[Chandler-dev] Some use cases and opinions

[Randy Letness]

> Is the messaging codebase abstract enough to allow multiple 
> input/outputs? I can imagine some people in my team wanting 
> notifications on SMS or twitter. In fact... I'd love to get SMS 
> notifications if an event is cancelled and it was within 24 hours of 
> now! (I'm not suggesting that you host an SMS gateway! Just asking 
> could that sort of exchange be supported via the Cosmo protocol if 
> somebody wrote a server to act as the middleman?)

Currently there is no messaging codebase to do what you are referring 
to.  The server doesn't support notifications at the moment so there 
really isn't a mechanism that would allow say a twitter or SMS 
notifications.  These would be great, and would get me using the server 
more.

> ## On Desktop vs WebApp vs Plugins
>
> If you're thinking about desktop at all, then I'd suggest that 
> Outlook/Sunbird integration should be a priority (with no plugins 
> allowed on Outlook)... not a Python app. The reason for this is 
> because most people in management will feel much more at home in 
> Outlook. Outlook can speak to servers, right? How well documented are 
> those protocols? Could Cosmo pretend to be an Outlook server?

In theory, Cosmo could support Outlook protocols, but these protocols 
are proprietary and notoriously hard to work with.


> Python is great for prototyping code but is it really helping 
> functionality to be ported back to the webapp? There is a lot of code 
> re-implementation since the server is all Java. If I had my evil way, 
> I'd have made the desktop app all Java (or Groovy, which is a lot like 
> Python/Ruby) so that server code could be reused on the client side 
> and so that the desktop app could be a way to quickly implement new 
> features that can be easily ported back to the webapp. It would also 
> mean more eyeballs on core code and provide a set of libraries that 
> would make porting to other platforms (e.g. J2ME or Android) so much 
> easier.

I would love to be able to re-use all the recurrence/timezone code.


> I would be interested in helping out with a Java-based desktop client 
> as a quick way to prototype functionality for the webapp (and to pave 
> a way for a mobile app). If there is no messaging system yet, then 
> server-side I might be interested in helping out there instead. Where 
> would be the best place to start to understand the protocol used when 
> speaking to the server? (please say xml!)

There are a few protocols the server supports at the moment:

- cmp(cosmo management protocol), used for account management
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoManagementProtocol
 - morse code, used by Chandler to sync collections
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoMorseCode
 - atom feed service/atompub, used by web ui
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoFeedServiceSpec
 - webdav, webdav tickets, caldav
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoWebdav
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoTickets
   http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/CosmoCaldav


-Randy