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LDAP-Based Address Books for Win32?

Posted by Cliff on from the outlook-excluded dept.

Snafoo asks: "I'm trying to replace an Access-powered communal address book at my office with something cross-platform and (preferably) LDAP-powered. Unfortunately, I can't find a single email client for windows that would allow people to update the LDAP dB from their address-book interface except, the usual suspect, Outlook. I've tried Mozilla, Eudora, and a slew of other 'freebies', but they only allow browsing; at the moment, I'm considering dropping cygwin+XFree on the desktops of the windows clients and giving them access to Evolution on a central server (God bless Ximian!), however, most of the Win32 boxen are used by non-clueful sorts who would be put out by the inconvenience of what amounts to a second desktop. Aside from shelling out $90 a seat for WinAxe, or another rootless X server for Windows, what do you all recommend?" Those interested in X-Servers for Windows may wish to check out this previous article, however if you are using an X11 server not mentioned, please feel free to recommend others, here.

10 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Why another desktop? by seanmeister · · Score: 3, Informative


    Couldn't you simply run Evo or whatever client in the X server WITHOUT running a window manager or desktop environment? Just pass it some window geometry and let it take up the entire X server display?

    1. Re:Why another desktop? by JabberWokky · · Score: 3, Informative
      Or just get a rootless X server, rather than XFree (which, afaik, and it's been awhile, doesn't do rootless on Windows). There are plenty available, most quite quite inexpensive per seat licensing.

      --
      Evan (no reference)

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. LDAP by GreenKiwi · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am very interested in finding a cross platform solution. I don't believe that Evolution is the way to go. Creating an LDAP server and using LDAP clients on all the different platforms is a much more elegant solution.

    I'd love to hear what others are doing.

    I know that many mail clients out there support LDAP searches, however, I haven't found any good guides to setting up the LDAP servers. If anyone has any pointers, I'd love to hear them.

    1. Re:LDAP by OnyxRaven · · Score: 3, Informative

      I certainly agree. I am currently in a couple of projects now that have people across the country, across different platforms (Mac and Win2k mainly, but I use Linux at home often) and we want to be able to share a contact list for our media contacts. Right now there's no good way of doing it aside from a text listing we have on our website, which sucks in comparison to an LDAP server we could have running somewhere. This would reduce the confusion we have when we're updating the contacts list and not everyone has the contacts in their personal Outlook/Netscape/Lotus Notes/whatever contact lists.

      Any resources on this? I checked google to only small avail (though my query might have sucked).

      --
      --onyx--
    2. Re:LDAP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      i spent a few days writing a HOWTO on LDAP.. you can find it here:
      http://howto.linuxpowered.net/ldap/ldap.htm l

      it covers many topics, I hope to update it
      a bit more in the next couple days.

  3. Re:Pegasus? by david+duncan+scott · · Score: 3, Informative

    It looks like it does, yes. For sure you can query LDAP directories, but I'm less sure of being able to make changes to them.

    --

    This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander

  4. SquirrelMail by pete-classic · · Score: 4, Informative

    SquirrelMail is a web-based IMAP client. Among its many features are . . . LDAP address book (RW).

    You could use this for adding addresses and using your IMAP server remotely, and use any other IMAP client(s) for all other purposes.

    -Peter

  5. Webpage for changes? by Finni · · Score: 2, Informative
    How about making an {Inter|Intra}net webpage that allows each user to log in and see their addressbook, with a web form for add/delete/changes to it?

    It's not quite as bad as stuffing them into some app their not used to through a complex delivery method.

  6. Write something in Java? by nicestepauthor · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've done a little LDAP work with Java using JNDI. It should not be too difficult to knock out a Swing app that can read and update an LDAP address book, and it would of course be cross platform. Browsing an address book is what people do 90% of the time, so they should tolerate using a separate application to update it.

  7. rolodap by dead_penguin · · Score: 3, Informative

    I really like seeing a question asked when it's something that I'm in the process of figuring out for myself at that exact moment! ;)

    Rolodap looks very promising. I'm probably going to put it up this weekend if I get time.

    --

    It's only software!