COMMUNITY Free Software Projects An up-to-date look at free software and its makers PROJECTS ON THE MOVE Evolution and Kontact are the standard Personal Information Manage- ment applications on Linux, but many users are dissatisfied with the major players. Pimlico is a small-footprint alternative, and GDATA Pro- vider brings Google with Mozilla calendar. BY CARSTEN SCHNOBER eadline and appointment are two Kontact thus covers critical elements of dirty words for a lot of us. In personal information management. Be- Dmany cases, the dates and times sides handling your appointments and are not the biggest problem, but keeping task lists, Kontact helps you synchronize track of the “to-dos” is. Many users turn handhelds and mobile phones to merge to software solutions that replace the multiple data sources. legacy day planner. Personal Information The integrated mail program handles communication with the outside world. The Gnome counterpart is Evolution [2], which also integrates the central compo- nents that any PIM solution needs. However, Kontact and Evolution can’t cater to all tastes. Although you can use Kontact without the KDE desktop, it is Management (PIM) covers any aspect of organizing appoint- ments, tasks, and contact data. Two Standards On Linux, the PIM field has two major players, one each for the big-gun desktop environments KDE and Gnome. The KDE camp relies on Kontact [1], which bun- dles the KMail, KOrganizer, KAd- dressbook, KNotes, KNode, KPi- lot, and KSync applications on a Figure 1: Orgainze deadlines and appointments with common interface. Pimlico’s Dates tool. 94 ISSUE 80 JULY 2007 WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM Free Software Projects COMMUNITY Tasks and Contacts the calendars with other programs and keep the application devices. window simple and un- The GDATA Provider [13] extension cluttered. is looking to change this by supporting New tasks can be synchronization of Sunbird and Light- added easily via a text ning with Google Calendar [14]. To box at the bottom of the allow this to happen, interfaces for the window. Contacts ac- XML, iCal, and HTML formats have been cesses the Evolution ad- developed; GDATA Provider uses the dress book but will im- XML interface to communicate with the port contacts from ex- web service. Changes made with the ternal files if needed. web interface synchronize perfectly with The main objective of Sunbird and Lightning. Pimlico development Currently, you cannot use Mozilla cal- was to support use on endar without an Internet connection Figure 2: Sunbird is the independent calendar program by any device with GTK because the software stores the data on Mozilla. support. Besides the the Google server. desktop PC, this mainly Also, the GDATA extension is only definitely focused on KDE. Many users means the Maemo [6] and OpenMoko available for the Lightning and Sunbird consider Evolution to be too slow, and it [7] platforms, which are used by the developer versions. This said, the cur- has a reputation of having a number of Nokia 770 Internet Tablet [8]; its future rent version of GDATA Provider bodes functional bugs. successors, and the Neo1973 [9]; which well for the future. If you use a mail program like Thun- is still in the development phase. The extension is simple to set up: You derbird [3], or any other mail client for A working version of the fourth Pim- just need to copy the URL for the XML that matter, you are likely to prefer a lico component, Sync, is not available interface and use this information to cre- PIM solution that simply manages to-do right now, and this more or less rules out ate a new Mozilla calendar (Figure 3). lists and appointments. the PIM suite for productive use as of The software automatically synchronizes The Personal Information Manage- this writing. the calendar and is quite reliable, despite ment arena still has room for improve- Sync is based on OpenSync [10] and some teething trouble with recurring ap- ment, which is what prompted Opened will help users exchange data from pointments. Hand [4] to launch a new open source Dates, Tasks, and Contacts with the Pim- Again, the calendar lacks an alarm project called Pimlico [5]. lico software on other devices and with function, although this is on the road- Pimlico is based on the Embedded other applications in the future. map for future versions. ■ Evolution Data Server [5], a port of the Evolution Data Server that uses D-Bus Webtop PIM INFO instead of Bonobo and Orbit and that Mozilla has had its own calendar for a [1] Kontact: http:// kontact. kde. org runs on mobile devices because of its while. Of two closely related projects, [2] Evolution: http:// www. gnome. org/ smaller memory requirement. GTK pro- Lightning [11] is a Thunderbird exten- projects/ evolution vides the graphical interface. sion, and the parallel project Sunbird [3] Thunderbird: [12] (see Figure 2) is an independent http:// www. mozilla. com/ thunderbird Pimlico calendar. [4] Opened Hand: http:// o-hand. com Pimlico comprises four separate and in- Neither of these applications currently dependent components: Dates, Tasks, has a reliable function for synchronizing [5] Pimlico: http:// pimlico-project. org Contacts, and Sync. In [6] Maemo: http:// maemo. org fact, you can even install [7] OpenMoko: http:// openmoko. org and use the programs sep- [8] Nokia 770 Internet Tablet: arately. Dates (see Figure http:// www. nokia. com/ 770 1) provides a simple calen- [9] Neo1973: http:// wiki. openmoko. org/ dar with an interface that wiki/ Neo1973 remains easy to read with- [10] Opensync: http:// www. opensync. org out compromising critical [11] Lightning: http:// www. mozilla. org/ functions. Various zoom projects/ calendar/ lightning levels take you from a de- [12] Sunbird: http:// www. mozilla. org/ tailed view to an annual projects/ calendar/ sunbird overview. Users can dou- ble-click to create new en- [13] GDATA Provider: http:// wiki. mozilla. org/ Calendar:GDATA_Provider tries or modify existing ones. At present, the tool [14] Google Calendar: http:// calendar. google. com lacks an alarm function. Figure 3: Creating a calendar in GDATA Provider. WWW.LINUX - MAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 80 JULY 2007 95.