===================== Project Description ===================== :Author: Guillaume Ayoub :Date: 2010-01-22 :Abstract: This document defines the main goals of the Radicale Project, what it covers and what it does not. .. contents:: Main Goals ========== The Radicale Project is a complete calendar storing and manipulating solution. It can store multiple calendars. Calendar manipulation is available from both local and distant accesses, possibly limited through authentication policies. What Radicale Is ================ Calendar Server --------------- The Radicale Project is mainly a calendar server, giving local and distant accessess for reading, creating, modifying and deleting multiple calendars through a simplified CalDAV protocol. Data can be encrypted by SSL, and their access can be restricted thanks to different authentication methods. What Radicale Is not and will not Be ==================================== Calendar User Agent ------------------- Radicale is a server, not a client. No interfaces will be created to work with the server, as it is a really (really really) much more difficult task [#]_. .. [#] I repeat: `we are lazy `_. Original Calendar Store Implementation -------------------------------------- Radicale stores iCal files, and nothing else. No easy way to store anything else, as our iCal library does not know anything of the iCal norm: it just receives iCal strings from the client and stores it after a really minimal parsing. Radicale has no idea of most of the iCal semantics. No joke! Dates, timezones, titles, contents, status, repetitions are never understood, they are just stored and replied as they are sent by the client. This is why storing anything but iCal files (databases, Evolution Data Server, etc.) is impossible with Radicale. Original Calendar Access Protocol --------------------------------- CalDAV is not a perfect protocol. We think that its main problem is its complexity [#]_, that is why we decided not to implement the whole standard but just enough to understand some of its client-side implementations [#]_. CalDAV is not a perfect protocol, but it is the best open standard available and is quite widely used by both clients and servers [#]_. We decided to use it, and we will not use another one. .. [#] Try to read :RFC:`4791`. Then try to understand it. Then try to implement it. Then try to read it again. .. [#] Radicale is `oriented to calendar user agents `_. .. [#] `Popularity of CalDAV `_, by Wikipedia.