[Kde-pim] Contacts... new name wanted for the framework

Friedrich W. H. Kossebau kossebau at kde.org
Tue Jan 23 21:13:31 GMT 2007


Hi,

I am around to copy now my so called Contacts framework into the kdepim-3.5.5+ 
branch, as discussed before

But when doing so I would like to improve the naming.

For now I named it "Contacts". This is because I see the framework as an 
improvement over/enhancement of KABC, and I did not want to mix the naming 
with addressee of KABC. But honestly the idea behind the terms 
contacts/addressee does not match the concept at least I have in mind we are 
modelling in the software. So I am really looking forward to a better one, 
after all the name directs the thinking of the user.

For KDE4 my ideas/experiments go even beyond and add the concept of groups and 
identities. Groups could have own properties, like a plain person, and 
include other groups.

With this one could e.g. model the persons and groups of the KDE project. 
There would be:
* KDE - group, with a homepage, a news feed, a anniversary, etc.
* KDE developers - group, with several mailinglists, chat channels, homepage, 
subgroup of KDE
* KDE translators - group, <same as above>
* Joe Developer - homepage, chat name, email address, member of groups KDE 
developers and KDE translators
*...

So we would move towards a persons and groups centric desktop, with some kind 
of proxy objects for them. One e.g. no longer goes for the mail management 
program and selects the folder with the emails of your friend, but instead go 
to your friend('s proxy) and select his emails. 

I guess most of you haven't used the Contacts applet before, right? If you 
have you might get the idea what I envision. There you can have something 
like the list of chat partners in Kopete, but enriched with all possible and 
impossible status and action services, depending on the properties.
Others are behind popupmenus, so I can use it like the bookmark menu to reach 
someone's homepage, except that I go by persons, not resourcetype like with 
the list in Konqueror. Same with the blog. Right now the support is broken, 
but in an earlier version one could select and go to the latest blog entries 
by the same menu. And see in the proxy object display if there are new unread 
blog entries. Like one can see now if there are new emails. Or if someone is 
logged onto my computer. Etc. pp. There are so many use cases if you start 
thinking about it.

I like my idea :)

I once choose the name "organs" for it, from the idea, that the framework 
models organizations. But it does not really express what this is all about. 
Nor does Contacts or KABC(=Addressbook), because properties are not only 
(contact) addresses, but can be computer accounts, notes, whatever and it 
omits the concept of groups.

But this is KDE4, and it's not even clear how this could be implemented with a 
vcard-based(?) Akonadi. For now the framework for KDE 3 only extends 
KABC::Addressee with
* some propertytype adapters which know how to display (and in the future 
edit) an entry, like the blog feed url, flickr or simple computer accounts
* three kind of services which support a given property type
all by plugins, to avoid the more or less hardcoding we see currently. It also 
features some basic widgets, which should make life easier for developers 
using the framework.

So for KDE 3 even a different name than for KDE 4 makes sense. Or? And which? 
Huh, is this all a little bit complicated?

What are your ideas/thoughts?
Friedrich
_______________________________________________
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/



More information about the kde-pim mailing list