February 2008 Archives
Lately I have been very very frustrated with Evolution. My desktop at work runs Fedora Core 5 with Evolution 2.6.3, and it works perfectly (albeit a little bit slow as it goes over webdav) with the Exchange Server at work. But when I moved to Kubuntu on my laptop, I got Evolution 2.12.1 with it, which was very unstable on connecting to the Exchange server, especially the mail part. I think the problem might be that Kubuntu is distribution 2.12.1 for the main Evolution application, but 2.12.0 for the evolution-exchange module (the connectivity to exchange server). I think the instability stems more from volatility of network connectivity on my laptop (change access points, use different networks, thus not being able to have a persistent connectivity).
So, I was looking for an alternative for accessing my exchange mail over IMAP. Between Claws mail, Original Sylpheed, Thunderbird and Kmail, so far I'm liking Kmail the best. Kmail has this disconnected/cached IMAP mode, where it isn't dependent on connectivity to the IMAP server all the time (which is perfect for my on and off connectivity). It also integrates better with KDE. Thunderbird has the cached mode, but if I just take off without clicking the offline button, it doesn't like it (I hate the pop-up errors with OK buttons.... log them, don't pop them up!!!), and I'd hate to click buttons to offline my apps before I go off the docking station. Sylpheed/Claws both are fine mail clients, but each time I click on the folder, it tries to access the server, which is pretty slow (and lame).
Having settled on KMail, I started looking for a calendar replacement that can talk to the exchange server, so that I can publish the calendar and other people don't send me conflicting meeting requests. Evolution's calendaring was the only one keeping me with it all these years. However, there are not many alternatives.
I decided to give KOrganizer a spin and found the Exchange plug-in nice, where I can download the exchange calendar, and upload events. But this got me thinking, if they have solved the problem of talking to the exchange server, why not integrate it to the whole KOrganizer thing, and make it seamless instead of manual download/upload. That will be a GREAT replacement for Evolution for whoever is forced to use Exchange Server for mail/calendaring. And lo and behold, I found this nice Tutorial on KDE wiki to do exactly that. Steps to use Microsoft Exchange server integrated with Kontact/Kmail/Korganizer
I used the "Alternative 1" mode. This now allows me to sync with exchange, and since I have marked this as the default calendar in Korganizer (and disabled the default "Default Calendar"), I can accept invitations from Kmail and it gets populated to Korganizer and gets synced to MS Exchange. I also get reminder and all too. Pretty cool, Eh?!!
Next step will be to get multisync to work with this calendar and sync it up to my bluetooth phone. But that's another day.
Google has an experimental search where you can use keystrokes to navigate the results. The question is, how to integrate this into the search box?
A little digging showed there is a open format called OpenSearch that can be used to write search plug-ins. Using this, I wrote a small plug-in in mycroft to have Google search in the searchbox with keyboard shortcuts enabled. You can get the plug-in here: GoogleKeyed.
The shortcuts are:
| Key | Action |
| J | Selects the next result. |
| K | Selects the previous result. |
| O | Opens the selected result. |
| <Enter> | Opens the selected result. |
| / | Puts the cursor in the search box. |
| <Esc> | Removes the cursor from the search box. |
