PROPOSAL: Evolution for GNOME 2.8

[JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>]

The Evolution team would like to formally propose Evolution 2.0
(http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution) for inclusion in the GNOME 2.8
Desktop release.

As some of you may know, we proposed Evolution 2.0 for inclusion in the
GNOME 2.6 release but a desire for greater quality and polish led us to
withdraw it from that release.  We intend to release Evolution 2.0
around mid-July, so the version that ships with GNOME can be an
appropriate point release of that stable series.

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

We are still endeavoring to remove gal as a dependency but it may remain
through 2.0.  The evolution-exchange code will eventually roll into e-d-
s but not for 2.0.

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. 

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

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, NNTP, Overlayed Calendars and Tasks, etc.

We really want Evolution to become part of the platform in the long term
to help drive more advanced features, such as the already existing: 

- gaim integration (Christian Hammond)
- clock/calendar panel integration (William Mccann)
- contact lookup applet (Ross Burton)

We're open to any feedback.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>
Novell, Inc.