Making use of calendar

Sören Apel abraxa at dar-clan.de
Mon Jul 7 19:29:48 CEST 2008


Hellos,

> Why not just use EDS as it is? I don't seem to get what this will 
> additionally provide over EDS. Since it will (hopefully) be based on EDS.
> Is it just to not come in conteact with the evolution API directly? Like 
> some unwanted dependency to glib?

It has nothing to do with glib as that will be around one way or
another. There are several reasons why EDS is not cutting it. Here are a
few:

-) EDS is built on certain assumptions.
It implements the common contacts/messages/events/todo PIM domains and
assumes that that's all there will be. All interaction between the
exsting PIM domains is also pre-defined and hard-coded.

-) EDS is inflexible.
If it were flexible enough, things like libmokojournal would not have
been needed to be written:
http://svn.openmoko.org/trunk/src/target/OM-2007.2/libraries/libmokojournal2/

-) EDS has limits.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/developer-doc/libebook/EContact.html#EContactField
Fixed set of fields. Want to add a field not in the enum? Tough luck.
Fixed number of pre-defined fields. Want to add a fifth eMail-address?
Tough luck.
Want to have two contacts refer to the same address? No go.
Want to have two contacts cross-reference each other as they're spouses?
No go.
The list goes on.

-) EDS doesn't go far enough.
It's not much more than a database incorporating different backends. You
want to interconnect data? You'll have to patch it, write a lib or do it
client-side. EDS knows about data but doesn't make enough meaning of the
data it has. The semantic web is coming. Where's semantic PIM?

> Maybe someone can give me a hint what the benefit of pyPimd would be 
> over plain EDS? (Embedded EDS)
> D-Bus alone does not sound like a selling point for me.

Correct. D-Bus alone isn't the selling point. Flexibility, scalability
and improved abstraction are. Also, we think that clients should build
on an API that's fun to use, doesn't get in their way and does what they
want.
Don't get me wrong - EDS is nice and is good at what it does. But we
need to move on and improve on it because it isn't and shouldn't be the
be-all end-all. We can't find better ways of doing things unless we try.
And that's what I'm doing :)

Should the reasons I mentioned still not convince you for whatever
reason, feel free to check out that the guys from the people project
have to say:
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/the-future-of-address-books-not-e-d-s/
And yes, the goals of pypimd are quite simliar to those of people. Just
they they cover contacts only whereas I'll deal with all PIM domains
possible.

 -Soeren

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