[vox-tech] Looking for a Sunbird (Google Calendar) replacement

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

On Tue, 2010-05-11 at 22:10 -0700, Tony Cratz wrote:

Also, while searching Debian's apt repositories, I saw a package called
qorganizer. It appears that one of its saving graces is that it has a
very simple file format (that should sync well using git).

> 	Now with all of that said (and what has been said before)
> 	my ideal PIM is really more complex then what I have been
> 	saying. Beside being iCal and Vcard base I would like to
> 	be able to sync my laptop PIM with a PIM on my main server.

Use Funambol on your main server as a synchronization server, then use
SyncEvolution to synchronize events. You could also configure davical or
calendarserver as a CalDAV server, and configure evolution to talk to
that.

Or use qorganizer and use git for synchronization. (I love git for
synchronization. If only everybody designed their file formats to
synchronize easily without requiring lots of work to resolve
conflicts...)

> 	The main server PIM would handle most of the event reminders
> 	for any client which currently has a live connection to
> 	the main PIM. In the case where the laptop is away from the
> 	main server it would handle the event reminders locally.

This level of intelligence is a tall order for any PIM with an offline
mode. If your PIM has an offline mode, then it's going to want to think
it's the only one that's available to remind you of each event. (Even on
the laptop.) I think when I was using KOrganizer/Kontact (in KDE 3) with
my PalmPilot, I solved this problem by just disabling the reminder
daemon (since PalmPilot would always remind me), but you need more
intelligence than that.

> 	For both versions of the PIM I do not want to be forced to
> 	use a web GUI. I really want a standalone GUI so my laptop
> 	can be (as I'm calling it, as thin as possible. No
> 	Apache/PHP|Perl|Ruby stack require. Just a standard Linux
> 	program which can be started via the command line or the
> 	menu via Gnome or KDE (with a very lite weight daemon
> 	to handle events reminders).

Anything I've mentioned should be able to handle this (at least if it
can handle reminders).

> 	Also as Rick mention I have seen a number of PIMs which
> 	seem to bloat up and have creepy featurism. They start to
> 	turn into a full E-mail client (such as Lightning/Thunderbird
> 	and Evolution)

If you can ignore the mail component, is that such a problem?

>         Also most are now moving toward web base requiring
> 	a web server.

Not any of the ones I mentioned. (Evolution Data Server isn't a web
server -- I think it's either a DBUS or CORBA server that just acts as a
storage back end for the PIM on the local machine only. Akonadi, which
KOrganizer uses, is the same kind of DBUS server.)

>         Myself I don't need to be able to store images
> 	of a customer Gold Fish in my PIM. I also don't need to have
> 	a 4 generation family history for a contact.

I don't know of any PIM that stores those things :)

> 	I should also say, yes I know that if I have an address book
> 	in my PIM I may/will desire to share it with the E-mail client
> 	in the future. But the same could be said about a softphone.
> 	To me the PIM should be the central core and the other clients
> 	(E-mail, softphone, browser) should be able to query the PIM
> 	database as needed. This would be a change of mind set from
> 	the current method.

Then you either want the Kontact/Kmail/Kopete solution, or you want the
Evolution/Pidgin solution. (I don't think either of them can talk to
Skype, and I don't think either of them has a SIP phone application that
integrates with their data store.)

> 
> 	BTW thanks for the discussion. I'm finding it helpful and I
> 	hope others may also gain something from the discussion. At
> 	present I'm not sure I will find the type of PIM I'm looking
> 	for.