[Kde-pim] Fwd: Google SoC Project Idea: Kontact Exchange

[Vincent Panel]

On 2/26/07, Thiago Macieira <thiago at kde.org> wrote:
> FYI, this was sent to kde-devel at kde.org.
>
> --
>  Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
>   PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
>   E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C 966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Vic Fryzel <vic at shellsage.com>
> To: kde-devel at kde.org
> Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:14:54 -0500
> Subject: Google SoC Project Idea: Kontact Exchange
> Hi,
>
> I'd very much like to contribute to KDE via the Google Summer of Code.  I
> think that I have two good project ideas (the first of which is listed
> below), and have no problem putting forth the required effort to contribute
> features.  I've already contributed patches to the KDE project, am an active
> Gentoo developer, and develop a lot of open source software in my spare
> time.
>
> Please take the time to review, comment on, and build on my proposal, and I
> very much appreciate any feedback.  I'll submit it as soon as the web
> interface for proposal submissions is available.
>
> My preliminary project proposal for full Kontact Exchange integration follows:
>
> Who are you? What are you studying?
> My name is Vic Fryzel.  I'm pursuing a B.S. and M.S. in Software Engineering.
>
> What exactly do you intend to do? What will not be done?
> It is my intent to bring the MS Exchange implementation in Kontact to be as
> feature-complete as Evolution.  I intend for this to be included in KDE4.  It
> is not my intent to affect any other features of Kontact that are unrelated
> to getting Exchange integration to work, unless a new feature is required by
> Exchange integration.
>
> Why are you the right person for this task?
> I'm the right person for the task because I have substantial open source
> software development experience, a significant will to see Kontact and KDE
> become more popular and widely used, and use both KDE and Evolution on a
> daily basis, so I know what's missing from Kontact.  I'm also familiar with Qt
> and the KDE libraries.
>
> How many hours are you going to work on this a week?
> I'm prepared to work as many as 30-40 hours per week on this project.  My
> other commitments include my full-time day job as a software engineer.
>
> Are you comfortable working independently under a remote supervisor or mentor?
> I'm comfortable working independently under a supervisor or mentor who is at a
> remote location.  I'd set weekly goals for the project, and discuss these
> goals and my progess weekly (or less frequently based upon the requirements
> of the mentor) with my mentor.  I've already had experience with this sort of
> thing in becoming a Gentoo developer, where a large number of the developers
> live in Europe, and I live in the U.S.
>
> What is your native language?
> My native language is English.
>
> Where do you live?
> I live in Rochester, NY, USA;  a local mentor would be spectacular, but I've
> yet to meet a KDE developer from the area.
>
> To what extent are you familiar with the software you're proposing to work
> with?
> I'm very familiar with Kontact and KDE development in general.  I've
> read the source code (I've already looked into further implementing Exchange
> integration in Kontact just in my spare time).  I've begun to modify the
> source to perform better calendar Exchange queries, but have nothing
> patch-ready, although all of my work has been on the KDE trunk, so it is all
> going towards KDE4.  I have used C++ for many work-related projects, and am
> familiar with Qt and the KDE libraries.  I'm also very familiar with MS
> Exchange queries, and have written work-related applications to query
> Exchange servers for data such as one's mail folder/email information, and
> appointment/meeting information;  this included the handling of meeting
> requests.
>

Hi,

I know a bit exchange as I've migrated a company from exchange 5.5 to
an exchange 2003 cluster.

The major problem being that exchange uses natively protocols no one
has ever implemented under linux (even evolution) : X400 and X500. Of
course these are "microsoft" protocols which means they have probably
added proprietary, undocumented features to these protocols. Exchange
also uses imap, pop3 and webdav. But you can disable all three of them
and only outlook users will be able to use exchange. Evolution uses
webdav access, so they don't implement the native protocol either.

The other problem is the calendar integration with the exchange
server. I think you should be able to keep a local copy of your
exchange calendar, but synchronize it with the server, so in the
current state, the best way to do this is via opensync and writing a
plugin for it.

You have almost the same synchronization problem with contacts.

I also notice some people sometimes use the "vote" mechanism of
outlook/exchange and kmail doesn't deal with it at all.

One last thing is public folders : these are mail folders shared among
several people (and generally open read/write to a group of people).

Now things that does work in the current kmail state  :
- If imap is turned on, kmail deals with exchange rather well
- kmail is able to display meeting requests, deal with them (accept /
decline / tentative and send a response to the sender) and add the
meeting in your (local) calendar
- you can get your exchange contacts and access the exchange GAL if
you configure LDAP in the configuration page of kadressbook. But here,
there's another difficulty : for a NT domain, the GAL is on the
exchange server and for a 2003 domain, it's on the Domain Controllers
of the domain. It's possible you can get the domain controller by
querying the exchange server, but I don't know how to do it. The other
way to get it is by querying the domain in a samba-way (samba is able
to tell you the domain controller with only the domain name).

I think an exchange wizard to configure all these pieces of kmail in
one go would be much appreciated, otherwise, you have to configure all
these things in kmail, then in kadressbook, then in korganizer.

My two pennies...
_______________________________________________
kde-pim mailing list
kde-pim at kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-pim
kde-pim home page at http://pim.kde.org/