Reading the comments that replied to your message there make me feel like a blind person in a shootout...
Anyways, back on the topic. I think one way out of this would be making free/libre software that follows entirely public and well document "open" standards (as some people call it, although I don't like the "open" word), and I mean to follow it extrictly, that is: if there is something missing in the standard, make a change in the standard, not a custom part in the data file. For a criticism on "customizing the data file" see [1], and also note that as far as I know, GNOME Evolution, Kontact and KMail tend to do this customization. For contact management, use vCard standard; for calendar and event/task organzing, use iCalendar standard. One other way would be to follow a known file format used mainly by a free/libre software for these two matters mentioned in the paragraph above. For example, Emacs BBDB 3 for contact management; and Emacs Org mode, or Emacs Diary mode (this one is limited to current day) both of which can be used for organizing events/tasks. Currently I don't know if these have synchronization support but in case of Org mode I know one can always do some GNU Sed or Emacs Lisp trick to only extract parts of the agenda file that someone else uses). Still on the subject of how to synchronize public Emacs Org mode agendas, there is currently an interesting discussion in [2]. The idea is to have various softwares that works with a given file format or standard, and in such way that it doesn't make the end-user tied to a particular software or particular graphic environment. This multi-software setup we have so far can be seen in the case of Emacs Org mode documents (Emacs and Pandoc support converting from it to other formats, and any plain text editor can change the file), LaTeX (LaTeX/PDFLaTeX, LuaTeX, XeTeX, ConTeXt, TeX4Ht, HTLaTeX, and many other *compilers* support it, also any plain text editor can change the file), Ledger accounting files (many Ledger-likes support reading from it, and any plain text editor can edit the files). In the case of LaTeX, I was made aware that some compilers *other than* LaTeX/PDFLaTeX, TeX4Ht and HTLaTeX seem to implement custom commands not supported by these just mentioned. [1] <https://alessandrorossini.org/the-sad-story-of-the-vcard-format-and-its-lack-of-interoperability/>. [2] <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2017-11/msg00213.html>. 2017-11-16T18:36:30+0100 Paul Boddie wrote: > > [...] > > I left a comment as well: > > https://lwn.net/Articles/739339/ > > Rather than focus on this particular situation in Munich, it discusses how > the > body of available Free Software work (focusing here on calendaring and > groupware) may not convincingly offer obvious solutions to organisations, and > it suggests why this might be happening and what might be done to rectify > such > problems. > > Paul > > P.S. The article is now freely viewable. I have previously seen people post > subscriber links to mailing lists, usually with the explicit permission of > the > authors and editors. Indeed, I've seen the LWN staff post subscriber links to > mailing lists themselves. > _______________________________________________ > Discussion mailing list > Discussion@lists.fsfe.org > https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion > -- - https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno - Palestrante e consultor sobre /software/ livre (não confundir com gratis). - "WhatsApp"? Ele não é livre. Por favor, veja formas de se comunicar instantaneamente comigo no endereço abaixo. - Contato: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno#vCard - Arquivos comuns aceitos (apenas sem DRM): Corel Draw, Microsoft Office, MP3, MP4, WMA, WMV. - Arquivos comuns aceitos e enviados: CSV, GNU Dia, GNU Emacs Org, GNU GIMP, Inkscape SVG, JPG, LibreOffice (padrão ODF), OGG, OPUS, PDF (apenas sem DRM), PNG, TXT, WEBM. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
