[Phpgroupware-developers] Re: Integrating phpgroupware and mozilla calendar

[Buchan Milne]

Mike Potter wrote:
> For the record I think this is a great idea.  I would love to see the 
> calendar hook into many datasources.
> I have no idea really how SOAP works. I know XML but have no idea how 
> XML-RPC works in Mozilla.

Ok. For the moment, I think Gary and I will try and look at just getting 
an xml-rpc request from Mozilla to phpgroupware, and see if we can get 
the data back to mozilla somehow. At some point we're going to need to 
know where to "put" the data, though.

> As for the sidebar, we're thinking of redoing it now.  The sidebar has a 
> lot of short comings, and these show up clearly when using the Calendar 
> with repeating events.  We were thinking of keep search as a tab, but 
> removing the list of events and then adding on a list of servers.  Then, 
> you could select the servers that you want to add, and the events would 
> show up in the calendar on the right.

That sounds great.

> I think the calendar is pretty stable right now, but I think that it 
> needs some work before we start adding on new features to it.
> I want to avoid the problem of Mozilla, whereby new features continue to 
> get added before things are stable.
> This provides other developers the excuse that they need to help get the 
> calendar into a completely functional state.

I don't think any of our work should affect Mozilla 1.0 at all. We will 
probably only have our xml-rpc stuff working minimally by the time 1.0 
is out, at which point I guess calendar work would be more acceptable.

> In any event, I think this is a great idea, and I'm glad to help in any 
> way that I can.
> Mike

I think we will have a lot more questions for you later.

> Buchan Milne wrote:
>
> > I am involved in a project trying to find a replacement for the 
> > functionality in the Star Schedule and Star Schedule Server that were 
> > part of Star Office 5.2 for OpenOffice.org. Since OpenOffice.org 
> > already interfaces with Mozilla (for accessing address-book data) and 
> > both are cross-platform and open source, the Mozilla calendar is an 
> > interesting option.
> >
> > The problem with group calendaring (to replace the functionality of 
> > the Star Schedule server) is the calendar server. Since phpgroupware 
> > already has a "calendar server", and can (or will be able to quite 
> > soon) communicate in iCal, and support both SOAP and XML-RPC as 
> > transports, it is a possible source of a calendar server.
> >
> > Would the mozilla calendar hackers be interested in
> > -trying to add support for phpgroupware as calendar server
> > -adding support for features available in Star Schedule (for example 
> > the ability to view free/busy time for all the participants of an 
> > event, and easily schedule a meeting in the free time, ability to 
> > browse other calendars)?
> >
> > If so, how would one go about adding support for phpgroupware to 
> > Mozilla Calendar? AFAIK mozilla has XML-RPC capability.
> > -How would one use this to send an XML-RPC request to phpgroupware.
> >
> > -How difficult would it be to add another tab (next to "events" and
> > "search") in the sidebar for browsing other users in a calendar.
> >
> > -How difficult would it be to add another "view" at which supported 
> > seeing more details of an event (such as participants), or should this 
> > be added to the existing event creation dialog?
> >
> > I believe there are many people who are looking for a solution to this 
> > problem, and while a real iCAP compliant calendar client and server 
> > would be nice, support for iCal over XML-RPC or SOAP to phpgroupware 
> > may be a worthwhile first target to attract users and developers.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Buchan

P.S. Sorry if you get duplicates, I forgot to enable our firewall 
software which I need to post to the mozilla newsgroup.
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