[Evolution] UI Suggestions

[Jason Haar <Jason Haar trimble co nz>]

I was wondering if you've thought about making Evolution capable of running
as a pure server-based app? By that I mean the option of making an IMAP
server responsible for Calendar and Contacts as well as mail.

As there are no standards in this area, you could work on the principle that
an IMAP folder named "Calendar" contains one calendar appointment per mail
message contained within. Same for Contacts. You could make each of these
messages an XML object containing all the appropriate stuff - or maybe iCal
and vCard objects instead (to use existing "standards"). Then when evolution
starts up, it could just read each item in Calendars, and generate it's
calendar from that, with recursive appointments and everything. The nice
thing about this would be that if these folders were in public shared IMAP
folders, then users could share Calendars and Contacts lists, etc. With the
above idea, it would also give you some data transparency because at least a
dumb IMAP client could still access Calendar entries as mail messages. M$
Exchange half-assed does this already, each contact/calander entry is a
separate message, but the IMAP interface botches the objects so that you
can't get to the data :-(. 

Sounds doable/a good/crazy idea?

-- 
Cheers

Jason Haar

Unix/Network Specialist, Trimble NZ
Phone: +64 3 9635 377 Fax: +64 3 9635 417