[Kroupware] Re: About Kolab and plugins

[Andreas Gungl]

Am Thursday 22 January 2004 16:49 schrieb Eugen Constantinescu:
> Hi Andreas,
> It is my first step to support Kolab, it's possible to not be what you
> have expected but that's what I could do for this release.
> I am using a standard Kolab server installation on my Mdk 9.2 system.

Hi Eugen,

At first I want to thank you for the surprising response. Good to know that 
you monitor the Kolab mailing list. ;-)
I don't know if my expectations are too high, I'm just looking for a tool my 
colleagues can run on W2K and WXP to benefit from our Kolab server. Well, 
I've told them only about LDAP and IMAP until now, but they see more 
possibilities in the web frontend and it's only a question of time until I 
get asked for a client on Windows.
Linux is easier, most of those who want to use the calendar functionality do 
run KDE. Kontact is going to get great (actually it already is), so I'm 
concerned about the Windows side. I've tested the Binary connector and 
didn't think that this is THE solution. I'm going to try other connectors 
as well, but I also wanted to give Aethera as OSS it's chance.

> For details about Kolab support you should read the Help pages which
> comes with Aethera.
> Aethera needs a restart after a new IMAP or Kolab account is created.
> Aethera can see only the subscribed folders and the Kolab specific
> folders are subscribed.

I'm using Mozilla 1.6 on a German W2K, I'm not able to use the menu at the 
left side when I open the help index. I eventually browsed the files 
manually. I succeeded in setting up the Kolab account and I can see (some 
of) the IMAP folders and the events are (partially wrong) shown in the 
calendar.

> It working very nice and without crashes for me, even on my Windows Me
> testing system. I am able to synchronize my calendar, contacts and notes.
> I am storing the password (which is encrypted) if this makes a
> difference. Regards,
> Eug

Well, I think 1) has been confirmed as bug by Shawn already. 4) didn't 
change for me. BTW, Aethera also crashed when I wanted to investigate an 
event which was shown for January 22nd while I know it is for 23rd (and 
it's shown correctly in KOrganizer).
Yes, 3) can be considered as invalid, but in the startup wizard (or however 
it i called) I could select only POP, IMAP and Local which led me to the 
natural conclusion that IMAP is the appropriate type.
For 2) I could not find out how to (un-)subscribe from / to a folder on an 
IMAP server. I somehow managed to work around this using Mozilla Mail.

Please take it as a status report only, I don't see a way to provide 
backtraces on Windows. I also don't plan to continuously test Aethera. In 
the moment it's to instable for my needs and I want to keep the risk of a 
data loss really minimal. However, if you could give some feedback on 
product improvements on this mailing list, I'll certainly give Aethera 
another try.
I know that Aethera is open source, but I feel I don't want to share my 
capacity between KMail and Aethera in the moment.

Regards,
Andreas

> On Thursday 22 January 2004 16:29, Andreas Gungl wrote:
> > Am Wednesday 10 September 2003 12:53 schrieb Bo Thorsen:
> > > On Wednesday 10 September 2003 11:49, Jon Bendtsen wrote:
> > > > Personaly i would suggest me ;-P but then again, i might be more
> > > > inclined to use Aethera from theKompany, since this is
> > > > kmail/korganisor/... but avaible directly for windows. And kolab
> > > > support should be 2 weeks away (this was last week). And this
> > > > product will use the full feature set of kolab, rather than just a
> > > > (ugly?) hack for outlook.
> > >
> > > If you do go ahead and evaluate Aethera, please send a review of it
> > > here. I have tried during this week to get it running on Windows, but
> > > it wouldn't even connect to an IMAP server. Not a good sign :-(
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > as Aethera 1.0.2 became available for download on Tuesday gave it a try
> > on my notebook running W2k. Maybe it was me but after 20 min I decided
> > to deinstall it...
> >
> > Here are the main reasons:
> > 1) I did specify to not store the password for my IMAP account in the
> > configuration. However, I was not asked for it (even after a restart)
> > instead the IMAP connection silently failed without any comment.
> > 2) A good portion of my IMAP folders remained invisible. I tried to
> > find subsription options or whatever in context and main menus - no
> > chance to solve that quickly resp. at all.
> > 3) Kolab integration - where is it? I played with the organizer view
> > which seem to be inherited from KOrganizer (and so written in about
> > text), but I got no idea how to let it access my calendar folder on the
> > Kolab server. 4) Aethera crashed on _every_ application shutdown.
> >
> > Data loss is no fun and to prevent it I finally wiped Aethera from my
> > disk without testing anything more. I'm using Mozilla and (sometimes)
> > Outlook on Windows. On Linux I'm using KDE 3.2 (branch). All of them
> > are miles away from Aethera concerning stability and functionality.
> > Sorry for providing only critizism, I really hoped for an alternative
> > Kolab client, but what I've seen (even as Aethera newby) was only
> > disappointing. And even if there would be an Aethera plugin for Kolab
> > which I missed, I would have no good feeling running that client.
> > Nevertheless I do hope, that the next Aethera release will do much
> > better.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Andreas