Re: [Evolution-hackers] Evolution as part of groupware projects in ST Louis

[JP Rosevear <jpr ximian com>]

On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 11:28, JT Moree wrote:
> Hello,
>    I have been actively attempting to get Evolution to play nice with groupware for the past few 
> months.  There are a few groups in St. Louis that have become interested in this subject and we are 
> working towards an Open Source, Outlook Exchange replacment.
> 
> True to the nature of this subject the OGo (http://www.opengroupware.org/) project requires 
> proprietary programs to connect an Open Source Mail client (Evo) with an Open Source mail Server. 
> To credit, the site does mention that they are looking for alternatives.
> 
> We have been discussing ways to overcome this apparently HUGE delimma.  No one has implemented such 
> a project yet.  So I have been trying to do it.
> 
> Here is a summary of what we have though about and done about the Calendar functionality related to 
> Evolution:
> 
> 1) Open WebDav/http standards are used by Mozilla calendar, Apple iCal to transport icalendar (.ics) 
> files.
> 	Evolution could do the same.  I started hacking Evo to add support for this.  Unfortunately, I was 
> only on 1.0.8 which was too old to be effective anyway.  I got as far as adding the GUI components 
> but had some trouble understanding the code for doing the actual work.  May come back to this in the 
> future.

Evolution allows "storages" to be written so that you just have to
implement a backend for the server/storage mechanism you are talking
to.  Essentially you want to subclass cal-backend.[hc], although in
practice its a little trickier than that.

> 2) Kolab (kolab.kde.org) is the German gov't funded groupware server.
> 	This method stores all data in IMAP email.  This makes centralized storing and sharing data very 
> easy.  But this is a new implementation requiring all clients to be changed to support said interface.

This should also simply be a calendar backend either in the wombat or as
a separate storage.

> 3) A program could be written (and we have some preliminary notes) that translates between Kolab and 
> ical for CALENDARING.
> 	A set of programs would have to be given priveledged access to the IMAP data store in order to 
> translate the IMAP data into icalendar files and vice versa.  This would allow a hacked version of 
> evo to support both ical/http(s) and Kolab.  The programs would be responsible for hiding private 
> data during translation.

This should also simply be a calendar backend either in the wombat or as
a separate storage.

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