[Evolution-hackers] Simple Calendar Protocol Connector for easy implementation of calendar servers

[Michael Wyraz <lists wyraz de>]

Hi,

i've spent some time with research on different calendaring 
client/server implementations. I believe that most use proprietary or 
open but very complex protocols (e.g. CalDav) or protocols that are 
restricted to read-only access (e.g. WebCal).
On the other hand there are some really simple protocols which are not 
dedicated to calendar access (e.g. xmlrpc or json over http).
So the barrier for a developer of a calendar (i.e. a web calendar) to 
implement a bridge to evoluition is very high.

I've seen that korganizer has a xml-rpc plugin that allows to access the 
calendar of eGroupware.

So my idea is:
- to specify a really simple, http based calendar access protocol (or 
use an existing if there is one)
- to do a reference implementation of the server part
- to implement an evolution connector for this protocol

Preferentially I'd use json for encapsulating messages because:
- it's easy to read and understand
- it's available for almost any language (http://json.org/)
- it's lightweight
- the same api could be used to implement an ajax-ui to access this calendar

I could do the protocol spec and the server implementation. But i have 
limited c-programming knowledge and know not much about the evolution 
api. I had a short look to evolution-webcal 
(http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/evolution-webcal/2.10/) and it 
seems that the evolution part is not very big.

What do you think about this idea?
Can anyone estimate how much work it would be to implement the evolution 
part?
Is anyone interested to help me with that project (especially with ideas 
and with the evolution part)?

Regards,
Michael.