Chandler 0.2 README

<Current OSAF Thinking>

This is a wiki version of the Chandler 0.2 README; there will be slight formattings differences from the version in the distribution because of wiki's superior text presentation capabilities. The authoritative version is also available.

• Introduction and Overview
• License
• Requirements
• Major Known Bugs
• Further Information
  • End-User Documentation
  • Developer Documentation
  • Non-Technical Documentation

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Introduction and Overview

Thank you for downloading Chandler's 0.2 release!

The 0.2 release of Chandler is still very skeletal in functionality, with very few obvious differences to the end-user from the 0.1 release. However, there are some major changes in the underlying framework and architecture. We feel that our platform is finally beginning to be interesting for open source developers to start contributing and writing code.

Our framework is by no means complete, but 0.2 shows a solid start on several of our major framework areas:

• Data Model and Repository
• Notification Framework
• Agent Framework
• Chandler Presentation and Interaction Architecture
• Improved Code Development Features

(See a complete list of changes.)

0.2 is by no means stable, and should not be used to store important data. We expect some significant changes in the near future. However, it should give developers a good understanding of where we are heading.

REPEAT: You should not store important information in Chandler yet.

Please read the license before installing, in the file named LICENSE.txt.

For information on how to run Chandler, please see the README appropriate for your platform:

• README.win.txt
• README.osx.txt
• README.linux.txt

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License

Chandler 0.2 Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Open Source Applications Foundation

The 0.2 version of Chandler is available under the GNU General Public License, version 2, as described in

• LICENSE.txt

You can also see the authoritative version of the GNU GPL.

We expect that subsequent versions of Chandler will also be available under one or more additional licenses. For more detail on our licensing plans, see the Chandler Licensing Plan.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

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Requirements

Chandler uses a number of components (e.g. python), but all the software you should need to run Chandler is shipped with Chandler. In general, OSAF develops on Windows XP, Linux Red Hat 9, and Mac OS 10.2 ("Jaguar").

We keep a list of platforms that Chandler is known to build and run on. We have no reason to believe that it wouldn't work on other reasonably current versions of operating systems, but in general, haven't tested them.

One occasional difficulty is libraries on Unix machines. If you are running with something other than a standard Red Hat 8 or Red Hat 9 release, you might need to either install a few modules or rebuild the binaries.

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This section has the known major bugs in release 0.2. A more current list is at ZeroPointTwoKnownMajorBugs.

Application

The first time you start Chandler, the list of parcels appears all squished together vertically, then immediately redraws. (Bug:923)

If you have no network connection, Chandler throws an error before the splash screen appears. (Bug:913)

You cannot set the locale properly on the Mac or Linux (Bug:251). A warning error appears on startup on the Mac; Linux fails silently.

The first time a Repository commit() is done, it takes several seconds to initialize everything.

Cut/Copy/Paste don't work. (Bug:920)

Chandler is slow to launch.

Documentation

We don't have good built-in help. See the up-to-date end-user help documentation.

Calendar

Frequently, the first users see the Repository commmit() slowness is when users try to create a Calendar Event for the first time. Getting no feedback that Chandler noticed their attemmpt, it is easy to think that Calendar didn't see the mouse clicks. (Bug:903)

The Del key doesn't work when editing a Calendar Event description (Bug:928).

Table/List view events should be sorted by startTime (Bug:930).

Month and Table/List views are read-only. (No bug yet, just not implemented).

Moving events in the Calendar is different across Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (Bug:409). (We inherited behavior from wxWindows and have not yet decided if or how we will change that behavior.)

• Under Windows, drag-and-drop to move calendar events and Control-drag to copy events.
• Under Linux, drag-and-drop to copy calendar events and Shift-drag to move events.
• Under MacOS, drag-and-drop to copy events; there is no way (yet) to move events.

Under Linux, if the active locale is UTF-8 (the default on RedHat 8.0 or 9), the month panel may display Korean characters in place of Roman letters and Arabic numerals. The work-around is to set the LANG environment variable to a non-Unicode value (i.e. "export LANG=en_US") before starting Chandler.

Event text does not always display correctly in Month View. (If it is long, it can spill over into the next day's box instead of wrapping into the next line of that day.)

You cannot (yet) create events in Month View.

Contacts

There are several bugs in Contacts related to creating or editing new Views (Bug:824, Bug:829, Bug:914, Bug:889)

Text editing doesn't look right in Contacts edit boxes. (Bug:927)

There are several bugs related to Company Contacts (Bug:933, Bug:935)

If you add an Interests attribute to a Contact on Linux, you will get error messages on standard out. (Bug:275)

Sharing

Sharing does not work at all.

ZaoBao

To refresh the sites for new feeds, click on the Reload button.

Clicking on the "Add" button hangs Chandler (Bug:919)

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Further information

End-user documentation

• General end-user documentation
• Chandler README
• Known Major Bugs and all All known bugs
• File a bug
• Discuss a design choice on the mailing lists
• Parcels other people have developed for Chandler

Developer documentation

• General developer documentation (including how to download and build the source)
• High-level overview of the Chandler architecture
• Architecture diagram
• TechnologyChoices
• Chandler Data Model
• Agent Framework
• Notifcation Framework
• Chandler Presentation and Interaction Architecture
• Tutorials on how to write a ViewerParcel for Chandler (To a first approximation, you can think of a ViewerParcel as a plug-in.)
• Coding style guidelines
• If you write a parcel, a place to put it

Non-technical information

• Chandler Compelling Vision
• Purpose and Goals of the 0.2 release
• Chandler Licensing Plan
• Chandler License
• Product Roadmap -- feature introduction strategy
• Chandler Product FAQ
• OSAF's background

<End Current OSAF Thinking>

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-- DuckySherwood - 16 Sep 2003