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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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