The Chandler plugin framework allows developers to extend the application’s functionality in new and fun ways. For example, I have been working on a Google Calendar sync plugin (more about that in another post) and a plugin to hook into Twitter. Twitter is sort of a global IM framework, and I thought it would be cool to have Chandler be able to subscribe to Twitter activity and display it in the UI. The first Twitter plugin I wrote used HTTP polling to download Twitter messages, but I have now replaced it with a more general XMPP plugin. XMPP (formerly known as “Jabber”) is an open IM protocol, and is much better suited to real-time data exchange. This plugin enhances the Chandler accounts dialog to allow you to set up an XMPP account. From then on, any XMPP message the account receives (not just Twitter, but Jaiku, etc.) will be added as a calendar event to an “XMPP” collection in the sidebar. These events can be stamped as tasks, dragged to other collections, etc. You can view them either in the Calendar or in the table view.

For example:

The plugin is still considered experimental, and you shouldn’t try it in a Chandler that contains data you care about, but if you’d like to play around with it, the tar file can be downloaded from the python ‘Cheeseshop’ (the central registry for Python packages). Once you have downloaded the file, use Chandler’s “Plugins > Install” menu to select it. Assuming you already have an XMPP/Jabber account somewhere (for instance, I use Google Talk), and you have already linked that account to get notified by Twitter, Jaiku, etc. via IM, you will be able to add a new “XMPP/Jabber” account into Chandler’s “File > Accounts” dialog. After you have closed the accounts dialog, restart Chandler, give it a minute and your Twitter messages should start appearing in the XMPP collection.

The XMPP account settings you’ll need to use Google Talk are:

   User name: username@gmail.com
   Server: talk.google.com
   Resource: (just leave blank)
   Port: 5223, Use SSL Checked

This new plugin will soon form the basis for other IM-based services like instant-sharing.

~morgen

With the GPL’ing of Java and Lucene’s pending move to using Java 1.5,
I decided to give PyLucene without gcj a try.

One of the best features of gcj is its C++ interface. Its ability to expose Java classes as C++ makes it very easy to invoke Java from C++. This feature is unique and sorely missed when moving off of gcj.

The Java Native Invocation Interface makes it possible to invoke Java
classes from C++ but is rather crufty and verbose to use by hand.

I started by implementing a C++ code generator that generates C++ wrapper
classes that hide all the JNI invocation cruft from the C++ programmer.
These wrapper classes in effect offer a very similar C++ interface to what
is offered by gcj’s CNI.

While I was implementing this it became apparent that the C++ wrappers for
giving access to Java classes from Python could be generated at the same
time.

Eventually, I ended up writing a new C++ code generator, that I called jcc.
JCC is able to generate C++ wrappers for accessing Java classes from Python
and C++.

This code generator is now used to generate a new flavor of PyLucene, called
PyLucene with JCC. JCC has no built-in knowledge about Lucene and could be
used to generate wrappers for any Java library that uses similar coding
styles and techniques than the ones used by the Java Lucene developers.

JCC could in fact become a project of its own. At the moment, it is part of the
PyLucene with JCC source tree.

The PyLucene source tree got split into two forks, a gcj fork containing the
original PyLucene and a new jcc fork containing the new sources, consisting
mainly of unit tests, samples and the sources to jcc since all of
PyLucene, except for extension code, is now generated by jcc.

For more details, please refer to the new README files:

• PyLucene README
• PyLucene with JCC README
• jcc README

For Preview, we’ve made a huge effort in updating and expanding Chandler Project documentation.

Visit our new Chandler Project website.

From here, you can Download Chandler Desktop, Sign up for a Chandler Hub account as well as find our newly updated Vision Document and Feature List, complete with screenshots and informational demos of both Chandler Desktop and Chandler Hub in action.

For a blow-by-blow list of what’s new and what’s changed since the 0.6 release, see Preview Release Notes.

There is now a consolidated FAQ that covers topics ranging from ‘What license is Chandler under?‘ to ‘Can I use Chandler for Email?‘ and developer questions.

We are also working on a Get Started Guide for step by step instructions on everything from setting up accounts and sharing to a quick overview of Chandler’s core information management workflows. We expect the guide to be a ‘living document’ that will be continually improved to help new users ramp up. Check it out and give us feedback!

If you run into problems using Chandler, take a look at Known Issues and Troubleshooting.

If you think you’re problem is new, subscribe to the Chandler-Users mailing list and send us an email. If you’re pretty sure you know what’s going on, following the directions on the Report a Bug page and log a bug.

Here is an overview of how you can Get Involved, including an up-to-date list of Starter Projects.

Last but not least, if you’re looking to learn more about Chandler as a project, dig through our newly re-organized Project Wiki where you will find an overview of the Desktop, Server and Hub Service, detailed design and developer documentation as well as day-to-day planning, bug-tracking and notes.

I’m pleased to announce that the Chandler project has hit our Preview milestone! We now have public-beta quality releases of our products; we believe them to be full featured enough and stable enough for daily use. Check out a full overview of features (including screenshots and screencasts). Download Chandler Desktop, create an account on Chandler Hub. Check out the source. Get involved in the project, help us build a really great 1.0 release.

Chandler Desktop
We released 0.7.0.1 of the Chandler Desktop yesterday, September 10. (In the spirit of responding to user feedback quicky, we fixed a problem with the release found by a user before we made the announcement).

Chandler desktop adds a central dashboard for managing tasks, notes, events, and messages to the basic calendar functionality found in the 0.6 release. You can share calendars, task lists, messages and notes in collections that can hold whatever you choose to put in them, regardless of data type. The performance has improved greatly, the application has basic search functionality, and now there’s a way to to manage and resolve conflicts on shared data. You can collaborate on individual items via email with the ability to edit and update messages you’ve already received or sent. Although Chandler Preview is not meant to replace your email application, you can configure your IMAP account so that Chandler can see some messages from your regular mail client.

We’re currently planning a 0.7.1 release in about a month, to quickly iterate on the Preview release. We’ll make use of user feedback to identify problems and drive priorities.

Chandler Hub
We upgraded Chandler Hub to the 0.7.0 release of Chandler Server on August 27th.

The latest release of Chandler Hub also adds a dashboard for managing tasks (and other kinds of data) to basic web calendaring features. Friends and family can access shared collections from the web without having to create an account or log in. We’ve focused on workflows that let desktop users share data with others using the web; this release is a major step towards realizing the full Chandler vision on the web as well as the desktop.

We’ll be upgrading the service with small fixes on a weekly basis for the next month or so, fixing minor glitches and adding support for Safari.

Chandler Server
The Chandler Server 0.7.0 release is available for download as a ready-to-run bundle. We’ll be creating 0.7.x releases as we improve the Hub service. In parallel, we’re working on a 0.8 release that is focused on interoperability with other calendar applications and services such as iCal, Google Calendar and Evolution.

Try out Chandler
We believe you can now feel confident putting your data in Chandler. We have migration features to make upgrading easier, and will do our best to support people if they run into problems. (The chandler-users@osafoundation.org mailing list is a great forum for support). These releases do have some bugs and rough edges, so Chandler might not yet be appropriate for mission critical uses. We are using the desktop and hub internally day to day for our office calendar, personal calendars, personal project management, and several small group task lists. We hope you’ll join us using Chandler — let us know how you like it! We’ll use your feedback to make a better 1.0 release.

Get Involved
One of our goals for this Preview milestone is to grow outside involvement with the project. We want users to log bugs. We want designers to collaborate with us on ideas. We want developers to submit patches fixing bugs that annoy them, create desktop plugins with their favorite features, and write clients that take advantage of their data on the server. Check out how to get involved.

If you’ve been tracking our download page, you certainly noticed that we uploaded last week a brand new 0.7.0-rc1 to replace 0.6.1 as the default download. This is because we are very confident that this new release is already way better and more stable than the older version and, though we haven’t yet completed the whole suite of tests, we prefer having new users installing and using that newer version rather than the old one.

For one thing, this new version is fully exploiting the new capabilities of the newly released Chandler Server 0.7.0 now deployed on Chandler Hub (see Jared’s post). The new protocol (Morse Code) used by 0.7.0-rc1 is much faster than what we used before so sharing is really improved. Also the level of interoperability between the Desktop client and the new Web UI client is way better.

Second, having new users starting with the new Dashboard and Triage workflow is more in tune with what Chandler is all about now. It’s not your old “Calendar Application” anymore…

And last, the new version supports an “export/reload” feature so schema changes in the repository database do not become migration headaches and data loss is non existent. This is pretty important for users in general and new users in particular.

So, what’s separating us from a formal release announcement? Well, tests, tests and more tests. We’re currently getting through the complete list of test scenarios and test plans and we’re creating a new RC (Release Candidate) every other day or so. RC 2 is now up for download and we’re expecting another couple of RC to crop up between now and the final release, the one with the QA stamp of approval. When’s that? ETA is Monday September 10th. Considering the current rather low rate of bugs logged, we’re pretty confident we’ll make that date. After all, we’ve been in debug mode since 3 months now so super-scary-blow-up-the-house bugs are unlikely to crop up now. It’s more about corner scenarios and making sure we’re really complete in our assessment of the product quality before putting it in everyone’s hands.

In the meantime, if you’re daring enough and not afraid of a couple of bugs that could hide here and there, take a spin at the new Chandler Desktop 0.7.0-rc2 and help us make the wait even shorter by testing it in your own environment.

Well I just got back from EuroPython 2007 held in Vilnius, Lithuania.

EuroPython was definitely smaller than our American Pycon counterpart and the diversity of talks more limited.

My favorite talk was on Streaming with Python, Twisted, and GStreamer.

I particularly enjoyed meeting developers on that side of the hemisphere who don’t normal make it to the American conferences. Overall, EuroPython had a very intimate feel.

On July 10th, I gave a lightening talk on Chandler which went very well.

I was trying to figure out how to capture all the functionality of Chandler in 5 minutes or less of speech time. I decided to run our Functional Test Framework while describing the different features Chandler has as the suite was creating new collections, new items, stamping, configuring accounts, sending email, publishing collections, and subscribing to collections. All in all I was able to show a large amount of Chandler functionality this way in under 3 minutes.

I then quit the tests and switch to a running version of Chandler spending the last two minutes demonstrating how internationalization and the plug-in framework work in Chandler. Specifically, I did an Amazon search for Scott Rosenberg and showed the collection results as well as an EVDB search for Opera in San Francisco.

I got a very good reception from the audience. As many people had not been following Chandler in a while they were surprised at how much recent progress had been made.

On July 11th, I gave my Internationalizing in Python: Chandler a case study presentation. It went very well also. There was strong turn out and I think may people were surprised out how hard it is to actually Internationalize / localize an application in Python.

In addition to showing slides I gave code examples of EggTranslations, PyICU, and how to create localization eggs using the Chandler tools.

You can view photos from the conference as well as access my presentation slides at:

http://people.osafoundation.org/bkirsch/europython/

On July 12th and 13th I hosted two days of Sprints on localizing Chandler.

I must say I learned a great deal. One thing that I had not considered is that localizers also make a very good focus group on Chandler usability. Since none of the translators had worked in depth with Chandler before, it was not only an exercise in how easy is the application to localize but also how easy is it for someone to start Chandler and grasp the concepts the application offers.

There were many issued raised at the Sprint including bugs in the Chandler code that are hindering a complete localization, better tools that need to be provided for localization, and ways that we need to better organize our strings in code to create a usable Chandler.pot for translators to work with.

I would classify those two days as providing the last few missing pieces regarding Chandler’s localization strategy.

I am excited to get started on providing the user community with the ability to localize Chandler in our 0.7.1 release which will follow Preview.

I have summarized the entire experience of the Sprints and next steps for Chandler i18n / l10n as well as included a link to the Swedish translation egg created during the Sprints here:

http://people.osafoundation.org/bkirsch/postsprint/

-Brian Kirsch

We’re closing in on our Preview release, currently on target for launch in late August.

Hub (hub.chandlerproject.org)
The service is running the 0.6.1.1 version of the server, and works well with desktop checkpoints. We maintain our OSAF office calendar on the hub; several OSAF’ers are now using desktop checkpoints with the service to manage shared task lists.

Desktop
The desktop team has hit the code complete deadline for 0.7, and is closing in on Zero Bug Release.

You can download the latest checkpoint now and and give it a spin. It is more stable than the last alpha release or than the 0.6 release, and contains data migration features for upgrades.

Server
The server team hit feature complete for its 0.7 release, and is busy testing and fixing bugs. Upgrading the hub to use the 0.7 version of the server will determine the launch date.

Website and Wiki
We’ve improved our web presence and cleaned up our wiki (though we still have a little work to do before launch). We’re also working on end user documentation.

• http://www.osafoundation.org/
• http://chandlerproject.org/
• http://chandlerproject.org/wikihome

OSCON is next week in Portland and a number of folks from the Chandler project will be there.

Wednesday morning, Ted Leung and Mimi Yin will be giving a presentation “Open Design, Not by Committee”, about our experiences incorporating designers into an open source development process.

Katie Parlante will be giving a Chandler project update during the “State of Lightning Talks” on Thursday morning

Also on Thursday morning, Mikeal Rogers and Adam Christian will be talking about Windmill, the tool that we use to test the AJAX based user interface for Chandler Server (Cosmo).

There will also be a Chandler BOF on Thursday night, so please come by and say “Hi”. Since the Preview release is just around the corner, now would be a great time to check in and find out what’s been happening.

It’s been a long road and finally CalDAV has reached publication at the IETF as an internet standard.

CalDAV is the first open calendaring protocol to be blessed by a standards body. CalDAV is already used in a variety of clients and servers including our own Chandler Desktop and Chandler Server. OSAF was one of the first adopters of CalDAV thanks to some great input from our previous server dev manager, now IETF application area director, Lisa Dusseault who helped create RFC 4791.

We should also thank Cyrus Daboo and Bernard Desruisseaux who have helped to drive not only this standard but other extensions to CalDAV which are in various phases of development and will provide longevity and broader adoption of CalDAV among a variety of users and institutions.

The OSAF team has been busily focusing on our “Preview” releases — functional products that are interesting enough for people to try out and give us meaningful feedback. (”Preview” will not be 1.0 — more like a usable public beta). Our original goal was to have these releases ready this month — we’ve adjusted our schedule to June. The countdown to Preview is tracked on our wiki.

Help us!

If you are adventurous and want to help out the project, we’d love to have people trying out the desktop application and the web application even before we get to Preview. Find bugs and help us make it better! Join the users list, download the latest checkpoint of the desktop application, or check out the web application.

Branding

Chandler was originally a code name for the desktop application. After careful consideration, we decided to use the name for the whole group of products (the desktop application, the online service and the server that runs the service). We’ve chosen a domain name (chandlerproject.org), and we’re working on a new logo. We’re also cleaning up our wiki and our websites as we near Preview. We discuss this work on the general mailing list.

Chandler Desktop

The desktop project hit a feature complete milestone on April 9. New features include recurrence and auto-triage of items in the dashboard, editing and updating items via email, Chandler IMAP folders, context menus, a new sharing format, conflict management, and data migration features. The team is working on performance now, and will spend many weeks after that fixing bugs.

Chandler Server (Cosmo)

“Chandler Server” is our new name for Cosmo. The 0.6 release of Chandler server was described in an earlier post. The server team is currently wrapping up the 0.6.1 release, which implements a new sharing format for data exchange with the desktop application. The team has also started on the 0.7 release, which will allow users to view and edit shared tasks and events in a table.

Chandler Hub (osaf.us)

“Chandler Hub” is our new name for the online service hosted by OSAF, running Chandler server. The service is currently running the 0.6 version of the server. We plan on moving to 0.6.1 in a few weeks, and upgrading to 0.7 in June. Once we’re ready to “Launch” Preview, we’ll use our new domain name (chandlerproject.org).