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Chandler 0.1 Released

Posted by timothy on Tue Apr 22, 2003 04:29 AM
from the oh-dot-oh-dot dept.
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kolchak writes "Very promising news is Chandler 0.1 (the Open Source PIM) has finally been released. 'While we are still very early in the design and implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more fully open project. We have made the release available for download, opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code repository.'" This is Mitch Kapor's attempt to offer an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, especially to small (under 100-person) organizations, last mentioned in December.
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  • Already emulating Outlook well (Score:5, Funny)

    by davidmb (213267) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:34AM (#5779620)
    Since I just managed to crash it.

    No virus propagation yet though, it is only 0.1 I suppose.

  • What's a PIM [ietf.org] in this context?

  • "alternative to outlook" (Score:5, Informative)

    by JohnFluxx (413620) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:36AM (#5779631)
    Please note that this is not a straight replacement, or something that is like outlook (that is what kroupware etc is aiming for) but they are aiming more to change things to make it better.

    Btw, did anyone find any screenshots? :)

    • In that case no one will use it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BitwizeGHC (145393) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:45AM (#5779659) Homepage
      Call it the law of Open Source Pangloss Parity: No one will use a piece of consumer oriented open source software unless it looks and behaves exactly like some piece of Microsoft software, no matter how badly the behavior of said MS software was designed.

      • Re:In that case no one will use it. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JanneM (7445) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:51AM (#5779678) Homepage
        I don't necessarily agree. While Exchange is used in many (if not all) larger organizations, frequently, each exchange installation covers only a subset of the organization, such as one department or workgroup. Within such a group - and especially if they have the budgetary responsibility for their installation - moving to a different, better, solution may well be worth the pain.

        Also, and more important, they are aiming for the small organization. How many 3-10 employee companies would have an exchange server already? How many 10-50 employee organizations in other areas than north america and europe? I know we do not (we're three people total), and we certainly could use something like this, if it is painless enough to deploy.

    • Screenshots HERE-- (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lord Prox (521892) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:27AM (#5779757) Homepage
      I made a few screenshots. [western-alliance.net] If anyone would mind mirroring them please. My little server is made from trashcan pickings (only the primo stuff :) ) and a crappy 128Kb pipe. It'll get crushed pronto...

  • Features (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rf0 (159958) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:37AM (#5779635) Homepage
    When I went to have a look at the site I had a list of things I would want to see. These were

    Diary
    Sharing of Calenders
    Phone book

    Now this has all of them as well as a few other cools things like inbuilt IM. Good luck to them I say. However I'm not sure but does the system has a centeral server it good log into rather than just peer to peer as it says?

    Rus

  • Nothing to see (Score:5, Informative)

    by seizer (16950) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:39AM (#5779644) Homepage
    Nothing to see here, move on, move on.

    I just got the XP build, and I can't really see how it bloated to 13mb already. I'll have assume that there's a really large API behind the scenes, because the interface is little more than a MyFirstCalendarApp.vb

    Oh and 10 seconds saw me crashing it too, just like the other poster.

    Still, it's 0.1, so I'm not grumbling yet.

    • Re:Nothing to see (Score:5, Informative)

      by vrt3 (62368) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:49AM (#5779668) Homepage
      I suspect a large part of that 13mb is the Python runtime that's included in the download. I didn't try it, but I suppose you can get the Python sources without the runtime if you already have Python installed, and the download should be much less that way.
      • I suspect a large part of that 13mb is the Python runtime that's included in the download.

        The python22.dll used by py2exe [sourceforge.net] is only 825 Kbytes. There must be a lot more than the Python runtime.

  • Lotus Agenda (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:41AM (#5779648)
    Note that Lotus Agenda, a distant ancestor of this program, is available for free. It's tricky toget working on a new PC, its interface is abysmally clunky by today's standard, but its approach to PIM (that's Personal Information Management) is really great. Agenda was for managing ANY information that you, personally, might want to track. It's like a dynamically-typed relational database, or something.

    • Re:Lotus Agenda - Now THAT was a PIM! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RobotRunAmok (595286) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @06:29AM (#5779874)
      There's never been anything like Agenda, before or since. Now, THERE was software!

      DOS-based, fast as lightning, completely (and intimidatingly) customizable (It opened into a blank page, if I recall correctly). It took any bit of info you wanted to throw at, and allowed you to establish your own relations among the bits. It was a database, an organizer, a rolodex, a "sketchpad for ideas," it was transcendant! No online component (E-Mail, Web) cuz there was no online component to your life -- this was circa 91-92.

      In the small office where I was the Tech guru at the time, no two workers' Agenda looked and ran the same -- everybody used it a different way, and the interface reflected that (Ultimately, it was probably that aspect of it which prevented it's widespread adoption in bigger shops.)

      Then along came Windows 3.1 and the Web, and upheaval. Lotus spiked Agenda, replacing it with a Win-based Lotus Organizer 1.0. I moved the company over to Jensen's "Commence" program, which held some of Agenda's flavor but proved an administrative bear.

      If Chandler can even approach lighting a candle to Agenda (sorry...) -- and run on Linux as well -- I'm there, Opneing Day. But I suspect it'll be targeting the regimented Outlook suits, and not us "Agenda hippies"...

  • I tested the "windows version" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fluor2 (242824) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:49AM (#5779669)
    This seem to be another open-source program that try to involve EVERYTHING (email, calendar, chat, documents etc).

    Well as it is coded in python, this is pretty multiple-platform compatible.

    I extracted the windows zip-file and ran the chandler.bat

    FIRST IMPRESSIONS
    I clicked next on the welcome picture. I immediately noticed that this is a non-standard windows application..

    The first thing I tried was simple outlook behaviour. It shows the calendar, but it does not feature any clicking in the calendar (like adding appointments etc). But the weeks are displayed correctly.

    It seems like this program is like alpha alpha, and it does not give any functionality (unless you like watching on a week ;) ).

    Ok good luck to the authors. I still think you have a very long way untill you can compete with outlook etc. I suggest taking a look at Evolution first.

    • Re:I tested the "windows version" (Score:4, Informative)

      by seizer (16950) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:30AM (#5779763) Homepage
      You can sort of click-drag on the weekly calendar, to add an appointment. It's not totally non-interactive :-)

    • Re:I tested the "windows version" (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:40AM (#5779780)
      I immediately noticed that this is a non-standard windows application.

      The curse of wxWindows. You can right an application that runs on Windows 95, WindowsXP, Mac OSX, Gnome and KDE, but it won't comply with any of the user interface guidelines on any of them, but at least everyone will be confused equally and on all platforms at the same time.

  • I'm sorry (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:52AM (#5779679)
    Could this software BE any more released?

  • what's with the name? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hkon (46756) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:52AM (#5779680) Homepage
    From the article: Our product (code-named "Chandler" after the great detective novelist Raymond Chandler,)

    Are these people so out of touch with the world most of us live in that they don't realize a lot of people will think of that goofy guy from "Friends" when they hear this name? Personally, I don't want my applications behaving anything like this guy.

    Oh, and does this make Outlook Chandler's cross-dressing dad?

  • What about support for mobile gadgets? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MacroRex (548024) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:53AM (#5779682)
    A quick peek at their site did not reveal any information about support for various mobile devices. For me, at least, it's crucial that my calendar app can be easily synchronized with whatever mobile gizmo I happen to be using as a calendar. While Outlook is the only viable alternative (for good or bad, I'm not a Lotus user), this thing gets only a "thumbs up" from me.
    • From the FAQ:

      "Can I access Chandler through the Web or PDA?
      We are not committed to develop a Web interface or PDA conduit for the Canoga release. However, these are exactly the kind of features that we expect third-party developers to develop."

      They supply the framework, and the community can then easily add functionality. A modular approach is mostly always nice.

  • Docs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ultrabot (200914) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:03AM (#5779711)
    It's nice to see that have included so much documentation about the architecture & philosophy, considering how early in the development they are. That's *real* openness.

  • Why only Win XP not 2000 or 98 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by leoaugust (665240) <leoaugust@gm a i l .com> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:12AM (#5779727) Journal

    If the goal is to have it used by small and medium sized businesses, why aren't there versions for Win 2000, or 98 ?? Most of the small businesses due to budget restrictions haven't yet updated to Win XP - esp due to its activation feature.

    Has anyone tried to install Chandler on older Win versions?

  • client isn't the issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martin (1336) <maxsec@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:47AM (#5779793) Journal
    The server is....we need a usable, easily deployable MS-Exchange/Notes server competitor.

    Sure you can build things with LDAP/Imap/web-mail and make them all talk to one-another, BUT you need a server then does alot of this for you...

    Until you can point and click your way through a server installation you're not going to win over the MS-Exchange sites.

    Yes SuSE have their openmail thing, but need a 'freeware' version of this that runs on *nix (ie more than just Linux, but the *BSD,SOlaris, HPUX, AIX variants as well - like Apache does).

    --
    Martin

  • Why is everyone obsessed with clients? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rufus t firefly (35399) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @06:40AM (#5779897) Homepage
    This is *not* flamebait, but why in the world is everyone obsessed with writing clients, but no one wants to either write a server, or interface with an existing groupware server?

    phpGroupware exposed their API through both SOAP and XML-RPC, and I have yet to see *anything* use their backend, other than an old Delphi frontend for WinXX which was yanked from their site. I'm sure there are other web-based groupware suites that also have web-services available, and yet no one wants to build interfaces to them?

    Don't get me wrong, Evolution is a nice toy, but only that in the realm of business until someone decides that they want to interface it with an existing groupware server (other than Exchange, which is quite closed-source...), since otherwise there is no open solution to doing this.

    I contacted the Evolution people at least a year ago about interfacing with phpGroupware, to get a reply of "if you can reverse-engineer our calendar API, which isn't documented anywhere, you can write it yourself...". (No disrespect to the developers of Evolution intended, but I'm trying to make a point about the little emphasis any of the major groups seem to place on enterprise adoption.)

  • Similar project (Score:4, Informative)

    by aliWiz (667697) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @06:57AM (#5779933)
    I have found another similar project based on Java and using a decentralized (p2p) architecture http://www.dynamicobjects.com/
  • There's 114 comments and his site hasn't been /.ed yet and I just downloaded chandler at almost 200KB/s.

  • P2P (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Samus (1382) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @07:24AM (#5780054) Journal
    On the surface p2p sounds like a great idea for a PIM app that needs collaboration. Then I start thinking about the holes this leaves. Suppose I use a laptop at work and take it home every now and then. If I leave at 4 and somebody wants to schedule a meeting with me for 7:00 AM the next day after I have left, how does it then confirm the appointment? If I just turn my machine off at night then anybody that wants to poll my schedule will have to wait until I come in in the morning. The next hurdle to get over would be the bandwidth issues. P2P apps are necessarily chatty. On a small lan that might not be such a big deal but a decent sized company will surely squash this like netbios. Will anybody want to invest in a program that they know their company will not be able to use a few years down the road when they have tripled in size? Realistically speaking most small companies are not going to triple in size in the next few years but admitting so is like saying that their growth is permantly stunted.

  • Not for me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by CommieBozo (617132) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @09:13AM (#5780679) Journal
    I'm more interested in testing Rachel 0.1, and to a lesser extent, Monica and Phoebe 0.1.

    • Yes, it works on Windows (Score:5, Informative)

      by vrt3 (62368) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @04:47AM (#5779662) Homepage
      There are binaries available on the site; the link says they are for Windows XP, but I tried them succesfully on Windows 2000. Mac OSX is also supported.

      Not coincidentally, the list of supported platforms is the same as wxWindows, since Chandler is written in Python and uses the wxPython GUI toolkit, which is a Python binding to wxWindows.

    • Okay, I understand this is /. and nobody reads the articles, but why did this have to be modded up? Come on now! It takes 2 clicks, and about 3 seconds to find the list of downloads, which includes Windows...

      Next up, comments asking for someone to repost the /. summary in the comments section!
    • Or better yet, write alternatives to the stuff that's really holding us on Windows...

      Indeed. Altho Outlook *is* holding me in windows (...and Visio and that bloody Watchguard Control Center). I have yet to see a PIM for Linux that compares to it. Evolution is nice, but is just a clone of the interface.

      Now, all I need is integration with my PDA and for it to import my pst files, and according to the FAQ, it's not planned in the near future.

      • Re:oooh yay! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by say (191220) <sigve@nOSpam.wolfraidah.no> on Tuesday April 22 2003, @05:00AM (#5779703) Homepage
        "I have yet to see a PIM for Linux that compares to [Outlook]. Evolution is nice, but is just a clone of the interface"

        Well, if Evolution is a clone, doesn't it compare to Outlook? I think Evolution has pretty much the same advantage/disadvantage rating as Outlook. In what way does not Evolution compare to Outlook?

        (Really - I'm curious!)

    • I love Evolution. It is the best thing to have happened to my mail reading in years. I currently run the 1.3.2 prerelease, and I enjoy it immensely despite a number of bugs and other issues.

      That said, Evolution is not an answer. Evo is a client. The server side is almost totally lacking. Chandler provides this in the form of a Peer-to-Peer style server/client architecture. What could (and, I believe, should) be done is to write an extension/plugin for Evolution to access the Chandler server functionality.

    • Re:exchange (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nutcase (86887) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @07:07AM (#5779969) Homepage Journal
      Chandler makes the exchange/server component redundant in the first place. It's purely p2p and all that jazz... there is no need for an exchange server. At least, not according to the design philosophy they are pitching. Which is a good one.

      The one thing that will be interesting is what happens when they realize that in most organizations people turn off their machines at night. Will they write a caching server for people's calendars and such? Or will those people's shared resources just vanish?

    • Re:any other similar OSS projects? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bahamat (187909) on Tuesday April 22 2003, @07:27AM (#5780065) Homepage
      You apparently haven't looked.
      • evolution
      • gnome-pim
      • korganizer
      • ical (the application not the file format)
      • plan
      • mozilla (with calendar plugin)
      • tons of still useful command line tools used back in the day before graphical displays

        • IMHO, programs that use the new ical format for storing calendar data are the most useful. I can parse ical files easily with perl (or heck, even bash and egrep) and do all sorts of fun things with the data. There's even a php script that parses ical files for display on your website. Add webdav to your server and you've got a free calendar server for you and your closest friends.

          (Sorry for the shameless ical plug).

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