[Kolab-devel] Kolab2 webinterface proposal (was Re: Horde as Webinterface)

[Raphael Langerhorst]

Hi all,

I would like to suggest an alternative approach to the 
missing-webinterface-issue.

For about two weeks now I've been thinking of writing a new Kolab2 
webinterface from scratch with modern technology. I assume that this is less 
work than fixing and integrating horde. On the other hand I don't mind at all 
if horde gets fixed and improved to work with kolab even if we end up with 
two webinterfaces.


So this is the very-short-version of my proposal:

* Design and implement a kolab2 webinterface for all groupware things not 
covered by today's webmail interfaces (squirrelmail supports IMAP, SMTP and 
LDAP addressbook already for example).

* In a second step this webinterface can be extended to also support email of 
course.

* The technology to use would be the SPL scripting language[1]. The reasons 
are that this scripting language feels more like a real programming language 
(compared to purely-weboriented programming languages such as PHP), has 
support for AJAX / Web 2.0 / RIA already built-in (!) and thus interactive 
web-applications can easily be built with SPL (other features see link 
below).
Sessions are also stateful, the current status of the program including 
dynamically allocated objects are automatically dumped and restored in 
accordance with user-interaction. Thus all IMAP data does not need to be 
fetched all-over again all the time (I do not know how (if) horde does 
caching at the moment).

* A small example you can look at is the online-poker game[2]. It is written 
in SPL using the W2T (Web 2.0 Toolkit) module. By registering callbacks (see 
source code) the whole thing gets very "interactive" and it feels like a real 
application (even from the programmer's perspective, not just the user's).

* SPL even provides "Web-Forms" modules which is a kind of widget set for the 
Web.

* I talked to the author of SPL just yesterday and discussed long-term 
availability and maintenance of SPL (for this very reason). He said that SPL 
is feature-complete now (so the language is not a moving target anymore) and 
will be maintained for a longer time. This means it fits well into the 
schedule of Kolab in general.


The company I work for[3] would be interested in writing such a webinterface
for Kolab2. Because of the modern technology that is available with SPL we 
expect that it can be finished within reasonable time. We do need at least 
some financial support to be able to develop such an interface. If you are 
interested please get in touch with me.

Our company has some customers that run Kolab2 and I have previously submitted 
bug reports and fixes to the kolab project (last winter, and NetBSD support 
just recently[4]). We generally intend to be supportive to the Kolab project.


Best Wishes,
Raphael


[1] http://www.clifford.at/spl/
[2] http://www.clifford.at/spl/splpoker/  <-- Use Firefox with this
[3] http://www.activenet.at  <-- the website _is_ very simple, I know
[4] http://raphael.g-system.at/tech/kolab/

-- 
Raphael Langerhorst
http://raphael.g-system.at
PGP Fingerprint: FB70 E4F0 40EF 071B F266 40D4 32C6 A578 46C4 8559
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