The Chandler Project Blog

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).

Scott Rosenberg’s new book about OSAF’s first years comes out this month, titled Dreaming in Code. Scott is a friend of OSAF — he spent a lot of time in our office, hanging out in meetings as a sort of “embedded reporter”. I’m not going to comment on OSAF’s adventures during that time period — you can go read the book for yourself. Instead, I’ll give an update on what OSAF has been up to since Scott’s narrative leaves off, around the end of 2005. At that time, we had narrowed our focus to get a calendar working, cutting out many interesting features. Since then, we’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve added a Dashboard for managing other types of information (including tasks, notes, messages) and improved polish, performance and reliability. The Preview release around April 2007 (described below) should be a good release for people to try out Chandler and Cosmo for the first time.

Cosmo

The Cosmo project was just getting started at the end of Scott’s book.
Cosmo is currently both a web calendar and a server for sharing data. The Chandler desktop application uses the Cosmo server to share data; shared calendars can also be viewed and edited in a browser using a Cosmo URL. Eventually Cosmo’s web client will be as full featured as Chandler, supporting tasks and other types of information. Cosmo’s server implements several standard protocols, so data can be accessed from other clients as well (including Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird). One of the big changes at OSAF in the last year has been the increasing importance of the Cosmo project. We’ve been designing Chandler and Cosmo so that they can be used in tandem.

Using Chandler and Cosmo at OSAF

With the release of Chandler 0.6 in late 2005, we started using Chandler and Cosmo at OSAF. Chandler at 0.6 was pretty rough — but we got good feedback and made significant improvements. The most recent milestone, Chandler 0.7alpha4, runs much more quickly on the Intel Mac, has a more polished calendar, and has the first workable Dashboard for tasks and notes. Several of us at OSAF brave the rough edges and use Chandler for our calendaring on a daily basis. Mitch and his assistant Esther are currently using 0.7alpha4 to share a calendar.

Preview

We set a major goal for ourselves last year: GET USERS OUTSIDE OSAF! We’ve been focusing on a “Preview” release for Chandler and Cosmo that will be functional and interesting for end users. While Preview will not include everything we want to accomplish for a 1.0 release, it will provide a tangible, plausible promise of the fully-fledged application we’d like to build.

Setting this goal has been a key step in transitioning to a “ship it” mindset from a more chaotic big tent of interesting ideas. Once Preview is out we can start building a community, since we’ll have something real people can use to solve real problems.

It was important to us that the Preview release contain some of the features that we’ve been excited about from the beginning: “stamping” features to blend tasks, events and notes; and “triage” features to manage important information in one view. It was also important to coordinate Chandler and Cosmo designs. We set a goal of Q1 2007 — my current best guess is that we will hit Preview in early April. Feedback from users will shape the remaining work towards a 1.0 release.

Informal workgroup collaboration

Early in 2006, we did a gut check and reevaluated our priorities. From the beginning of the project we struggled with too many ambitious and sometimes competing goals. The end result of a prioritization exercise was a tighter focus around small workgroup collaboration. Note that we never aspired to be an “Outlook killer” — we’re more passionate about solving problems for informal groups than for enterprises.

To make decisions about the feature set for Preview, we used the technique of identifying target users and the workflows they would use to accomplish their goals. Our keystone user is a person who sits in Chandler every day, using the desktop app for projects and tasks, as well as calendaring. We refer to this type of user as a “Hub”. The Hub interacts with “Casual Collaborators” — people in the Hub’s workgroup who don’t run their life with a calendar and task list or people outside of the group. The Hub might send a URL to the Casual Collaborator, who can then use that URL to access a calendar or task list on Cosmo. An example scenario: individual contributors in a workgroup edit their PTO on a shared office calendar (via Cosmo), which is largely maintained by a project manager (using Chandler). More info on target users and the Preview feature set for Chandler and Cosmo can be found on our wiki.

osaf.us

We’re going to host Cosmo as a free service starting in March or April (when Preview is ready) . Small groups will be able to use the service to share calendars and task lists instead of running their own Cosmo server. Someday we’d like small workgroups to be able to run their own Cosmo server without much hassle, but that will require more work. Braver souls can download Cosmo and try it out, though.

CalDAV and interoperability

CalDAV is an emerging calendaring standard; Scott chronicles a bit of Lisa Dusseault’s involvement breathing life into CalDAV. Cosmo is a CalDAV server and Chandler is a CalDAV client. OSAF remains committed to supporting standards based interoperability — we test against other servers and clients at Calconnect events and fix bugs when we find them.

People

Several people mentioned in Scott’s book are no longer working with OSAF, including Andy Hertzfeld, Michael Toy, and Chao Lam. Lisa Dusseault moved on to focus on IETF work as an Area Director. Each of these people made significant positive contributions to the project. We have new talented developers and designers working on Cosmo and Chandler who don’t appear in the book, appear only briefly, or have taken on new roles. The current team deserves a lot credit for pulling Chandler and Cosmo together as healthy, productive projects. I’m pretty excited about both and am really looking forward to Preview.

Our goal for our most recent release, 0.7alpha4, is to give a rough sketch of what Chandler will be by our first Preview release (Spring 2007). This release introduces the Dashboard, which gives users a runway view of all of their information. Users can try creating a simple task list, and can share that list with others just as they can share calendars. Users can also experiment with sending notes, tasks and invitations to others via email.

For further details go to http://chandler.osafoundation.org/newinalpha4.php
You can download the latest milestone at…
http://downloads.osafoundation.org/chandler/milestones/0.7alpha4/

Travis joins OSAF as a Software Engineer on the Cosmo team after spending the summer working as an intern. Read more about Travis on our people page.

As of version 0.7 alpha3 of Chandler, OSAF is changing the license for the Chandler desktop product to the Apache 2.0 License (our Cosmo and Scooby codebases are already Apache Licensed). Previous versions of Chandler were licensed under the GNU GPL because we thought that we would pursue a MySQL style dual licensing scheme as part of the sustainability plans for the Foundation. We no longer plan to pursue this kind of scheme in order to acheive our sustainability goals, and we want to reduce the number of open source licenses in use at OSAF.
Those interested in the complete discussion on this topic can look at the archives of the OSAF ‘general’ mailing list: <http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/general/2006-May/000248.html>