[Kolab-devel] Kolab 2 ... bad design.

[Martin Konold]

Am Freitag, 20. August 2004 15:07 schrieb Bernhard Reiter:

Hi,

> >  I just read the "Kolab 2" specification.
>
> There is only a draft yet, which document in which version did you read?

I assume it does not refer to the Kolab 2 architecture but to the Kolab XML 
format,

> > What a big pile of garbage.
> >
> >  Kolab 1 was elegant.  It was simple.  It was functional.  It was easy to
> > build on.  Why did you throw all that away and replace it with a big
> > unmaintainable pile of XML?  Why are we all going to have to rewrite our
> > software to interoperate with that?
> >
> >  This is the dumbest design decision I've seen in a long time.

I very much can understand your feelings and would like to thank you for your 
comments. Please be aware of the fact that I also felt uneasy when we started 
to go the XML route for the storage format.

After all vcard and icalendar are well respected RFC standards.

The problem we try to solve with the XML format is to be able to have a 
simpler format than vcard/icalendar.

Actually when you look at the new XML format more closely it matches 1:1 to a 
subset of both standards. The problem we developed with both vcard and 
icalendar is that they are too powerful. It is very easy to for example 
create a valid vcard which cannot be fully understood by OL. So as soon as we 
have true shared resources like a shared calendar folder or a shared contacts 
folder we run into trouble....

Please note that I am very open to discuss this issue in more detail.

Yours,
-- martin

Dipl.-Phys. Martin Konold

e r f r a k o n
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker
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email: martin.konold at erfrakon.de