[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
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