Section for the personal calendar server.

2000-02-28  Federico Mena Quintero  <federico@helixcode.com>

	* calendar.sgml: Section for the personal calendar server.

svn path=/trunk/; revision=1970

2 files changed, 103 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/doc/white-papers/calendar/ChangeLog b/doc/white-papers/calendar/ChangeLog
index 819f68905c..47b3e30c41 100644
--- a/doc/white-papers/calendar/ChangeLog
+++ b/doc/white-papers/calendar/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+2000-02-28  Federico Mena Quintero  <federico@helixcode.com>
+
+	* calendar.sgml: Section for the personal calendar server.
+
 2000-02-25  Federico Mena Quintero  <federico@helixcode.com>
 
 	* calendar.sgml: New file for the Evolution calendaring white paper.
diff --git a/doc/white-papers/calendar/calendar.sgml b/doc/white-papers/calendar/calendar.sgml
index a8c8e53ee6..6d6cb7da5e 100644
--- a/doc/white-papers/calendar/calendar.sgml
+++ b/doc/white-papers/calendar/calendar.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 <!doctype article PUBLIC "-//Davenport//DTD DocBook V3.0//EN" [
-<!entity Evolution "<productname>Evolution</productname>">
+<!entity Evolution "<application>Evolution</application>">
+<!entity CUA "<acronym>CUA</acronym>">
+<!entity PCS "<acronym>PCS</acronym>">
 ]>
 
 <article class="whitepaper" id="calendar">
@@ -41,9 +43,103 @@
     <title>Introduction</title>
 
     <para>
+      Calendaring is an important part of a groupware suite.  A
+      calendaring framework will allow a user to keep a personal
+      calendar and have several applications use it.  Such
+      applications could be a graphical calendar client that the user
+      employs to schedule appointments and keep track of his time, a
+      <productname>Palm Pilot</productname> synchronization client, or
+      a simple alarm or reminder utility.  A comprehensive calendaring
+      framework will also allow multiple users to schedule
+      appointments between each other; for example, a project director
+      may want to schedule a weekly meeting with the rest of the
+      project members, or a person who owns a large house may want to
+      schedule a big party with his friends.  The attendees will then
+      want to reply with messages such as, &ldquo;I will
+      attend&rdquo;, or &ldquo;I will attend only if the proposed time
+      is changed&rdquo;.
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
       The &Evolution; groupware suite provides a framework for
-      developing calendaring applications.  This includes handling of
-      appointments, &ldquo;to do&rdquo; lists, and journal entries.
+      developing calendaring applications, as well as a graphical
+      calendar client or calendar user agent (&CUA;) and a personal
+      calendar server (&PCS;).
+    </para>
+
+    <para>
+      The following sections explain the basic calendaring framework,
+      the functions of the calendar user agent and the personal
+      calendar server, and the relationship between the two.
+    </para>
+  </sect1>
+
+  <!-- Personal Calendar Server -->
+
+  <sect1 id="pcs">
+    <title>Personal Calendar Server</title>
+
+    <para>
+      The personal calendar server (&PCS;) provides centralized
+      management and storage of a user's personal calendar.  Multiple
+      clients can connect to the &PCS; simultaneously to query and
+      modify the user's calendar in a synchronized fashion.  The main
+      features of the &PCS; are as follows:
     </para>
+
+    <formalpara>
+      <title>Storage</title>
+
+      <para>
+	The &PCS; is responsible for loading and saving calendars.
+	Centralizing the loading and saving functionality allows
+	multiple clients to use the same calendar at the same time
+	without having to worry about each other.
+      </para>
+    </formalpara>
+
+    <formalpara>
+      <title>Basic Queries</title>
+
+      <para>
+	The &PCS; provides functions to do basic queries on a
+	calendar, for example, a client can ask the server for a list
+	of all the appointments in the calendar, or for all the data
+	for a specific appointment.
+      </para>
+    </formalpara>
+
+    <formalpara>
+      <title>Recurrence and Alarm Queries</title>
+
+      <para>
+	Clients can ask the &PCS; for a list of the appointments that
+	occur within a specified time range; for example a graphical
+	client that has a per-week view could ask the &PCS; for all
+	the appointments that occur in a particular week.  This
+	includes multiple occurrences of a single recurring event; for
+	example, the object for &ldquo;a 1-hour meeting that occurs on
+	every Tuesday and Thursday&rdquo; is represented inside the
+	&PCS; as a single event with a recurrence rule.  Similarly,
+	clients can ask the &PCS; for a list of events that have
+	alarms that trigger within a specified time range.
+      </para>
+    </formalpara>
+
+    <formalpara>
+      <title>Notification of Changes</title>
+
+      <para>
+	This is the most important function of the &PCS;, as it allows
+	multiple calendar clients to maintain a unified view of the
+	calendar between the server and themselves.  When a client
+	asks the &PCS; to modify or remove an event, the &PCS;
+	notifies all the clients that are connected to it about the
+	change.  The policy is that &ldquo;the server is always
+	right&rdquo;; clients can act as dumb views onto the
+	calendar's data and they will be notified by the &PCS; when
+	something changes.
+      </para>
+    </formalpara>
   </sect1>
 </article>