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Chandler 0.1 Released
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.
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.
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.
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.
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A bloated e-mail client.
I like my e-mail client and my calendar separate, thank you very much, just like I like my e-mail client and my browser separate, and my e-mail client and my text editor separate. It's good that they can talk to one another, yes; but gluing them together is a lousy idea.
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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!)
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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.
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The problem is the dearth of apps that already do this, and try and do it like Outlook does for no good reason other than that.
Sure there are reasons for trying to make things Outlook-alike, ease of migration for one, but are you sure the Outlook way is the right way? I for one don't use it being of the *nix persuasion, but I have to support it from an administration POV, and I find myself going through the setup/option dialogs in circles. It sucks from that perspective alone.
Good for them that they're at least trying to do things differently rather than write Yet Another Outlook Clone.
Evolution is an outlook-workalike. That is to say, PIM defined as "Personal-Information management" i.e. "Information about people".
Chandler is a modernised Lotus Agenda. That is to say, PIM defined as "Personal Information-Management" i.e. "Information I personally want to manage"
Bit of a difference.
The python22.dll used by py2exe is only 825 Kbytes. There must be a lot more than the Python runtime.
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"...
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.)
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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?
Here is Chandler running on Mac OS X. It seems to have UI issues, or issues with my screen size since some of the icons in the upperleft are obscured by the menu bar. Chandler: http://homepage.mac.com/zizban/chandler.jpg
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
One problem is that a large percentage of business users use Windows because of Outlook. I can certainly say for myself that although there are reasonable Linux (and Mac) replacements for Word, PowerPoint, and even Excel, I have not yet seen any other application that duplicates the functionality (breadth and depth) of Outlook.
As a "knowledge worker" I'd estimate I spend 50% of my day in Outlook. Outlook really is aimed at managing your working information - emailing or calling someone in your address book, filing the notes you make on that contact, making an appointment in your calendar for that contact, etc. Plus, it integrates perfectly with Exchange server, which like it or not runs a lot of businesses.
Don't get me wrong, I hate a lot of Outlook, but having tried various replacements (Linux-based and Windows) I keep coming back to Outlook. Its the lesser of the various evils.
Because of this, I think it is admirable for folks to have another try at beating Outlook. Evolution, etc haven't done that yet, but perhaps one day Chandler, Evolution, or one of the others will do so. I will happily switch from Outlook when that day comes.
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