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

Vincent Panel yohonet at gmail.com
Mon Apr 7 10:42:44 BST 2008


Hi,

Is it time to propose kontact-exchange project once again ? Now with
KDE4 and Akonadi (which were not really stable last year) ?
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

Some very interesting discussions went on last year and vic seemed to
be motivated !

Vincent

2007/4/12 Vic Fryzel <vic at shellsage.com>:
> Hello,
>
>  Although my SoC project idea was not selected, I still think it would be very
>  important to Kontact.  I thought for sure it would have been selected, but I
>  guess others had better ideas for KDE PIM that were more in line with a SoC
>  project.  Regardless, I'd like to pursue this project anyway.  Would one or
>  more people care to mentor me?  I'm sure there are others significantly more
>  familiar with Kontact and KDE development processes than I.
>
>  Thanks very much.
>
>  --
>
> Vic Fryzel (vic at shellsage dot com)
>  http://shellsage.com/
>  Key id C7B780CA = 3235 2261 807B 451C DA4D  DFBA CAA7 80CF C7B7 80CA
>
>
>
>
> On Monday 26 February 2007 4:44:45 am Vincent Panel wrote:
>  > 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...
>
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