[Kroupware] Another name for "Kroupware"

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Tuesday 24 September 2002 16:46, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
>
> 	KDE Kolab client we are developing will be based on KMail
> 	and KOrganizer, already known labels.
> 	Furthermore there might be longer plans within the KDE-PIM
> 	initiative to reshuffle the functionality later.
> 	Maybe someone taking a lead role in KDE-PIM should comment
> 	on the long term plans.

We have always concentrated on making the individual applications as 
good as possible for their specific purposes. I don't think this will 
change in the future.

Integration and interoperability have become increasingly important. We 
already address these issues to a great extent by using common 
libraries, DCOP communication, plugin and KParts interfaces etc. But 
one important goal is to not sacrifice the usability of the individual 
applications by the integration efforts. There are a lot of people 
which want to use a mail client for reading their mails or an organizer 
for keeping their appointments, but not the one-in-all beast which does 
everything at once.

The integration of the GUIs to a common application similar to Outlook 
or its clones is something we have been constantly asked for. The 
component technology KDE provides gives us the big chance to achieve 
that without loosing the ability to run the components as separate 
applications. Kaplan is an implementation of that concept and as we 
have seen on the mailing lists in the last few weeks, there is a broad 
consensus that something based on this concept is the future of kdepim 
(including KMail, KNode and others).

Another important aspect is that we always have been trying to make use 
of open standards and don't tie the apps to certain implementations of 
something. That means for example that the kdepim apps will never 
become clients which work only with a certain server. But we are open 
for accessing special servers in a clean and modular way. The Kroupware 
project is doing the best job we have seen so far to integrate the KDE 
clients with a groupware server, but there is also work going on to 
integrate with Exchange and implementations for other servers like 
phpGroupware or Citadel/UX are also very welcome. It's just that we 
can't do all the work ourselves.

Conclusion: We focus on the individual apps and make them available as 
components. They have well-recognized names and will keep them. We will 
add a framework for (optional) integration, but an important goal is to 
keep modularity and partition functionality in a sensible way to avoid 
redundancy as well as too monolithic applications.

> 	If we want a new name, what will it label accurately?
> 	The KDE client consisting of several components, which
> 	habe names like KMail or KOrganizer?
> 	All Kolab clients?

There is no point in renaming existing well-known applications and I 
think the apps should also keep their name, if they are used as 
components in another app.

We can discuss the name of the shell/framework/meta application. I like 
the name "Kaplan", but Don's proposal "Kontact" might also be fine. If 
somebody has a really good idea, we could also choose something 
completely different.

> 	Will it replace KOrganizer?

Definitely not.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@kde.org>