model which has a
number of usability issues; instead we are moving towards a model where
calendar, address book and mail are separate entities and at some point
it will be possible to launch them as separate applications.

* Simpler design.  The old architecture was very complicated and
required a lot of knowledge to write a component, the new one is much
more straightforward.

* Code refactoring: we have been cleaning up a lot of loose ends, trying
to make the application more accessible to external developers.

* S/MIME 

We really want Evolution to become part of the platform in the long term
to help drive more advanced features.  We're open to any feedback.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>
Ximian, Inc.