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Lotus 'Agenda' Returns as Open-Source 'Chandler'
RobotRunAmok writes "Before there was Outlook, or Evolution, or The Brain, there was Lotus Agenda, a DOS-based Personal Information Manager created by Mitch Kapor. Wired is reporting that Kapor is throwing 5 Million USD at the Open Source Applications Foundation to create an open-source resurrection of this PIM-Of-The-Gods in the form of Chandler, available now as an alpha for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..."
Does it use the "3 Nipples" interface metaphor?
"Oh, my, God!"
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's good to see people using money to create open-source programs. There is some expectation of support and quality, and you still can modify it any way you want.
Aside from that, is this a better PIM than Evolution, or another? Why (other than the "oh, it's being redone") is this news? Was/is it revolutionary in some way? I have never used it.
Having said that, I think it's fascinating that the programs creator is using his own money to open-source it. Will we see more of this? I hope so.
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This story is ancient news. Chandler has been in alpha form for years. Real news would be when it's finally released.
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"For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..."
That's pretty good and all that, but you're really never going to be able to get the dead fish smell out of the place. You're also going to have to contend with lawsuits from Namor and Arthur Curry as soon as you set foot in it, too. Best advise your lawyer to play those two off each other.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Somebody is working late THIS weekend" I hope it gets a nice web interface and ajax and will be synchronising with my PDA.
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Reading the Wikipedia article about Agenda, it sounds very much like the PIM functionality of the Apple Newton, particularly the Agent. I wonder how inspired the Newton designers were by Agenda.
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"For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..." :)
Both of you?
with apologies to both lovers and haters of Friends and particularly Matthew Perry...
Could this project BE better funded?
or
This project is alive with the sound... OF FUNDING!
could I *BE* any less interested?
Like it had little compatibility with other apps, had memory and file limitations, and had an ugly GUI.
Maybe OSS'ing it might improve it, but by the post, you'd think the Rapture was upon us. It's not. This code will take a lot of work to make right, It was developed in an era where code wasn't checked much for array bounds, and if memory served (I used it and kind of liked it) it had little code for large files (pics and video) and had no knowledge of a number of varying kinds of file types for linking, importation, or even simple access.
And so, although it had some cute features and reasonable speed, we through out hundreds of licenses. Pity. But it's going to take a lot of freaking work to make it useful again.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
So far, they've only managed to produce alpha quality software at best, after more than three years. I always felt that they made some bad technology decisions from the start, like Python is probably not the best language for writing a PIM.
The requirements for this project have gone all over the place. Initially, it was touted as "exchange without the server," using some P2P method. Then it became an "outlook killer," then a "repository," and now they even have a "higher ed version," thats been talked about for some time.
Instead of trying to do a few things really well to start with, this project has become the poster boy for scope creep.
Chandler is just depressing..
.. but after years and years it still is pretty much useless for day to day use.
I download every version..
I TRY to use it...
There has to be some manangement issues over there as OSAF... because they can't seem to ship something that is useful and stable.
Arg.
Aside from the Kapor tie-in? Agenda's key feature was that you could just take notes and it'd see, "Meet with Dave next Tuesday about project x" and it'd know which Dave based on the Project X team and when next Tuesday was based on today's date, etc. Then it'd categorize all your notes so you could ask it, "Show me Project X stuff" or "What appointments do I have today?" If this is just an alternative to Outlook - that is, calendar-oriented or whatever -- how is it Agenda-like?
I took a look at 'Chandler' a while back, and I didn't really see what it had in common with Agenda. It seems more like an attempt at an Outlook and iCal clone with a bit more generality.
If someone made a real clone of Agenda, that would be news.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
>>For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..."
I hope that both of you are happy.
I always felt that they made some bad technology decisions from the start, like Python is probably not the best language for writing a PIM.
That's true. They've spent a bit of time getting base libraries for Python that would have been a non-issue in other languages.
Instead of trying to do a few things really well to start with, this project has become the poster boy for scope creep.
That's the big problem over at OSAF. This project is dead unless they get someone in there that knows what they're doing. That's why 3+ years, half-dozen+ fulltime staff, and not a single application or service deployed.
And they're no where close to releasing anything by the way.
I know it's a dumb question, but what exactly is the relation of this project with candlemaking ("chandler" is an archaic form of "candler," which is the occupation of candle making)?
My guess is that it runs (burns) slowly and functions (illuminates) poorly, but at least it's better than nothing...
Honestly, This seems completly behind the time. The lesson of Gmail is that uses will accept less functionality in exchange for more universal access. Take a look at Zimbra if you want to see a real exchange killer.
I agree. I don't understand the fascination with reworking the same application over and over again. Evolution, Kontact, iCal, Sunbird, Aethera and oldies like Kpilot and Jpilot all cover the same territory; contact info, calendars and notes. What open source really needs is an Information manager that will organize diverse types of information in formats like pdf, graphics, html, spreadsheets and regular word processor documents as well as text. There are a few good ones in proprietary, Windows only format like The Brain, Mybase and Treepad. Open Source / Linux apps are almost all limited to text only. Besides, the last Chandler / Kapoor announcement I recall was back in 2003. Chandler is still barely usable. What's changed?
You seem to misunderstand the situation.
Chandler has very little in common with Agenda other than being a PIM. Certainly there is no Agenda code in it.
I don't know what's news about Chandler today -- it's been in alpha for a while.
The surname Chandler is a contraction of old French "chandelier" meaning candle-maker, as you point out. But is this project like a chandelier in that it falls down and breaks into a thousand pieces?
On the other hand, my recollection of Organizer was when it came bundled on my old Hitachi laptop, circa 1996. I found it to be mostly "cute" with its binder metaphor but otherwise nothing special.
One more Lotus app I miss: Magellan.
The layout is haywire with firefox...
How unfortunate... The handy "View in IE" extension to the rescue...
/* TBD */
I hate the way dragging a To Do to your calendar actually removes it from your To Do list. It should copy it as a new calendar entry, which can then be manipulated as you see fit without changing the original To Do.
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That's OK. None of us work.
We use Mozilla Sunbird and a WebDAV server here. It isn't perfect, but it is a good enough calendaring application. Lightning integrates this with Thunderbird.
Evolution, a decent Outlook alternative from Novell, has been ported.
Aethera seems stalled, but includes native windows ports of KOrganizer.
Finally, there are some versions of Kontact which can run under Cygwin.
All of the limitations you're talking about were common to apps of Agenda's day: they're certainly not unique to Agenda. One can expect that if Agenda was resurrected it'd share the traits of modern apps and lose those limitations.
:-) That much money gets "a lot of freaking work" done.
Also "a lot of freaking work" is exactly what the $5M is for
Anyway, I don't believe Chandler is going to be an updated Agenda: I think it's a new animal that will share a lot of the features and strengths that Agenda had.
Agenda was an MS-DOS product, which meant that: a) it was a standalone application with relatively few opportunities to be compatibile; b) it had memory and file limitations inherent with being a DOS application; and c) it didn't have a GUI. The UI it did have was, admittedly, ugly.
These limitations, whether the fault of the Agenda implementation or not, certainly contributed to its demise. To succeed at what Agenda did, an application would have to work with data in its "native" form, interoperate with other applications (the ones used to get actual work done), and implement a contemporary UI. This last would help enormously; a ridiculous amount of the code in Agenda was devoted to implementing menus, dialogs, text editors, tables, and a clever (for its day) persistence model.