another take on the phone numbers issue

[undecidable]

With respect to the phone numbers issue that has been discussed at length in other posts,
I have just come across another disadvantage of gContactSync's sophistacted handling of them.
Once gContactSync has handled them, if you want to export a csv, they are all in the wrong columns,
and impossible to now know which was which.

So you lose the backup and flexibility of being able to export csv's.

My own suggestion fwiw is to just handle them as Tb does - one of each type.
What I do if I have a 2nd work number is to put it in the (say) fax field with a trailer "(work2)",eg
    +852 9997 8888 (work2)
    Works fine. 
mc

[Josh Geenen]

That is a good point, I usually don't export my contacts from TB so I hadn't thought it through.

If you follow the instructions here you can have gContactSync use the original phone fields without adding types.
http://pirules.org/forum/index.php/topic,60.msg333/topicseen.html#msg333

Based on all the feedback I may make this the default for 0.3, or at least show the option when gContactSync is used for the first time.  Usually changing default preferences is frowned upon, so I may just do the latter and try to make the option visible and obvious to anyone who doesn't like the new phone number types.

What I do if I have a 2nd work number is to put it in the (say) fax field with a trailer "(work2)",eg
    +852 9997 8888 (work2)
    Works fine. 

Yeah, that will definitely work.  If you sync your contacts with an application that uses that number (like a phone running Android) I'm not sure if it would try to use that or just ignore it.

Josh

[tanstaafl]

Based on all the feedback I may make this the default for 0.3, or at least show the option when gContactSync is used for the first time.  Usually changing default preferences is frowned upon, so I may just do the latter and try to make the option visible and obvious to anyone who doesn't like the new phone number types.

While I would normally agree with you about not changing a default setting like this, in this case I think changing the default is the sensible thing to do.

Your extension is a Thunderbird extension, not a GMail extension. Many people - like me (can you tell?) will only be using it as a way to backup/share their TB contacts between computers and their phone(s), and will rarely if ever even log into their gmail account through the web, so they don't *care* what Gmail sees or doesn't see.

So, I'd do the opposite - upon first run after the extension upgrade, make the new default 'visible and obvious', with a simple button click being all that is necessary to revert to the old/original behavior.

Or at least that's my .02 clad coins worth...