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Re: a bit offtopic



Hi Oleg,

> The only point of exchange (pardon the pun) is the appointments
> calendar. I would like to have the following on the linux side:
>
> 1) Ability to see the Exchange Calendar - I would like to see when
>    people, or, more importantly, non-human resources (such as
>    conference rooms), are busy or free.

Umm, ok

>
>    NB: The Exchange web access does not work properly, and normally is
>    disalbed by the organization's sysadmin for security reasons
>    (apparently it has an inordinate amount of holes even for a
>    Microsoft product). That is not a solution.

Yes, known fact.

>
> 2) Ability to invite people to (reserve resources/venue for) a
>    meeting. This need not be through the interface of item 1 (though
>    it might be nice). I personally would be satisfied with a clear
>    spec of an email message that I would send, so that the
>    Outlook-bound addressees would get it in the way they are used to.
>    I would insist on such a spec, because I don't need a "tool" for
>    this, I'd like to do it through my normal mail interface.
>
> 3) Ability to acknowledge/accept/reject appointments by email. Same
>    comment as in item 2: I want to see the invitations through my
>    usual email interface, and reply through the same interface. In
>    principle, I'd like to be able to do it through {proc,for}mail.
>    The whole thing should be independent of the actual program I
>    use to read/write email.

I see.

>
> 4) It should not rely on the emails residing on the Exchange server.
>    I need to be able to fetch all my mails (including the appointment
>    invitations) from the server, say with POP3, and still do 1,2,3.

huh? I don't understand point 4

>
> 5) I am quite capable of entering appointments into my personal
>    calendar myself, so I don't insist on a tool that will do it for
>    me. Such a tool, or a spec for it, would be nice, but it will have
>    to work with a variety of mail and calendar tools. E.g. currently I
>    use GNUS and KOrganizer (sort of trying the latter as a substitute
>    for the emacs calendar), so I would like to be able to write some
>    elisp code to run inside GNUS so that an appointment will be added
>    to / updated in / deleted from the calendar.

If there was a commercial "outlook" for Linux. Would you buy it? if so, how 
much are you willing to pay for such a client? and if it was for free but 
closed source - would you use it?

> All in all, I will be quite satisfied with a protocol, not a tool.
> However, if you decide to develop a tool, make it interoperable with
> popular calendars, such as KOrganizer, ical, the emacs calendar,
> reminder, etc.

I'm affraid that won't be possible.

The thing is - if a company would have to reverse engineer the Exchange 
protocol stuff - it wouldn't release it for free - or else they'll have 1000 
competitors within a week. They cannot add support for stuff like KOrganizer, 
ical, emacs caldendar because of 1 reason - they are under GPL'd - which 
means they'll have to release source code, which with it - you can find how 
they reversed engineered it and the story of 1000 competitors starts again.

>
> > what features they don't like
>
> I hate the interface - it's way too complicated and cumbersome. To
> invite people for a meeting I would like to either click on the time
> slot in the calendar or just issue a command in emacs, and get an
> emacs frame with a mail buffer with slots to fill, similar to GNATS
> bug reports. It should not be difficult to arrange something like that
> for the vCalendar format, I guess, but emails I get from Exchange
> don't look like vCalendar, as I mentioned before.

Ahha, I see..

>
> > and how much do they think a price are you willing to pay for this
> > kind of solution?
>
> Not much - it is not essential at all. It's a matter of slightly more
> convenience and interoperability rather than a must-have.

Well, I was talking about a server solution to replace Exchange, not for the 
client.

Hetz

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