KAddressbook- interview met Tobias Koenig
Door Klaus Staerk Vertaald door Jos Poortvliet
Please introduce yourself, what is your role in the KDE project?
I'm Tobias Koenig, a 22 year old computer science student, currently living in Dresden (Germany). I'm maintaining KAddressbook, the addressbook application for KDE and working on the underlying addressbook library kabc. I'm also working on Kontact and fixing KDE applications all over.
When did you start working on KAddressbook?
At the beginning of 2002, I read an email from Ralf Nolden where he stated that there were so many open jobs in the KDE project that lack a maintainer. So I contacted Ralf by private mail an asked him what exactly could be done. Ralf directed me to the list editor of KAddressbook which needed a redesign of the user interface. The rest is history...
Are there any new things to report about KAdressbook in the KDE 3.3 release?
KAddressbook now supports two different types of custom fields. The simple one, the user can define a label and a field type. The advanced version of this feature allows the user to create forms using Qt designer and use them as pages in the contact editor.
Another important improvement is the LDAP support of KAddressbook. It now supports encryption and an offline mode. One feature to mention is that it's now much easier to select the addressbooks to be shown in KAddressbook. For further changes in KAddressbook please referer to the KDE 3.3 changelog.
Can you tell us a bit of what to expect in future releases of KAdressbook?
Most changes will be done in the kabc libraries, not in KAddressbook itself. So we plan to improve the support of huge amounts of data. Then it's the implementation of asynchronous reading and writing of address data between client and server.
How much time do you spend on KAdressbook?
Usually I spend a minimum of 8 hours per week working on KAddressbook and the other components it interacts with.
What do you think of the current state of groupware features on the KDE desktop?
I think that there are indeed some points that have to be improved, e.g. managing huge amounts of data, as already mentioned above.
We just wrote a connector for Novell's Groupwise that has to be improved further on. But I think we also should improve connection to Microsoft Exchange server and add additonal connectors for OpenGroupwise and other groupware projects from the Open Source scene.
Regarding the KDE groupware client Kontact, the current state of interaction between the given components must be improved a lot.
How do you imagine the "desktop of the future"? How far are we still away from that?
The desktop of the future should be such that I can place my grandmother in front of it and she starts working with it without asking me how to use the desktop software.
I think MacOS X is a step towards the right direction (easy to use and eye candy) but it's missing the cool features from KDE like network transparency and freedom of the code.
We also need better integration and cooperation with the underlying operating system, e.g. for better hotplug support or automount features.
Are you the only author of KAddressbook?
I was not the original author who wrote KAddressbook, that was Don Sanders. Mike Pilone did a great job on redesigning the user interface of KAddressbook. But during the last two years it's been mainly Cornelius Schumacher and me who worked on the KDE adressbook application.
Do you get any financial support for KAddressbook?
Not directly, no. I'm working part time for credative and they pay me for working on KDE - and KAddressbook is a part of this job.
KAddressbook was published under the GPL. What do you think about Open Source? Have you ever thought about distributing your software commercially?
I think Open Source software is a superor concept of software development, because you have the possibility to throw away the complete code and restart again from scratch without being limited by a time frame but nevertheless you can work together with other experienced KDE programmers. This results in a stable and innovative source code and applications.
The GPL makes sure that we as developers can enjoy this freedom, for this reason all my software is issued under the GPL or under the LGPL.
I have never thought about distributing my software commercially.
What do you do when you're not hacking?
What? This really exists? :-) Well, I try to do some self improvement in many ways - just as I do with my software :-)
To keep my physical balance, I do some sports like e.g. jogging, read good books and enjoy spending my time with my girlfriend.
Je kan Tobias Koenig per email bereiken op nogevenwachtenhiermee@kde.org. Een korte beschrijving van KAdressbook vind je elders op deze site.
Laatst gewijzigd: 24 september 2004 door: Jos Poortvliet