DulcetTone wrote: > I am confused why such a flexible network of high-level inter-app > communication would be established, and then sawhorses placed across > the on ramps. I know time and testing resources are at a premium, but > blanketing the earth with a variety of phones that belie their > seemingly common platform undercuts the vision substantially.
Let's take an example: On Windows, there is a calendar program called Outlook (does a bit of email on the side too, I'm told). There are any number of other ones, such as Mozilla's calendar add-on to Thunderbird. Windows also has the COM mechanism that allows for high-level inter-app communication. Outlook supports a COM API to work with its calendar. Few other calendars do, AFAICT, and none necessarily support Outlook's COM API. In fact, even if there were a COM interface between the calendar add-on to Thunderbird, it might not be part of a supported public API (e.g., designed for communication between the add-on and Thunderbird itself). This is pretty much the same situation as Android faces with calendars: great potential for interoperability, limited actual interoperability. And Windows calendars have been around a *lot* longer than have Android calendars. At most, you can argue that it is the core Android team's fault for not mandating a calendar API. Then again, it's unclear where you draw the line (e.g., do we need a carved-in-granite alarm clock API? a cast-iron music player API?). And the calendar app isn't exactly something the Android team controls exclusively, since it's tied to Google Calendar. So, I think it's unfortunate but not unreasonable that we are where we are with respect to adding events to local calendar applications. If there isn't an issue already on the topic, you might want to open one on http://b.android.com, requesting an SDK API for calendar operations (basically, pulling the com.android.calendar stuff into android.calendar or whatever). If you open one, post the link here, and I'll star it. -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://twitter.com/commonsguy _The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development_ Version 2.8 Available! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
