client compatibility (was: Re: [kroupware] About mozilla calendar ...)

[Henning Holtschneider]

--On Montag, 20. Januar 2003 19:44 +0100 Bo Thorsen <bo@sonofthor.dk> wrote:

>> format which can only be read by InsightConnector. So, if you start off
>> under Windows and then wish to switch your client platform to Linux,
>> you cannot transfer any other data than your emails.
>
> Why do you say this? We have been pretty succesful in decoding these. At
> least appointments we can read just fine in the client.

Sorry, I must have missed something here. Are you saying that you can 
decode the data  InsightConnector stores in "special" email messages on the 
server? 8-} I'm not talking about meeting requests sent to other clients, 
vCards or free/busy files.

> Why on earth do you want to reimplement Exchange with using the
> proprietary fileformats we're all trying to get away from?

No, that's NOT what I want. I want Outlook to speak a non-binary language 
on the storage side (= IMAP server, doesn't work at least for me; see 
below) and on the client-to-client communication side (= meeting requests 
etc.; works correctly)

> of the kolab server is orthogonal to what you want. We're focusing on
> open standards, writing a client that supports them and getting Outlook
> to work with it too.

That's exactly what I tried to say ;-)

I just checked the legacy file format specs in the architecture paper again 
and I think I'm probably making assumptions based on a broken or 
misconfigured InsightConnector. Another possibility would be that where the 
paper says "Legacy File Formats - Calendar Event" (Appendix B.1) it means 
"Meeting invitation".

Here is my problem: the file format described in 
http://kolab.kde.org/concept-1.0.1/a566.html#AEN569 simply does not match 
what is being stored on the IMAP server by the InsightConnector. I've 
created a  sample calendar event and the event information is being stored 
in a binary attachment. You can download a sample at 
http://www.holtschneider.com/bynari-calendar.txt. I wrote my message to 
this mailing list based on that. If I'm too stupid to configure MS Outlook, 
please beat me up now ;*)

> P.S. Again I felt the need for some ranting. It is pretty annoying to be
> part of a project when many of the mails send to the list lately are all
> about why we should fundamentally do something different. So I'd like
> future posters to this mailing list to actually *read* the concept papers
> on www.kroupware.org and understand that the general concept is not going
> to change. We are obviously happy with discussing implementation details,
> but hearing someone elses thoughts on how we should do most things
> different gets tiresome. If you want to say that we're wrong, do it with

I'm not telling you that your approach is wrong. In fact, I think it's 
right because it tries to use existing clients and doesn't try to program 
yet another client. Even more importantly, you will be delivering a working 
solution! That's a point where all other open groupware projects have 
failed so far because they have changed the specs over and over again or 
they have been working on stupid details but forgot the overall framework. 
I can't thank you guys enough for sticking to your goals!

hh