PIM/MS Windows

This page covers topics related to the MS Windows port of the KDE PIM suite.

Note

This page is work in progress started by jstaniek.

Problem points

Maildir implementation in KMail

It is to be expected, that the maildir implementation in kmail does not work on Windows' file system, since it uses the ":" character in file names. It also relies (as does maildir in general) on the atomicity of making a hardlink and then unlinking the original, to implement an atomic move. The implementation used by akonadi (kdepim/maildir) relies on QFile in that regard, but it's unclear if rename is atomic on all platforms.

• jstaniek 12:50, 7 January 2008 (CET): Hard/soft links could be handled on Windows by altering the source code so that the "link" file is a text file itself and contains the target path. If we need atomic renames, Windows apparently lacks them, I have found a pre-Vista blog which contains description on how to perform them in a messy but honest way (look at the very last "Write process (on Foo.txt)" version). There's also a way to recover from application/system crash during the pseudo-atomic operations (see the very last "Recovery from a crash during write" checklist).

Integration into the Windows Explorer & Desktop

Detecting whether KMail is the default e-mail client

If set as default, KMail should act as a default mailer, and thus be invoked automatically for actions like RMB "Send To -> E-mail Recipient".

This shall be also reused by others for KOrganizer and Konqueror. The solution is relatively simple modifications to the Windows Registry.

Drag&drop support

Support drag&drop from/to composer and from received mails into the file system (Windows Explorer and the Desktop)

Copy&paste support

Support pasting files copied (in Windows Explorer or the Desktop) as attachments.

Notes

• The Windows port currently happens in branches/work/kdab-post-4.0 branch (kdepimlibs, kdepim modules), so it is better to check out this and not trunk directories. The branch is merged from time to time with the KDE trunk.

Links

• The KDE on Windows Project
• Missing features of kdelibs for Windows - KDE PIM may depend on them

External Links

• Find out how others have managed to port their software to Windows:
  • Building Firefox on win32 using msvc