[Kde-pim] [kde-promo] Akonadi questionez

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Friday 21 May 2010 21:21:50 Kevin Krammer wrote:
> Hi Jos,
> 
> On Monday, 2010-05-17, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> > Hi fellow gearheads,
> > 
> > The marketing team asks for your help in communicating Akonadi.
> > 
> > You might all be aware of the questions often seen on mailinglists,
> > like "what the heck does this resource hog do here" and similar
> > insults. Basically, the users are asking:
> > 
> > 1. what does it bring me NOW
> 
> This is the hardest question, also because it depends on what "NOW" refers
> to.
> 
> As of KDE SC 4.4 there isn't really a lot positive for users to actually
> notice other than maybe access to Google contacts through the Google
> connector.
> Unfortunately this connector is limited in certain ways, e.g. which contact
> fields it supports, so this might count more as a thing to play with than a
> thing to work with.
> 
> As for KDE SC 4.5, well this for one depends on when in the 4.5 cycle
> KDEPIM will be ready for release and it might also be just improvements on
> certain data transports, e.g. I think there is a very functional CalDAV
> connector which can talk to most calendar servers out there.
> 
> Most of the time related to Akonadi had to be spent on massaging insanely
> old and complex code bases on top of something that is totally different
> in almost all aspects to whatever these applications had been using
> before.
> 
> So while an Akonadi based e.g. email setup as done with KMail2 could offer
> folder specific cache settings (current KMail can only do account specific,
> same for all folder of an account and not changable without account
> recreation), I am almost certain that there is no UI for that yet.
> (somebody please correct me if I am wrong on this one).
> 
> Other improvements such as not having to run KMail when working with
> groupware contacts or calendar such as Kolab is only visible to such users
> of such setups, which probably means only a tiny group outside the
> company/public administration camp.
> 
> > 2. what problems does it solve?
> 
> Right now mostly engineering problem such as getting rid of hack on top of
> hack that where added during more than ten years of development.
> It allows KDEPIM developers to look forward instead of watching their
> backs, allowing to cope with requirements that have been unseen at the
> time applications like KMail or KOrganizer were designed first.
> 
> It also makes it possible to split things into more module parts making it
> for one possible for other application developers to do PIM related stuff
> from withing their applications (e.g. sending reminder emails from
> invocing applications) as well as enabling "light" versions for use in
> mobile scenarios, etc.
> 
> > 3. what will it bring me in the future?
> 
> For one, more variety on data sources. We already see much more new
> contributors working on Akonadi resources (data source connectors) than at
> any time before, mostly because working on these can now be done without
> having to muck with specific application code bases (see above).
> 
> Another one depends on whether other application developers will use this
> non- applications specific approach to enhance their applications with
> related functionality.
> 
> Some early attempts have already shown potential for unprecedented
> workspace integration, context/activity aware new-mail notifications,
> dragging PIM objects to your desktop but keeping them live-updated and so
> on.

Lion Mail! :-D

> > Meanwhile, the promo team is struggling with this. We know *part* of
> > the answer, but still would like to solicit input from those great
> > minds which came up with it in the first place!
> 
> Unfortunately this is mostly something at developer level right now as far
> as improvements go.

For the beta1 announcement, I'm using the following as to why akonadi is interesting:

"Akonadi will centralize synching and caching of PIM data, deliver wider support for 
groupware servers and makes handling PIM data, such as contacts, calendaring and 
email more efficient by sharing it across applications."

Let's see how this fares. (It goes along with the "akonadi ports coming later" 
message, so definitely interesting.)

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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