[Kde-pim] SyncML-Klient KDE

[Patrick Ohly]

Hello Sascha!

Let's switch to English as you suggested, with the mailing lists on CC.
I've summarized the main points below. For those joining the discussion,
I mailed Sascha after I read about his KDE SyncML work and introduced
SyncEvolution+libsynthesis. Some relevant links:
http://syncevolution.org/
http://moblin.org/documentation/syncevolution/direct-synchronization-aka-syncml-server

As you said, libsynthesis wasn't available when you started your work on
the KDE SyncML client/server. It's a real pity that we (Synthesis.ch for
libsynthesis, Intel for the revampled SyncEvolution) couldn't get the
open sourcing done sooner. On the other hand, this way you and the other
SyncML projects which seem to happen this summer had a chance to
experiment with the technology. That might make it easier to understand
what libsynthesis and SyncEvolution are about.

Regarding "libfunambol is good enough for a client": yes, after all I
used it for over three years. But it has its limitations. In addition to
the obvious lack of WBXML support (required for Google), you'll also
find that the "pass KDE data to SyncML server directly" approach is too
limited once you start doing interoperability testing with SyncML
servers. I already mentioned vCalendar 1.0 support (mobical.net) and
vCard extensions (X-SPOUSE); this is trivial to solve with libsynthesis
and harder with libfunambol.

But I'd like to go one step further: instead of switching to
libsynthesis, I suggest that you consider integrating your work with
SyncEvolution. libsynthesis is really just the raw engine. The app
framework that you know from libfunambol is provided by SyncEvolution
for libsynthesis. The "syncevolution" command line tool should work with
a KDE backend right away.

We are currently in the process of revising the D-Bus API for GUIs. The
sync engine is already decoupled from the GTK GUI via D-Bus, but this
was done in a rather ad-hoc fashion and we think this can be improved.
It would be great to get your feedback, but as you are going on vacation
(lucky you!), we'll have to give it a shot and then revise it when you
come back end of September - assuming that you are interested, of
course.

-- 
Bye, Patrick Ohly
--  
Patrick.Ohly at gmx.de
http://www.estamos.de/


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