Re: [HC Evolution] evolution brain-dump

[rms39 columbia edu (Russell Steinthal)]

"Matt Loper" writes:

>       - A "query" search function should be added to the
>        e-book. This means that you could send an SQL query through
>        the Evolution:Book CORBA interface, and get notifications on
>        found cards. I think this would mean adding a "query"
>        function to Evolution:Book (in addressbook.idl), and adding
>        a few lines to the following files:
>
>             e-book.[ch]
>             pas-book.[ch]
>               pas-backend-file.[ch]
>
>        We'll need helper functions to assist in doing the actual
>        SQL query.

One thing which might be useful to consider when implementing this
(and no, I'm not volunteering, see below) is that the same sort of SQL
querying is needed to fully implement the iCalendar CAP (Calendar
Access Protocol), which allows clients to execute queries over
servers.  I don't think Federico has yet committed to making the PCS
CAP-compliant, but it might not be a bad goal to strive for.

(My personal opinion is that a SQL query mechanism is overkill for a
calendar-access protocol, but the people who wrote the spec disagree,
and if we're implementing it anyway...)

> Calendar
> --------
>
>       The Calendar's lookin' good! Here are a few of the things that
>       could be done without too much trouble...
>
>       - The main notebook widget in Gnomecal needs to be turned into
>        a Bonobo component, such that it can be housed in the shell.
>
>       - Since files were copied from gnome-pim/gncal modules to
>        evolution, some updates in the gnome-pim/gncal modules
>        haven't been brought over to Evolution. Federico will
>        eventually get to this, but if someone wants to send
>        patches, they will be appreciated.

Once I get gnome-pim 1.2 out the door (hopefully in the next week or
two), I'll probably go back and extract the patches for evolution- if
someone else wants to do it, however, it shouldn't be too difficult,
since I *think* most of the changes were relatively small (but
important).  (And some of them were UI-only, and probably don't need
to be ported.)

>       - The event editor dialog should be redone and made prettier,
>        using Glade.

Could anyone who takes this on please let me (or the list) know before
starting work?  I have some ideas for what needs to go into a good
EventEditor, so knowing someone is going to work on it will be a good
incentive to type them out...

>       - We need a nice editor for categories.

There was some basic code committed to gnome-pim after Federico copied
the tree... Whoever takes this on should probably coordinate with
Dirk-Jan (check gnome-pim/gncal/ChangeLog for his e-mail address),
since he was working on the same thing for gnome-pim.  (He wrote the
basic category support in gnome-pim 1.1.x; I don't know if he is on
this list.)

>       - The calendar should be able to build properly :-)
>
>       There's a lot in progress going on right now with the
>       calendar; Seth and Federico are making the GUI client use the
>       CalClient to talk to the PCS (instead of directly manipulating
>       the store). Seth is doing some iCalendar work, but could use
>       some help if you know iCalendar well. Russell is working on
>       timezone support. Damon just committed a bunch of new widgets
>       for the calendar. And finally, Eskil is looking into finishing
>       support for Pilot syncing; this is basically missing deletion
>       support, which Federico thinks he has a solution for.

Hmm... I had forgotten that I was working on timezone support.  But I
did promise Federico, so I'll get back to it soon. :)

If nobody else jumps at iCalendar, I'll probably help Seth with that
as well, since I was the one who originally started that
implementation and have spent too much time reading iCalendar specs to
let it all go to waste. :)

Let me add one other item to the to-do list: we could really use
someone who is comfortable with lex and yacc to look into some issues
in the libversit parser- there are some fairly significant bugs which
have shown up in gnome-pim (and will in Evolution as well, since it
uses the same library to handle vCalendar files).  If someone wants to
volunteer, e-mail me and I'll give you details.

Ok, enough from me.

-Russell