[TYPO3-ect] Groupware bridge or API Layer

[David Toshack]

Karsten Dambekalns wrote:
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> Hi.
> 
> Elmar Hinz wrote:
>> this question is not of high priority but I am curious to see if someone
>> is interested in this field. There are some groupware projects with a lot
>> of extensions that are also GPL. In theory it would be possible to make
>> all those nice plugins available for TYPO3. How could we do this in
>> practice?
> 
> The best way would be to have a common underlying data storage. I am
> involved with more.groupware, and it's major drawback is that it uses MySQL
> to store things. It would be better if it stored iCal/vCal/Mail in IMAP,
> Users in LDAP, ... you get the point.
> 
> This way it would be possible to use e.g. Kontact alongside transparently
> and to write FE plugins to display the data in a TYPO3 site.
> 
> If it comes to integrating, a groupware following that principle (to allow
> the use of standalone clients) and built from scratch on top of TYPO3 would
> be ideal.
> 
> IMHO: A lot of work, but better than adding a bridge or API.

I agree completely Karsten. eGroupware[1] would be a great candidate in 
my opinion, from the outside looking in it seems to have great 
separation of business logic and UI design, and has quite a long history 
being a fork of the slightly let go phpGroupare[2] Framework. The Horde 
Framework[3] also seems to be quite abstract in its data management and 
interface design. I also like the look of dotProject[4], which uses a 
kick ass 3rd party ACL system called phpGACL[5], similar to how the 
be_acl extension works and also used by Joomla[6] (Mambo), which could 
only help things along.

What do you all think about using any of these as a base for 3rd party 
groupware?


Cheers,
David

[1] http://egroupware.org
[2] http://phpgroupware.org
[3] http://horde.org
[4] http://dotproject.net
[4] http://phpgacl.sf.net
[5] http://jambla.org