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  Outlook Competition: Enter Kroupware and Kaplan
KDE PIM Posted by Charles de Miramon on Sunday 22/Sep/2002, @19:37
from the old-news dept.
It has been a long time dream of the KDE PIM team to be able to integrate the different PIM applications into one common interface shell that would permit the creation of an Outlook-like application and provide a fully integrated personal information management system. Development of such an application is in fact rapidly picking up steam. In particular, the Kroupware Project, part of a full-blown open-source groupware solution for KDE and commissioned by the German government, was pre-announced and has already generated a flow of ideas and code. Karl-Heinz Zimmer showed a prototype of KOrganizer embedded in KMail: kroupware1, kroupware2. But Don Sanders, KMail hacker, went one step further. He managed to transform KMail into a KPart and demonstrated how the different PIM components can be embedded in the pre-existing framework by Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel and Daniel Molkentin known as Kaplan: kaplan1, kaplan2, kaplan3. Great work that proves, once again, that the KPart architecture is sound and gives tangible results. Expect the first official results of the Kroupware project on October 15th.


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Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.
Just one thing...
by Roland on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @09:08
Please, please, please let us users choose how we want our windows. KNode lets you do this and it is great.

I want to have my message window tall (as high as the screen) and the folder-list and the message-list on a side.

Since most lines are wrapped at 80 characters, this is the only layout that makes sense to me. Having an Outlook-like wide message window that is always half-empty is not efficient. KNode features these "sub-windows" which can be arranged how you like it, if Kaplan will support this, this feature alone will put it far ahead of current KMail.
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Kaplan is most excellent
by Evan "JabberWokky" E. on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @09:47
I was worried when I looked over Kroupware, as I'm working on a non-folder based alternate email/messaging/contact application for KDE. It would plug into Kaplan quite nicely (or run as a seperate application), but Kroupware looks like you're locked into it's variant of KMail. Moving to a large monolithic application that does a whole bunch of stuff (like Outlook) prevents you from picking and choosing components - your favorite addressbook with your favorite email application.

(As an aside: Yeah - that's right, non-folder based. But not flat. It's a relational message database with a novel (I think) UI that is pretty nifty. No clue if I can climb it up to version 1.0, right now I have pages of notes, a KWord document full of documentation, and a dozen PyQt files that semi-work as a bad text editor that saves to a mailbox format, and makes little icons of people pop up when I create files. :) If you're interested in discussing some interesting alternative concepts about how to build a communication interface, which I've dubbed KIM (KDE Integrated Messaging), feel free to email me. I'm hoping it might debut around the time KDE 4.0 is released).

--
Evan (been awake over 24 hours now - please excuse any run on or fragment sentences - now, back to work).
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open source and money
by Anonymous on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @09:48
This is wonderful! The german government is doing a great service to Open Source by funding the Kroupware/Kolab project like this. Fingers crossed till Oct 15. This is a greatly compressed schedule, and if they pull it off, it will be thanks to the pre-existing work of the KDE project. Everybody wins.
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Athera
by Stof on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @10:39
Wasn't TheKompany working on Athera a year ago? (and it was supposed to compete with Evolution?) Where is it now?
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WOW.... I can't wait
by Jeff on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @10:49
This is the most exciting KDE event since KDE 2.0!

KDE 3.1-beta series
KDE 3.0-series
KOffice 1.2

I'm blown away!
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kroupware
by fault on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @11:09
I like the idea, I hate the name (kroupware?!?!?)
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Kaplan in 3.2?
by Peter on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @12:06
Kaplan looks great! Will it be part of KDE 3.2?
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single apps, too?
by Thorsten Schnebeck on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @15:59
All this integration stuff looks very raw. I hope I can configure the degree of integration. I never want to use an integrated korganizer but integration of message based kparts like knote and kmail looks fine.

I hope, that I can use both variants with kooperate -ehm- kroupware: integrated and/or single apps!?

Bye

Thorsten
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Great news, but...
by poremaster on Monday 23/Sep/2002, @19:25
As much as I hate to say it and get everyone's panties in a wad...

Please make it able to talk to MS Exchange servers. This would go a long way towards eliminating the need for having two machines at work, or running some funky emulator/vmwaresque application.

Along those lines, thats the reason I don't really use KWord...its nice and powerful enough but I need to read/write MS Word docs. I realize this is a nearly impossible task since the formats are not made available...I've come to accept using Crossover for this.

The Exchange thing is doable however since the Evolution folks seem to have done it.
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Call it Foresight
by will on Tuesday 24/Sep/2002, @12:49
I would just like to add a top-level "me too" to the thread above concerning the name of the app. I think that the name "Foresight" is just about the first good name I have ever heard mentioned in relation to a KDE-app, and the team really should consider using that name.

Please, please also consider dropping the K naming convention. It results in ugly, amateurish and clumsy names. As Jabberwokky said above it would be better to call simple functions by their general description. Now that the linux/kde is approaching the consumer market you will see that the k-names will be replaced with descriptions or simply replaced with other names in relevant distributions.
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Call it Koolaide....
by Thorsten Hitler on Tuesday 24/Sep/2002, @15:51
....nah seriously, don't call it anything starting with a K - enough of that already. Let's get abstract...

Motion, Motionware, connect, connectus, Konnect(!), connectware, Konnectware(!), Share!, Communicate!, Kommunicate!(!), Inform, Expound, InMotion, @Share, Etecetera.

Just some possibities. Sorry, I don't like Foresight, and I'm fairly sure that is the name of a software product already.
T
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Where is KDE kernel cousin
by Frank Rizzo on Wednesday 25/Sep/2002, @13:00
I am having withdrawals without it.
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K naming convention
by anon on Wednesday 25/Sep/2002, @14:43
Since there is much talk about the typical KDE convention to start program names with a K, I figured I'd start a thread dedicated to just that. To start off, here is my take on it:

I think the 'K' naming scheme was at one time appropriate, as it easily showed that an application was developed for KDE. I think it has gone on too far though, with some people stretching too far to come up with more K names. I like some of the names, like Konqueror and Kontour, and things like KMail and KMix are fairly intuitive. But I think that the best sign that the K naming scheme is inappropriate for the audience KDE is expanding into is the fact that many desktop oriented distributions are renaming the KDE menu items to show more generic terms like Internet Dialer and Browser. I think that whether we like it or not the beef against the K naming scheme must be a valid one, because these distros are trying to act based on consumer preferences and customer demand. It seems that there are enough people seeing this to be a problem to warrent some real discussion on the issue.
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The adressbook needs to get better
by tarjei on Thursday 26/Sep/2002, @03:02
What I find missing with Kroupware is a writeable adressbook in LDAP. This should be implemented so it is possible to have ones own adressbook accross mail clients and also in webmail (f.x. horde has a very nice LDAP-adressbook app).
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SImular project
by tofu on Friday 27/Sep/2002, @03:54
I have found a simular project for KDE 2:
http://www.shadowcom.net/Software/infusion/index.html
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Who really needs it
by Winux on Friday 27/Sep/2002, @10:45
But how will it be with the speed... KDE is wonderfull, in no time it is up, and in now time I can read my e-mail, but have worked a little in KDE with Evolution (So I do not know how it is Gnome where it is made for) but I had the greatest difficulty to read some graphical mail... And no, my processor is not slow, my ram is not low and my Modem is not analog... So...
By the way, how many people does really need an implemented client?" So still let us have the chance to use parts independent of each other...

Greetz

Winux
- The virus who eats both ways -
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Who really needs it
by Winux on Friday 27/Sep/2002, @10:45
But how will it be with the speed... KDE is wonderfull, in no time it is up, and in now time I can read my e-mail, but have worked a little in KDE with Evolution (So I do not know how it is Gnome where it is made for) but I had the greatest difficulty to read some graphical mail... And no, my processor is not slow, my ram is not low and my Modem is not analog... So...
By the way, how many people does really need an implemented client?" So still let us have the chance to use parts independent of each other...

Greetz

Winux
- The virus who eats both ways -
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Is this really necessary?
by Dimitris Kamenopoulos on Friday 27/Sep/2002, @13:53
I find the project very interesting, and clearly there is a lot
of people esp. in the Windows world that use Outlook as both an organizer and
a mail/news client. But I can't help wondering if it is a step towards the
right direction. The Unix philosophy is "small and simple tools for each job that can be easily combined to take care of a more sophisticated job".

So far KDE has worked under the terms of this philosophy.
We have a mail reader for reading mail, a news reader for reading news,
an Organizer for organizing, a Ghostscript viewer for GS viewing etc.
(granted, Konqueror can view just about anything but this doesn't happen
by giving it zillions of features, but by giving it the ability to
cooperate easily and transparently with other, external applications or
modules (e.g. IOSlaves)).

Even if this can be sacrificed because of the merits of integration, I just
don't see what mail, news and schedules have in common, besides being
one's "personal information" (and news is not even that). Which one of
us keeps their postal mail in their organizer?

Just my $0.02 guys, I really don't mean to upset anyone.
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mmmmhhh...
by Anonymous on Friday 27/Sep/2002, @19:06
Make a KDE program like GIMP !!!
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Why always do things like MS?
by mp on Saturday 28/Sep/2002, @16:00
I understand that making apps that look and feel like a popular operating system's apps will help potential users of KDE migrate, but we have to consider one thing: as long as imitation is our game, we will NEVER be ahead. You can't copy ahead. It just doesn't work. Now I know that there are many innovations in the KDE world, like KParts, and that is great, but I would like to see more. I certainly do not think that MS creates perfect programs, therefore I don't want to copy them, or even want to have those mutant clones on my KDE box.

I feel there is a lot of innovation left in the realm of user experience. I am currently working on a new way of navigating through the data on my computer. Notice I said "data". Any data. Anything that is stored on my machine should be accessible without having to remember which folder it's in, and what is the proper app to open it. No more "/home/mp/projects/mushroom/06-12-01/other/pics/0001231-01.jpg" Yechh! Unfortunately I am in the very early stages of this project, but email me if interested.
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apps.kde.com?
by KDe User on Tuesday 01/Oct/2002, @09:52
What has happened to apps.kde.com?
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Check with fluent literate English speakers please
by Dictionary_Enforcer on Tuesday 01/Oct/2002, @20:44
and speakers of other languages as well.


croup
n 1: a disease of infants and young children; harsh coughing and
hoarseness and fever and difficult breathing [syn: spasmodic
laryngitis]
2: the part of a quadruped that corresponds to the human
buttocks [syn: hindquarters, croupe, rump]

Kroup sounds like croup and reminds me of near death of infants and smelly behinds. ....

Sheesh why not call it "Poonomia"?
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Is it really a issue?
by ekstam on Tuesday 29/Apr/2003, @03:12
I have to admit that I actually do not care a bit about the name as long as it 100% compliant and does what's it supposed to do.

Just my point of view.
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