Come on, people! This was just a newbie brainstorming on one of the newsgroups. He probably has no idea, what entails a Mozilla-based OS or desktop environment and he probably will not make it happen. And for sure all serious Mozilla developers have better things to do, than doing the 10th incarnation of a desktop environment.
So relax, get a good coffee and learn to do your research before you post.
Sunbird and Lightning never ditched the iCal support (.ics files) in favor of a custom format.
What they did, was to change the internal storage format from.ics to a SQLite SQL database (which is Open Source of course) for performance reasons since.ics files were never meant for local storage purposes. Before the switch to SQLite Sunbird/Lightning would become awfully slow or even unusable with larger.ics files (files with a few hundred events and/or tasks). Since a lot of users complained about this, the developers reacted and switched to format, which is evidently better suited for local storage purposes.
Sunbird/Lightning still works with external.ics files on a WebDAV or a FTP server and will do so in the future. With a workaround you can also still work with.ics files locally, if that is your desire.
>Sunbird would get more attention if > >1. the deveopers gave it more attention
You can't force people to develop a program. Currently Sunbird/Calendar are lacking active developers, but we're gaining momentum at the moment. We're up to five part-time developers from just two a few months ago.
One part of this quest for a new theme is to gain more user and (hopefully) developer attention.
>2. it didn't suck
Well, if it sucks then help to make it no suck. Find and report bugs, help triage bugs or supply a patch or two if you can. You can really make a difference here compared to other much larger projects.
>The last time I tried sunbird as a standalone app >it couldn't even perform basic tasks like adding >an event. The last time I installed it as part of >Firefox or Thunderbird it wrecked the app so bad >I had to delete it, my prefs, and reinstall.
I didn't see any bugreports from you. You also seem to confuse Calendar and Sunbird. Calendar is the extension which you can install into Thunderbird or Firefox. Sunbird is the standalone program which can't be added to Thunderbird or Firefox.
The site (I guess you mean the roadmap) is outdated and has been for outdated for nearly a year. An update has been promised a couple of times but never delivered.
But one thing is clear: Neither Firefox nor Thunderbird nor Sunbird will be renamed when they reach 1.0
iCal is the native calendar format that Sunbird uses. See this faq entry. Try it out. You can easily import iCal calendars and subscribe to them. Some calendars to which you can subscribe to are available on this page.
For the more technical guys: Sunbird uses libical as its calendar engine. This library is available under the MPL or the LGPL.
Your information is outdated. Firefox and Thunderbird won't go through another name change again. Three name changes for Firefox (mozilla/browser -> Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox) and one name change for Thunderbird (Minotaur -> Thunderbird) are clearly enough. You can't build up a successful brand, which is recognized by people if you keep on changing the name every few months.
>>Mozilla is OSS, so improvements to any part of it wil ripple through the different products >>automatically. FireFox, ThunderBird, Mozilla and Camino are all coming from the same base >>code, and improvement to that code improves all the products. Continuing to develop >>the 'monolithic' mozilla is vital to the rest of the projects, because the monolithic app >>showcases and tests the ground for features that may or may not dribble down to the 'birds.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The monolithic mozilla application suite is in maintenance mode now. New features all go into the new apps like Firefox and Thunderbird.
What you probably mean with the "monolithic mozilla" is the mozilla backend code (e.g. the layout rendering engine aka Gecko or the networking code aka Necko to name a few). The backend code is still improved continously but it is totally independent from the monolithic Mozilla Application Suite aka Seamonkey. If the mozilla foundation and the mozilla hackers wanted they could abandon the suite today. They won't because there are still some hackers interested in the suite as are some companies who have deployed the suite.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, people!
This was just a newbie brainstorming on one of the newsgroups. He probably has no idea, what entails a Mozilla-based OS or desktop environment and he probably will not make it happen. And for sure all serious Mozilla developers have better things to do, than doing the 10th incarnation of a desktop environment.
So relax, get a good coffee and learn to do your research before you post.
Sunbird and Lightning never ditched the iCal support (.ics files) in favor of a custom format.
.ics to a SQLite SQL database (which is Open Source of course) for performance reasons since .ics files were never meant for local storage purposes. .ics files (files with a few hundred events and/or tasks). Since a lot of users complained about this, the developers reacted and switched to format, which is evidently better suited for local storage purposes.
.ics files on a WebDAV or a FTP server and will do so in the future. With a workaround you can also still work with .ics files locally, if that is your desire.
What they did, was to change the internal storage format from
Before the switch to SQLite Sunbird/Lightning would become awfully slow or even unusable with larger
Sunbird/Lightning still works with external
Sunbird is the standalone Calendar project from mozilla.org.
Lightning is a calendaring extension, which will be tightly integrated into Mozilla Thunderbird.
Both programs share most of their backend and some of their frontend code.
See the Calendar/Sunbird FAQ on local calendars.
>Sunbird would get more attention if
>
>1. the deveopers gave it more attention
You can't force people to develop a program. Currently Sunbird/Calendar are lacking active developers, but we're gaining momentum at the moment. We're up to five part-time developers from just two a few months ago.
One part of this quest for a new theme is to gain more user and (hopefully) developer attention.
>2. it didn't suck
Well, if it sucks then help to make it no suck. Find and report bugs, help triage bugs or supply a patch or two if you can. You can really make a difference here compared to other much larger projects.
>The last time I tried sunbird as a standalone app
>it couldn't even perform basic tasks like adding
>an event. The last time I installed it as part of
>Firefox or Thunderbird it wrecked the app so bad
>I had to delete it, my prefs, and reinstall.
I didn't see any bugreports from you. You also seem to confuse Calendar and Sunbird. Calendar is the extension which you can install into Thunderbird or Firefox. Sunbird is the standalone program which can't be added to Thunderbird or Firefox.
The site (I guess you mean the roadmap) is outdated and has been for outdated for nearly a year. An update has been promised a couple of times but never delivered.
But one thing is clear:
Neither Firefox nor Thunderbird nor Sunbird will be renamed when they reach 1.0
iCal is the native calendar format that Sunbird uses. See this faq entry. Try it out. You can easily import iCal calendars and subscribe to them. Some calendars to which you can subscribe to are available on this page.
For the more technical guys:
Sunbird uses libical as its calendar engine. This library is available under the MPL or the LGPL.
Your information is outdated. Firefox and Thunderbird won't go through another name change again. Three name changes for Firefox (mozilla/browser -> Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox) and one name change for Thunderbird (Minotaur -> Thunderbird) are clearly enough. You can't build up a successful brand, which is recognized by people if you keep on changing the name every few months.
>>Mozilla is OSS, so improvements to any part of it wil ripple through the different products
>>automatically. FireFox, ThunderBird, Mozilla and Camino are all coming from the same base
>>code, and improvement to that code improves all the products. Continuing to develop
>>the 'monolithic' mozilla is vital to the rest of the projects, because the monolithic app
>>showcases and tests the ground for features that may or may not dribble down to the 'birds.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The monolithic mozilla application suite is in maintenance mode now. New features all go into the new apps like Firefox and Thunderbird.
What you probably mean with the "monolithic mozilla" is the mozilla backend code (e.g. the layout rendering engine aka Gecko or the networking code aka Necko to name a few). The backend code is still improved continously but it is totally independent from the monolithic Mozilla Application Suite aka Seamonkey. If the mozilla foundation and the mozilla hackers wanted they could abandon the suite today. They won't because there are still some hackers interested in the suite as are some companies who have deployed the suite.