voice of humanity: Chandler and Mitch Kapor
Roger Eaton's notes towards a collective voice for humanity on the web
 Chandler and Mitch Kapor6 comments
20 Nov 2003 @ 19:14, by Roger Eaton

Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation is building a personal information manager (PIM) called Chandler which InterMix is likely to adopt as a user interface. Here's a good transcript of a Chandler discussion with Q&A.

In his Emotional Bandwidth paper, Mitch Kapor references Teilhard de Chardin! This is a very good sign. In the same paper he says, "The real design challenge in cyberspace will be to use it as a basis for enlivening compassionate action." And in an interview he says "what we have to do is ... to re-embed the technology in a broader moral and spiritual universe because that's the only hope". I think I want to meet this man. I wonder if it can't be arranged.

Chandler looks good. See also this pdf. The design is email oriented, which seems right on even though it goes against the industry direction to make adaptive user interfaces portal centric. The idea is to have multiple contexts for the user and in each context to show the items, whether email or calendar or todo-list that are priority for that context. Here is the latest technical writeup Chandler Presentation and Interaction Architecture (CPIA) Overview from August -- still good in November 2003.

It looks smart to copy Chandler. Use WingIDE for Python project handling and debugging, just as Chandler does. Use Jabber, just as Chandler looks to do. Use GPL licence, just as Chandler does. Most of all, use Chandler as an excellent user interface for the voice of humanity InterMix middleware. This means getting very well acquainted with Chandler right down to the code so it is clear how to plug InterMix into Chandler in a way that respects the Chandler vision. If it continues to make sense on a closer inspection, that is.

We are not hitching InterMix to Chandler's Star exactly. What if Mitch Kapor ends up producing the perfect PIM for Mitch Kapor and a few hundred thousand enthusiasts, and everyone else is perfectly happy running Outlook forever? But let's not think that! I don't think that.

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6 comments

24 Nov 2003 @ 05:11 by ming : Chandler
Excellent overview! And I agree, Chandler is the thing to connect up with. Based on very sound principles and approaches. And I think it is worth thinking about using wxPython as well. I'm going to play with that.  

24 Nov 2003 @ 07:40 by isaac @218.79.82.25 : Near future
How about recent release? Any predicatable features?  

24 Nov 2003 @ 16:49 by mre : Answers and the Big Question
InterMix is not in production yet. No code until next year. At the best the first version will be available by year end 2004. I am just beginning to get set up -- ordered WingIDE, will soon install Chandler to take a better look. wxPython is definitely on, and very likely Sleepycat Berkeley DB as well. The Big Question is whether to use Chandler as THE basis for InterMix. The design until now has been for InterMix to be a standalone. No decision on this one until I find out more about Chandler.  

24 Nov 2003 @ 18:10 by ming : wxPython samples
Did you see the Chandler wxPython samples here? Neat stuff. Looks like one can interface just about anything to Chandler.  

24 Nov 2003 @ 18:18 by ming : Chandler/Basis
Well, Chandler as I understand it is for individuals to organize their various kinds of information: e-mail, chat, to-do, calendar, etc., and share that with others. But it isn't any attempt of inventing the semantic web or aggregating huge amounts of collective data. So, your Intermix might be a wonderful thing for Chandler to connect with, to help individuals and small groups have better data to organize and have better ways of organizing it, based on collectively gathered meaning. And maybe the way they each organize their stuff might feed back to Intermix. But I wouldn't think it means that Chandler would be the basis or the main interface to it, particularly. More that there would be a natural bridge between them. But, well, I really don't have the full overview either.  

25 Nov 2003 @ 10:52 by Roger Eaton @209.55.71.129 : wxPython
Looks like you are ahead of me, ming. Do you already have python and have pulled those examples down and run them? My understanding of wxPython is that it is cross platform -- Windows, linux and Mac. The Mac interface is weak, but coming along, according to what I have read.  

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