[Kde-pim] Integrating LDAP into contact lookup in a common way

[Shaheed Haque]

Hi,

As discussed briefly on the mailing list on Saturday, I think it would
be useful to integrate LDAP lookup with non-LDAP lookup in KMail's
"Select Recipient" dialog. My original proposal was based on the idea
I could simply collapse the "Search for Addresses in Directory" into
the "Select Recipient" dialog by combining the search capabilities of
the latter into the former, at the UI level.

However, in poking around the Akonadi-based code in trunk, I see that
we have the following backend code:

        - One LDAP implementation in kdepimlibs/kldap/ldapsearch.h, in
namespace KLDAP. This is the version that is referred to from the KDE
4.x docs for kdepimlibs, though the bulk of the content is missing.

        - Another LDAP implementation in
kdepim/libkdepim/ldapclient.h, in namespace KPIM. This is referred to
from the docs for kdepim/libkdepim, though the file contains comments
saying "this is for internal use only".

        - An LDAP Akonadi resource in playground/pim/ldap. From a
quick test, this seems to work nicely, and depends on the KPIM
version.

And on the UI side we have:

        - An AddresseeLineEdit in kdepim/libkdepim which does support
LDAP, based on KPIM.

        - An AddressLineEdit in kdepimlibs/kabc which does not support
LDAP directly.

        - An LDAP search in kdepim/libkdepim/ldapsearchdialog.cpp,
based on KLDAP.

        - Another LDAP search in
kdepim/libkdepim//kaddressbook/xxport/ldap/ldapsearchdialog.cpp, based
on KPIM.

Needless to say, I could use some input on what's actually wanted
here! The first question I have is which is the preferred backend
implementation going forward, the one in namespace KPIM, or KLDAP?

The next questions should be which is the preferred lineedit, and
which is the preferred search dialog. However, I am beginning to
wonder if, given the Akonadi resource, we should not just use this for
all the UI stuff? If we did:

        - There seems to be a some missing steps in how "Edit
Completion Order" is handled for lineedits.

         - I assume the "Search for Addresses in Directory" becomes
superflous becuase the base "Select Recipient" dialog could just be
enhanced as I originally planned from a UI point of view, but now, the
LDAP resource just looks like another address book.

Your thoughts and guidance would be appreciated because there is a lot
of work here to unify this lot, and I'm not going to get far without
some idea what the overall plan needs to be.

Thanks, Shaheed
_______________________________________________
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/