Address problem

[LaPogne]

Hi,

Someone asked me a solution (in a business environnement) to have a shared-synchronizable address book. I suggest him to use TB-gContactSync, cause it seems to work really good.
But,
There is the really confusing problem of the address.

People using Thunderbird expect the address writing in the Address Tab of a contact to be the only one.
And for the guy who edit a contact and fill these fields, the fields remains filled for ever.
But, the one who synchronize the edited contact will not have these fields filled as the previous guy. He will only have the address fields of the Tab gContactSync2 filled.
So the shared address book don't appear to be the same for the 2 person. That's a problem.

I understand why things are as they are.
But i need to have a switch somewhere in gContact preferences to permit the GoogleAddress <-> ThunderBird_Address to be translated transparently.
I think it's a missing feature in the current gContactSync.

So, i've did it. I modified gContactSync to have the feature.
I can provide diffs and explanations, and all the help i can to permit the feature to be integrated in you're extension.


PS : forget about my really bad english

[Josh Geenen]

Hi,

I am definitely aware of the problem with addresses and am still trying to figure out what to do in version 0.3.0 (available in CVS under gcontactsync/src3.  Google now supports 'structured' postal addresses like Thunderbird has so the most difficult part will be converting existing addresses back since Google doesn't allow structured and unstructured addresses in the same feed.

I'd be happy to see your diff and changes.  When converting addresses from Google into Thunderbird's separate fields the most difficult part is supporting multiple formats from around the world when certain information is missing.

Josh

[LaPogne]

Google now supports 'structured' postal addresses like Thunderbird has

Great ! Though, I've check the Gmail contact html interface, but didn't see the structured address which you're talking about...

the most difficult part will be converting existing addresses back since Google doesn't allow structured and unstructured addresses in the same feed.

I can't see perfect solution for this. IMO, the only thing to do, is to move all the address in the one line field Address (or perhaps Address and Address2).

I'd be happy to see your diff and changes.

I've attached a commented diff.
The solution i've made is to enclose each TB field whith :
NameOfTheField=<the_datas>\n
After that concat each non empty field in one string, and upload it to Google.

The bad part is that address when viewed in GMail appear ugly.
The evil part is when a user modified an address in GMail and throw away the structure, the results when synchronizing will be data losses.

Hope i'm clear enough...

[Josh Geenen]

Great ! Though, I've check the Gmail contact html interface, but didn't see the structured address which you're talking about...

It isn't actually visible through the interface AFAIK, but Google has some very powerful ways to split addresses into their components (used by their online maps) so I assume that it can split addresses up automatically.

I can't see perfect solution for this. IMO, the only thing to do, is to move all the address in the one line field Address (or perhaps Address and Address2).

Since that field is only one line and other sync apps used it I'm not sure if it can be done that way.  Hopefully once I get started I'll find a better way.

The bad part is that address when viewed in GMail appear ugly.
The evil part is when a user modified an address in GMail and throw away the structure, the results when synchronizing will be data losses.

Yeah, with the current way addresses are synced there has to be a catch for Gmail or TB.  Right now it is with TB since other AB add-ons can't see the new addresses...

Thanks for the diff, I'll take a look at it.