Re: [Evolution-hackers] Interface Spec for PIM component interoperability

[Till Adam <till kdab net>]

Srini, Berndt,

I know this thread is very old (hopefully Evo sorts by newest mail in thread, not olders, like KMail did, until recently ;), but I thought I'd hijack it anyhow, for a proposal:

What do you guys think of a PIM BOF at the Gran Canaria desktop summit this year? I'd try to get any interested Mozillistas and Maemo-ites involved as well, if you agree that this is a good idea. Hopefully there'll be some around. Would give us all a chance to discuss the state of things and how we can best interoperate and cooperate, in the future.

Game?

Till

On Thursday 21 August 2008 11:24:57 Srinivasa Ragavan wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 14:14 +0200, Holger Berndt wrote:
> > Hello Evolution hackers,
> >
> > I just subscribed to the list, and browsing the archives this message
> > may or may not have an overlap with the recent thread about EDS D-Bus
> > interface in "Future of eds bindings".
> >
> > I am a supporter of the desktop independant, GTK+ based MUA Claws Mail.
> > Its (few) developers are pretty evenly split between between being KDE,
> > GNOME, and XFCE users.
> >
> > I've thought many times that it would be great to have a
> > (maybe freedesktop.org) standard for PIM component access and
> > interaction. Ideally, this would allow for all PIM components
> > implementing this spec to be interchangable without loosing
> > integration, so the user could choose calendar, addressbook, mailer etc
> > independantly, and still have a nicely integrated PIM suite. This could
> > be achieved by defining a "common language" for popular PIM tasks
> > involving multiple components (by "PIM component", I mean MUA,
> > calendar, addressbook, notes application etc).
>
> Sure, a valid requirement. Evolution gets used by quite a few KDE users,
> I have received feedbacks from such users on the similar lines.
>
> > Let me give a few examples of such tasks:
> > What a MUA could request:
> > - dear addressbook, whoever you might be, please add the following
> > contact: John Doe <john doe tld org>
> > - dear addressbook, please give me a list of all contacts
> > - dear addressbook, please open up contact xy for editing. Or just show
> > me your main window.
> > - dear calendar, whoever you might be, I just received a meeting
> > invitation via email. Please insert that event into my calendar
> >
> > Basically, it would be necessary to define a set of interfaces
> > (possibly D-Bus services) along the lines of
> > org.freedesktop.pim.addressbook.storage
> > org.freedesktop.pim.addressbook.ui
> > org.freedesktop.pim.calendar.storage
> > org.freedesktop.pim.calendar.ui
> > org.freedesktop.pim.mua.storage
> > org.freedesktop.pim.mua.ui
> > etc, where in the case of GNOME Evolution could provide the *.ui
> > interfaces and EDS could provide the *.storage interfaces.
>
> Infact, I'm open to have some defined common interfaces that multiple
> apps (Mail, Calendar) can interface with the PIM daemons (EDS, Akonadi,
> etc). Infact, starting next week (planning bits atm), I'm gonna work on
> moving mail to e-d-s to make EDS complete. Then defining common
> standards/interfaces (across Mail, Contacts Calendars) would help apps
> to operate transparently, independent of the desktops.
>
> -Srini.
>
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--
Till Adam
KDAB - platform independent software services