In the early days of free e-mail accounts, I lived in a close-knit rural community. My close friends and I thought e-mail was the best thing ever invented, and we’d make all sorts of plans entirely by e-mail. What could be more simple and effective? It turned out almost anything.

While my closest friends all checked their e-mail hourly, many of my other friends had work that wasn’t sitting in front of a computer. Many of them got e-mail accounts only grudgingly, and checked them maybe weekly. I was constantly wasting time expecting people to have read my email proposals. Eventually, I learned that I had to kill trees if I wanted people to hear what I had to say.

Applications, even paradigm shifting applications, are only useful if you use them. Obvious though this may be, it’s critical in determining whether a tool is valuable in practice.

In my day to day use of Chandler, I often close the application down and forget to open it up again. When I want to go check whether I can schedule an event, or find some other specific piece of information, I go and load Chandler, no sweat. But when I have an idea or something I need to remember to do, I often just create an (electronic) sticky or emacs file or send an email to myself to track it.

This is a hassle! I love Chandler’s organization of my calendar, random thoughts, and tasks, especially the ability to set something to come back to my attention later. But I’m not getting us much advantage from this as I’d like, because I still have so many tasks not in Chandler. The truth is, I don’t need all that organizational power most of the time. Often, I’d just like to quickly jot down a task.

To make it easier for everyone in my position to add tasks to their Chandler collections, today we’re announcing Chandler Quick Entry for iGoogle. OK, maybe this doesn’t make anything easier for Nepalese babies. But hopefully it’ll be helpful for people who use Chandler Hub and iGoogle.

If your homepage is set to Google and you’ve never used iGoogle before, it’s worth a look. You can quickly add a few gadgets with blog feeds, news, or whatever else you’re into. And, now, you can create notes and quickly send them to Chandler Hub. If you use Chandler Desktop to sync your hub collections, your new note will appear in Chandler the next time it’s open and syncs.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

 [Note: at the moment, you can’t use Google’s Directory to add the gadget, the directory contains an old, non-functional version of the gadget.  You need to click on the image above to successfully add.]

We’ve decided to roll a Chandler 0.7.5.1 to address two issues that users have been reporting in 0.7.5. These were actually both bugs present in 0.7.4, but probably I should have prioritized them higher. They are:

Bug 11718: Auto Reload fails…thinks repository is already in use.
This affected Windows users attempting to migrate their data when upgrading from an older version of Chandler.

Bug 11916: Exception subscribing to Google Calendar.
This makes it impossible to subscribe to a private Google calendar URL (and possibly other Google calendars).

Once I’ve downloaded and validated the build, which should happen in the next couple of hours, I’ll make the formal announcements, etc.

Updated to add: OK, everything turned out fine. Get Chandler Desktop 0.7.5.1 here.

Chandler Server 0.13.0 includes a major security fix that required some minor client side changes.  These changes were implemented in Chandler Desktop 0.7.5.  When Chandler Hub is updated to version 0.13.0 of the server, users of Chandler Desktop prior to version 0.7.5 may experience sharing problems.  To prevent such problems, all users of Chandler Hub are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of Chandler Desktop, 0.7.5.

Chandler Desktop 0.7.5 is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux at:

http://chandlerproject.org/download

The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.7.5 release of Chandler Desktop!

The Chandler Project is an open source, standards-based information manager designed for personal use and small group collaboration.

The 0.7.5 release of Chandler Desktop simplifies the Chandler UI by changing elements confusing to new users. In particular, multiple toolbar buttons were removed, “tasks” were replaced with “starred items”, the “triage” button was renamed to “clean up”, and the items created when first starting have been made more useful. The sidebar list of collections can now be reordered by dragging them in-place. A variety of build/packaging and platform-specific bugs have also been fixed.

Additionally, Chandler Desktop has updated its sharing protocol to match that of Chandler Server (Cosmo) 0.13. Previously, a user could republish items that had been shared to them read-only to obtain read-write permission to those items. See here and here for more information. People using versions of Chandler Desktop prior to 0.7.5 will not be able to republish items to recent versions of Chandler Server including Chandler Hub.

A list of known issues in this release is at the bottom of this announcement.

Chandler Desktop 0.7.5 is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux at:

http://chandlerproject.org/download

Additional information is available from the Chandler Project homepage.

The bugs fixed in this release include:

• #5058 Add the ability to reorder collections in the sidebar
• #7024 Improvements to divider in the sidebar
• #10785 Tab key press doesn’t end lozenge edit on Ubuntu
• #10997 Bad dependency on tools/ dir
• #11013 Plug read-only security hole
• #11238 Reminder popup prevents to use Chandler
• #11239 Using delete via context menu deletes wrong user item - no indication to user
• #11290 Rename Triage button
• #11429 Re-organize the File menu
• #11676 Added a new collection on the hub & Chandler desktop hung
• #11678 make the links in the ‘Tip of the day’ clickable
• #11684 Add “Show Tips” to the Help menu
• #11689 Chandler crashed on linux with X window System error
• #11705 Need to be able to tell if a reflist attribute has been deleted or not
• #11712 Full Name not showing up for sender in email I receive in Apple Mail
• #11729 Generate items from dialog
• #11770 Strip down UI
• #11771 Change task stamp to star stamp
• #11772 Fill-in OOTB items
• #11783 Traceback when making ‘Future’ edit on recurring series
• #11814 Change hint text in quick entry bar to: Create a new note
• #11819 Leopard Desktop releases show “Python” not “Chandler” for name
• #11823 Couldn’t migrate 0.7.3 to 0.7.4 on MacOSX
• #11830 SAST timezone missing
• #11831 German translation’s key-bindings (at least on Mac) are bad
• #11836 Change Copy URLs to Clipboard text to…
• #11838 Language Switch doesn’t work
• #11880 Disallow adding read-only items to other collections
• #11884 Better sharing error messaging
• #11887 Exception changing visible hours in multiweek (month) view
• #11900 Change View>>Triage to View>>Clean up
• #11903 Traceback after upgrading
• #11911 D-click to mark item as 2-triage statuses away
• #11914 Drags to read-only collections succeed
• #11919 Can’t cancel publishing a collection

There are five known issues with this release we’d like to highlight:

• #11878 Can’t put items you received via Email on the Server
• #11921 Read-write access should override read-only access
• #11946 Crash manipulating particular event in Chandler
• #11947 No highlight state in month view
• #11948 sidebar update oddity when creating a collection

This list of known issues includes an application crash that previously didn’t happen when editing an event in a collection that’s not currently selected. All these issues involved sophisticated sharing scenarios (multiple collections with some read-only and others read-write, and sharing items via email) or are UI oddities with simple workarounds.

Thanks for your interest in Chandler Desktop!

Interoperability is an important part of the Chandler Project vision.

Chandler is about trying to match the way people really work. And everyone uses lots of tools to get their job done. One of the first things people want to know when considering trying out Chandler software is “Will it work with what I already use? Can I switch back if I don’t like it? Will it work with the tools that friends of mine use?”

We believe the answer to all these questions is “YES”! You can safely and productively start using one or more of the Chandler Project components on top of your existing toolset. Go ahead, try it out! Read more below to learn the details.

For a bullet-list summary of our best-available notes on specific applications and which features are supported with each, see our interop overview.

Import/export

The gold standard of calendar transfer is the “ICS” file (in iCalendar format). Most calendar and task list applications support both import and export of ICS files.

You can try out Chandler Desktop without switching from your current setup. Just export one or more ICS files from your current application, then import those files into Chandler Desktop (continuing to use your current app). To switch over permanently, just export+import again a final time!

If you later decide you’d like to change again, you can export ICS files from Chandler Desktop or Chandler Hub, using those files for import into a wide variety of applications.

We’ve seen import and export work for Outlook 2003/2007, Mozilla Lightning/Sunbird, Apple iCal, and others; it should work with a great many apps, probably yours included.

Note that Outlook doesn’t export full information by default; we’ve found this $10 application from littlemachines produces high-quality exports from Outlook that work well with Chandler Desktop.

In practice, doing ICS import/export can have gotachas. Not all application combinations/roundtrips are 100% perfect. We urge you to keep backups and try out import/export before committing your important data to any application. In Chandler Desktop, we’ve spent a lot of time tuning our import/export routines to handle as many variants and details as we can. Chandler Desktop properly handles events, tasks, timezones, recurrence, and other details. Please report any import/export problems you encounter.

We’ve put together some additional information about import/export with Chandler Desktop specifically, so check that for additional hints and notes.

Synchronization

ICS import/export is great for transferring your data between apps, but it’s a manual process not suited to keeping multiple applications in sync. Usually when you import a data set, your app will overwrite changes you may have in your local copies of those events. It’s hard to make changes in two separate apps.

Chandler Desktop and Chandler Hub both support multiple network sync protocols. Where other applications (Outlook, iCal, etc) overlap at least one of these protocols, interoperability is possible on at least some level.

One main idea to keep in mind when thinking about these various systems is whether a scheme is “read-only” or “read-write” (ie, bidirectional). It seems like read-only (or 1-way) interoperability works more reliably today, but protocols like CalDAV promise a new era of real-time, 2-way synchronization of calendar data between lots of free and for-pay applications and web services.

The big news is that you can do 2-way/read-write calendar and task synchronization today, both privately and shared with other people. Here’s a list of the main ways to do that, based on Chandler Project software.

Webcal, 1-way sync

The most simple network protocol is to take an ICS file (see above in import/export) and post it to the web, so various apps can download it (redownloading to check for changes periodically). This system is called webcal.

Chandler Desktop works great for subscribing to a number of public webcal URLs and overlaying them all on one canvas. This is a great way to keep track of lots of calendars.

If you store any events/tasks on Chandler Hub, then you can login to get a URL that you can enter into the right spot in Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar, Lightning/Sunbird, Evolution, Zimbra, and many other apps to synchronize that Hub calendar with your app. This is always a read-only/1-way procedure.

Using webcal, in Outlook 2007, you can overlay say personal or family Hub calendars on top of your Exchange/Outlook calendars you use at work. (Look for “Internet Calendar” features in Outlook’s help.) If you make a change on the Hub or Chandler Desktop and then synchronize, you’ll see that change in your work Outlook’s display.

You can also subscribe to Hub calendars in Outlook 2003, but only view the calendars side-by-side. Other apps like iCal, Lightning/Sunbird, Google Calendar, and Evolution all support overlaying the Hub calendar with other calendars.

Many applications, Outlook included, can also publish a webcal calendar to a web server. You can use Chandler Hub as a destination server for most of these webcal-publishing apps. This works, but please note this does not provide a web UI for that calendar, and it’s again a 1-way publication. The original application will very likely not detect any changes made to this webcal file on the server.

Webcal, 2-way sync

Chandler Desktop can also do 2-way synchronization via webcal. Most applications treat a webcal file as read-only or write-only, but Chandler Desktop will check for changes in a webcal file it is monitoring and integrate those changes. If used with another application that also checks for changes, you get 2-way synchronization. We know Lightning/Sunbird does this (though you might chose to use CalDAV to synchronize instead).

CalDAV, 2-way sync

CalDAV is an emerging standard protocol for open calendar exchange. It’s not a protocol that’s used directly between two clients (like ICS files are), but rather defines a calendar server to which multiple clients can subscribe and synchronize. Chandler Hub also provides a read-write web UI to any calendar you store or use in your account.

The Open Source Applications Foundation via the Chandler Project was an early supporter of CalDAV. Together, our Chandler Desktop application and Chandler Server server product are some of the oldest and most mature implementations of the CalDAV standard and we plan to continue that support.

Chandler Hub is, as far as we know, essentially the leading free CalDAV service offered to the public. Given a fully-cooperating CalDAV client (Lightning/Sunbird, iCal 3.x, and Evolution all cooperate to various degrees), you can use these other clients regularly or occassionally and even use Chandler Desktop for advanced work (like sharing a single item between multiple calendars).

Chandler Desktop can subscribe to and publish a collection (calendar+events) to any CalDAV server (Apple Calendar Server, RSCDS, Bedework), or actually any WebDAV server (Apache mod_dav, .Mac, etc). Both of these mechanisms support bidirectional (read-write) synchronization, so multiple applications or people can all create, edit, and delete events and tasks any time they want, using the application of their choice.

iCal 3 (in Apple 10.5 “Leopard”) is a great new CalDAV-using PIM client. You can use it to make changes to your Hub collection, and still be able to use the Hub web UI to make changes from anywhere. Note that iCal 3 supports read-write calendars only to calendars in your account. Chandler Desktop and Chandler Hub let you subscribe to shared collections owned by other users with full read-write access.

Email integration

Chandler Desktop is not a complete email client; it is rather intended to complement your existing email client. The mechanism we use is to create dedicated Chandler folders on your IMAP server. Using your regular email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail.app, Evolution, etc), you just drag an email from your inbox into a Chandler folder, where the message will be parsed for event, task, and other information.

You should also be able to send email update of items from Chandler Desktop using just about any outgoing mail server available. Events emailed this way appear as ICS attachments. We’ve tested Exchange, Postfix, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and Hotmail/MSN among others.

The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.7.4.1 release of Chandler Desktop.

Chandler Desktop is an open source, standards-based personal information manager (PIM) built around small group collaboration and a core set of information management workflows modelled on Inbox usage patterns.

The 0.7.4.1 release contains the fix for a bug that severely complicated upgrades from version 0.7.3; see

#11823 Couldn’t migrate 0.7.3 to 0.7.4 on MacOSX

for details.

The 0.7.4.1 release is a single bug-fix release to 0.7.4, which was the fourth in a series of ongoing releases since Chandler Preview 0.7.0 intended to respond to the ongoing feedback received from users. Additional releases improving Chandler Desktop are planned and ongoing.

Chandler Desktop 0.7.4.1 is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux here.

Additional information is available from the Chandler Project homepage .

Thanks for your interest in Chandler Desktop!

The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.7.4 release of Chandler Desktop!

Chandler Desktop is an open source, standards-based personal information manager (PIM) built around small group collaboration and a core set of information management workflows modelled on Inbox usage patterns.

The 0.7.4 release adds a Tip of the day feature and a German translation contributed by a user. The triage status behavior was improved to be more useful. There have been dozens of bug fixes across the application, as well as fixes to the build and testing infrastructures.

Bug fixes in this release focused on items reported by people using Chandler regularly; in particular, issues users found using the Chandler dashboard. The 0.7.4 release is the fourth in a series of ongoing releases since Chandler Preview 0.7.0 intended to respond to the ongoing feedback received from users. Additional releases improving Chandler Desktop are planned and ongoing.

Chandler Desktop 0.7.4 is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux at:

http://chandlerproject.org/download

Additional information is available from the Chandler Project homepage.

The bugs fixed in this release include:

• #6629 testing framework bug: KeyError:
• #7894 Events should be marked as DONE when end-date/times roll by, but not ‘Purged’ to DONE section
• #8658 Missing documentation on en_GB locale requirement
• #8814 After Preview is frozen, we should contact volunteer localizers to get them started
• #9928 Recorded Scripts: playback too sensitive to time zone settings
• #10128 MinCyg download on Chandler page missing some binaries
• #10498 Recorded script recTestAllDay passing even though it is creating a note
• #10625 Save when dragging event lozenges in the calendar
• #10662 error while deleting office cal
• #10750 TCEUT0007 - Sending an update to an invite doesn’t trigger sending the mail
• #10909 Chandler does not build on 64-bit Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon
• #10916 PyDeadObjectError from wxTimedEventsCanvas
• #10937 Start-up screen that directs people to demo movies
• #10948 Entire recurring series keep popping into NOW but no evidence of global edit
• #10999 gdata plugin ends up as an .egg in plugins/ others are .egg-link
• #11110 Traceback when renaming a non-visible collection
• #11375 Use of delete key in quick entry field
• #11388 New items with a “/” anywhere in the title don’t get created
• #11396 recTestNewEvent fails on intel leopard tbox
• #11428 Kernel protection error double clicking in calendar
• #11444 Redesign export on quit
• #11454 Plugin install fails if no write access to CHANDLERHOME/plugins
• #11475 Nov 12th, 2007 Weekly PPD Meeting keeps popping back to NOW
• #11479 wxGrid fails to send EVT_GRID_EDITOR_HIDDEN
• #11494 It’s possible to have a collection be subscribed but not appear in the sidebar
• #11498 Need to handle cosmo response 409 to see if duplicate icaluids reported
• #11513 A couple exception raising statements are missing proper module name
• #11514 Localization scripts leveraging build_lib.runCommand fail on Windows
• #11531 Need a tool to compare Chandler.pot with submitted Chandler-LOCALE.po
• #11556 0.7.3 RC1 Chandler fails to launch with ValueError: An error occured while creating VM
• #11562 Events don’t auto triage to now when changing time of recurring event
• #11573 distIndex needs to be fixed to deal with the ~ in .deb files
• #11577 wx stock labels in English when starting on non-English system
• #11578 recorded script recTestNewEvent fails on Leopard
• #11597 Item I edited shows up as Unread in PPD collection
• #11602 Traceback borked my PPD collection
• #11604 Not able to create Chandler HUb Account - Generating Timeout error
• #11606 Failed to import record ItemRecord
• #11616 Traceback using context menu during script recording
• #11625 Using UI repo view from bg thread
• #11640 gettext needs to be built in external for mac and windows
• #11645 make install fails on leopard with error: egg creation failed
• #11660 Sending email to yourself in Chandler causes false-positive ‘Unread’ status and ‘popping into Now
• #11661 Only pop the NEXT OCCURRENCE into NOW if there has been a global edit.
• #11663 print statements in production code
• #11666 Recorded Script: mini cal nav does not work in Leopard on playback
• #11692 Subscribe to Google Calendar results in Subscribe Error
• #11697 Recorded Scripts don’t handle tabbing into notes DV field
• #11701 Add the German translation to the SVN trunk Makefile and releases
• #11702 Update debug plugin for repository as egg
• #11734 Update the French po for 0.7.4
• #8447 recorded scripts don’t work for dialogs
• #8772 Recorded script recTestKeepOutOfDashboard fails
• #9442 Recorded script quick entry creation of an item with apostrophe in title generates invalid python
• #9714 Script recording - triage button doesn’t get clicked on playback
• #9758 Script recording - unable to name an event on creation
• #9768 Script Recording - scripts fail to stamp items on playback
• #9780 Script recording - script too sensitive to event time on playback
• #10187 browse never catches AssertionErrors
• #10709 timezone display error
• #11121 Land the recorded_scripts branch
• #11150 Recorded scripts focusWindow.GetName() error when using quick entry
• #11172 Changing UI indication for working hours
• #11181 webbrowser.open is unreliable
• #11194 clicking on outgoing mail in the accounts dialog scrolls it on the top hiding the other 2 options
• #11390 gutsy and leopard tbox logs don’t include func test logs
• #11431 Inconsistent wording for protocol: type vs protocol
• #11433 Recorded scripts finds bug in wxGrid on Leopard
• #11462 Unstamping as mail after attempting to remove from Dashboard leads to AssertionError: index (n) out of range (n) and python crash on closing app
• #11507 Emails sent from Chandler don’t display First Name, Last Name in the From column
• #11528 Traceback when canceling a “collections and settings” export
• #11547 App crash on compact
• #11569 TestMulti fails intermittently on Linux
• #11574 Tip of the day
• #11582 Land the wx tarball for wxPython 2.8.7.1
• #11583 Recorded scripts UnboundLocalError: ‘window’ referenced before assignment
• #11627 Deleting imap account and adding another leads to exception
• #11708 Difficulties replacing TestEnableTimeZones with recorded script

Thanks for your interest in Chandler Desktop!

The Chandler Project is pleased to announce the 0.7.3 release of Chandler Desktop!

Download link, information on mailing lists, and how to get the sources available from the homepage.

The 0.7.3 release is the third in a series of quick, time-based releases since Chandler Preview 0.7.0 intended to respond to the feedback we received from 0.7.0 and continue to receive from these quick releases.

0.7.3 fixes over 50 bugs and includes some major improvements:

• Month View:Yes! Month View! This has been pretty much at the very top of everyone’s wish list so we decided to bite the bullet and just did it. Month View can be reached by simply clicking the month name in the top area of the calendar. Switch back to week view simply clicking on the week number on the left side. This fixes bugs:
  • Bug #5361: 30-day view? Variable multi-day view.
• Bundled Localizations: Chandler now comes bundled with localizations in French, Swedish and Finnish. If you’d like to join the localization effort in your own native language, we are looking for volunteers. This is a great way to get familiarized with Chandler ideas and its community. We fixed the following bugs along the way:
  • Bug #11197 Normalize dialog title capitalization
  • Bug #11199 Bogus message in MasterPassword
  • Bug #11201 Incorrect strings in GetPasswordDialog
  • Bug #11260 Export dialog text says ‘Exported’ not Dumped
  • Bug #11333 Reword Unpublish Confirmation dialog
  • Bug #11405 Need different strings for no encryption and no alarm (currently ‘None’)
  • Bug #11419 Fixed running with localed using ‘,’ instead of ‘.’ for decimal point (was : invalid literal for float() error when reloading a .chex)
  • Bug #11470 File > Sync manager… has mnemonic
  • Bug #11490 Reminders dialog missing mnemonics, default button
• Share Management: There’s a new feature under the File menu called Sync Manager. This allows users to view and choose which of the published collections on their Chandler Server need to be synced with the Chandler Desktop. Additionally, this dialog shows up automatically in some situation (like restoring settings). This helps the user to avoid “forgetting” collections on the server.
  • Bug #10971 Auto-restore published shares
  • Bug #11334 Sync Menu items
• Support and build for Mac OS X Leopard, Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Use System Libraries: Modern OSes are now catching up with Chandler’s use of cutting edge releases of Python. So the good news is that, for those systems, we don’t have to bundle all these, resulting in much smaller downloads. We now provide special downloads for those Systems.
  • Bug #11088 Use system python on Mac (Leopard), Ubuntu Feisty and forward
• Automate Upgrade Process: User now have the option to let Chandler export a .chex on quit. This is convenient for new users (small data base) with fast machines. For old timers with thousands of items, there’s an option to bypass this (don’t forget to export though _before_ upgrading to a new version of Chandler):
  • Bug #11139 Automate upgrade process

For a more complete list of bug fixes and known issues, please visit our Release Notes.

Thanks for your interest in Chandler Desktop!

We’ve added Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Mac OS X “Leopard” to our supported list, and are just phasing out Mac OS X “Panther” support, so it was time to clarify what platforms are officially supported.

Linux:

• Ubuntu Dapper Drake (tarball installs)
• Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (deb install, using system python)

Windows:

• Windows XP

Macintosh:

• PPC Mac OS X “Tiger”
• Intel Mac OS X “Tiger”
• Intel Mac OS X “Leopard” (using system python)

Additionally Chandler may be built and may run in the following configurations but is not officially supported/tested, although we may fix issues if reported, especially if given patches:

Linux:

• Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (using system python)
• Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 64-bit (using system python)
• Other Linux variants

Windows:

• Windows 2000
• Windows Vista

Macintosh:

• PPC Mac OS X “Panther”
• PPC Mac OS X “Leopard” (using system python)

A problem in the Reload Collection and Settings function limited to the Mac PPC build prompted us to release a 0.7.2.1 bug fix for that platform. For more details about this issue, see Bugzilla Bug #11305.

If you are using 0.7.2 for Mac PPC and had problems migrating your Chandler data from a previous version, please download the new 0.7.2.1.