[OGo-Users] OGO - Kontact Integration

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > We'll see what comes out of the new "MailCo", IMHO it should go into
> > the full-Outlook-replacement direction (lovely).
> Well Im not expecting much and personally I dont have the time to wait. What 
> is interesting in the realease announcement is the verbage used, " email and 
> communications areas" Thats standard language for integration with a number 
> of protocals, and its not what Im looking for. My spec reads as follows:
> 1. Standard linux based PIM: email, calender, contacts, todo list. Notes and 
> journal are nice but not required. Workflow is far more important to me then 
> the latter two. 

We are very much in the same boat - but I think what is at work here is
that there are several definitions of groupware people from different
perspectives use: 

(1) calendar / address books, etc... this may include tasks and to-do,
but it frequently doesn't.  If the calendar & address books (and
whatever else) can be used collaboratively or simply shared, then it is
"groupware".
(2) human oriented workflow in the sense of jobs and job collections,
and often used in relation to scheduling / calendering.  Here issuing,
tracking, and delegating things is the key.
(3) collaborative CMS and form oriented RAD; aka Lotus Notes & Domino or
Sharepoint.  Often these are built upon the foundation provided by 1 &
2.

None of the above are wrong, and all the industry leaders provide all
three (because they all make sense together).  I think it is reasonable
to accomplish #1 first and to realize that #1 is all that allot of
people want.  And it may be unrealistic to expect any kind of
interoperability standards related to #2 and #3;  look how long #1 has
taken.

Personally, #2 is my world.  With hundreds of users spread across
several states the infrastructure to keep information and agendas moving
through the pipe lines has occupied most of my time for the last year.  

<Aside> I find it amusing when I read on Slashdot how groupware is an
albatross.  And there is the infamous -
http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html - that gave birth to Hula and
contains the quote: "Groupware" is all about things like workflow, which
means.... Nobody cares about that **** Nobody you'd want to talk to,
anyway"  And that is exactly what our users want - "What happened to my
request?",  "What shmuck is holding it up?", "What exactly did we do in
regards to XYZ?" </Aside>

> 2. Able to sync my laptop to a server and update and sync remotely as well as 
> sync workstation with laptop or server. All three need to be updated with the 
> same information. 

This works, at least for the address book in TB.  

Once [or "if ever" :) ] Consonance is stable complete enough, due to the
absolutely fabulous db4o system - http://www.mono-project.com/DB4O -
doing offline support and sync should actually be pretty simple.  That
is why zOGI has the getVersions method.  DB4o is flat-out the coolest
thing I've bumped into in a long time.

> 3. Able to sync, calendar, contacts, and todos to my mobile.

This is, IMO, done.  It isn't simple as it requires the infrastructure
of Funambol, but it works.   With the notable exception of To-Dos (which
do not work),  but like #2 above I find the to-do application on my Palm
or provided by either Evolution and Outlook to border on useless.

The feature  I miss most of all is the memo support in OGo's original
Palm support [memos could be linked as text files in projects].  *THAT*
was really handy.  You could use your mobile device to update notes
other users could see and also use it as a bulletin board (configuring
the intranet to get certain content from notes - i.e. #3 above).  I miss
that feature every single day.

> Lets see, Ive been on linux now since the late 90's and I still cant get this 
> combo to work in a reliable manner. Can ya feel da pain..:) 

Sure,  this is exaggerated by the fact that nothing stands still;
witness the breaking of pilot-link between versions of
PalmOS/Garnet/or-whatever-it-is-called-this-weak.  This is why Funambol
is such a good option, it adds a middle man that can deal with all the
crazy oddities of each platform;  that is its purpose in life, so all
that kind of stuff actually gets maintained.

> > Anyways, I guess TB + Lightning + the SOGo extensions are quite
> > reasonable. Well, and if you want to target Windows, its the only
> > real (FOSS) option currently (IMHO).
> Not so, 

I think it is reasonable given the #1 definition of groupware.   And
those apps do run on Win32 *today*.

> Big debate in the KDE community was whether to release a windos 
> version and with qt4 and KDE4 this will be the first release. 

And there has been a Win32 release of Evolution;  but it isn't really
usable and until [or if] it grows a viable user base such things will
always lag behind and be maintained in a herky-jerky manner.  And there
is a big difference between a good port of an application and a crappy
one.

> > IMHO it looks better than ever because we have the TB/Lightning
> > extensions, and they are actively maintained.
> > Some thing on MacOS. With iCal supporting CalDAV we are closer than
> > ever with getting reasonable client support.
> Closer then ever is like telling a drownding sailor, only a few more miles to 
> shore lad. And I am going sailing next year so I had hoped to have all this 
> sorted by then. :(

Yea, it does seem like these things have been close for a long time.  I
understand the sentiment.

> Kolab is just OK 

Now here I disagree with you. :)  Kolab is just about the worst idea
ever.  No way one could ever build a reasonable foundation for #2 & #3
definitions of groupware based on IMAP.  Kolab is simply nuts.

> and Groupwise is excellent, expensive, 

I've got Exchange & Domino to play with and learn from;  never used
Groupwise.

> But what about simple end users on linux? 

I think most "simple end users" think groupware in terms of #1.  So
Helge's stack should come at least pretty near to scratching that itch.
And you have to get users to #1 before many of them will embrace #2.

Those of us using groupware in the #2 context won't be satisfied,  thus
we have to keep on hacking...

> > PS: of course there is always a place for real OGo like native
> > clients, say the Consonance thing of Adam :-)
> And that is where a scratch meets an itch. Ya gotta love opensource software 
> and the talent that is invested in such efforts, both at the server end and 
> the front end. Best of luck. 

Patches welcome!