Contact Summary

[BEvans]

I have a problem with my gcontactsync installation. When enabled, I get double Get Map buttons neither of which works. And the Card spacing expands greatly. I have tried uninstall/reinstall and all the various options to no avail.

Config:

XP SP3, TB 2.0.0.23, gcontactsync 0.2.8

Other Add-ons:

Addressbooks Synchronizer 0.90
Contacts Sidebar 0.7.1
CS Lite 1.4
Duplicate Contact Manager 0.6
Grab and Drag 2.7.4.3
Lightning 0.9
Minimize To Tray 0.0.1.2006102615+
Minimize To Tray Enhancer 0.7.5.3
MoreFunctionsForAddressBook 0.5.5.3
Signature Switch 1.6.4
ThunderBirthDay 0.2.9
ThunderBrowse 3.2.6.5
United States English Dictionary 4.0.0
XNote 2.1.0

[tanstaafl]

Did you try the obvious?

1. Update AddressBook Synchronizer to the latest version (0.9.7)?

2. Disable any/all Address Book related extensions that might be conflicting (AddressBook Synch, MoreFunctionsForAddressBook, Duplicate Contact Manager, , etc)?

[Josh Geenen]

Hello,

It is almost definitely a conflict between gContactSync and one or more of your other address book extensions.

Could you click on the bottom-right side where it says the synchronization status (Synchronization finished at ...).  If you scroll through that you might see ERROR or WARNING with something like "Error while modifying the view pane".  There might also be some errors in the Error Console.  You can check that by going to Tools -> Error Console in the main window.

I'd appreciate it if you could find any errors or warnings and/or which extension has a conflict with gContactSync.

Josh

[BEvans]

I'll need two posts for the images. I worked through disabling and enabling lots of combinations and this is what I came up with.

First I disabled all add-ons.

Then I enabled GContactSync only. Notice the space added between Contact and Home

Then I enabled MoreFunctionsForAddressBook only. Notice that it also added space space between Contact and Home, just not as much as GContactSync.

Then I enabled Duplicate Contact Manager only. It double spaced everything except Notes.

Next post. The combinations.

 

[BEvans]

Combinations

Duplicate Contact Manager and MoreFunctionsForAddressBook just combined their singular issues. Space between Contact and Home along with double spacing.

GContactSync and Duplicate Contact manager also appeared to combine their issues.

GContactSync and MoreFunctionsForAddressBook combined their issues, increased the space between Contact and Home plus added double get map buttons

All three combined seem to combine issues with really increasing the space between Contact and Home.

For all single and combinations of add-ons, TB never generated Warnings or Errors nor did the GContactSync log

This is the first installation of GContactSync for me. I checked my other machines and they exhibit the same issues for Duplicate Contact Manager and MoreFunctionsForAddressBook.

[Josh Geenen]

Thanks for the thorough response and screenshots

I believe the extra spacing caused by Duplicate Contacts Manager was a mistake as that style was applied to the main address book window in addition to the intended target (the actual duplicate entry window).  It is possible to fix that either by editing that extension or removing that accidental style in another extension.  I attached a patch to gContactSync that would fix it here, but I don't want to blindly modify another extension through my own.  I might add a hidden preference, disabled by default, that fixes the problem and provide instructions on how to enable it.

I didn't look into the MoreFunctions problem yet.

[tanstaafl]

Hi Josh,

You sure you're not embarking on a slippery slope here? Trying to maintain patches for compatibility with every other Address Book extension out there might become a very time consuming process. Of course, I'm not saying you shouldn't try at all, just not spend too much time on it. You could obviously make exceptions for the most popular ones - or, you could just tell me to mind my own business...

Maybe an alternative would be to write some code to detect conflicts (extensions that modify the same code that gContactSync does), and have some decent error detection that will disable gContactSync and provide feedback that will tell you right away which extension is causing the problem (with as much detail as is possible), and maybe where the problem is best fixed (gContactSync, or, as appears in this case, the other extension) - then you could simply let the person reporting the problem report it to the other extension dev, so that it gets fixed in the appropriate place.

Just a thought, and my motivations for posting this are selfish - I'd much rather you spend your time improving gContactSync (and maybe coding the new extension to modify the QuickSearch to include the Organization field) than trying to work around bugs/conflicts in other peoples extensions.

Once you consider gContactSync feature complete, then obviously you could focus on compatibility with other AB extensions, and code workarounds if you felt it was worthwhile.

[BEvans]

Josh,

Thanks for the work. You have a great Add-on in GContactSync. I'll let you know what I find.

Also, To let you know, I did post the findings with the other developers also.

Bob

[Josh Geenen]

I found the source of the conflict with MoreFunctionsForAddressBook (more details here[url]) and it will be fixed in the next release.
I checked in my changes for Duplicate Contact Manager, which will also appear in the next release, but it is disabled by default.  You'll have to go to Tools -> Options or Edit -> Preferences, then Advanced -> General -> Config Editor...
Then paste fixDupContactManager into the textbox and change the value of the preference that appears to true.

With Thunderbird 3 and MFFAB beta 5 the contact view pane looks OK.  However, with 0.5.5.3 and Thunderbird 2 there is still an extra space between the first screenname and the extra screennames.  This is due to a spacer that goes along with the photo MFFAB adds to the address book.  This has not been 'fixed', and I'm not sure if it is something I should 'fix' since it isn't a mistake and the extension developer is still active.

Could you update the MFFAB developer and let him or her know that I've taken care of it on my end?  You can do the same for the Duplicate Contacts developer, but it doesn't look like the project has been abandoned.

You sure you're not embarking on a slippery slope here? Trying to maintain patches for compatibility with every other Address Book extension out there might become a very time consuming process. Of course, I'm not saying you shouldn't try at all, just not spend too much time on it. You could obviously make exceptions for the most popular ones - or, you could just tell me to mind my own business...

That is a valid concern.  In the MFFAB case that was kind of a mistake on my end so I fixed it.  My extension should be compatible with most other extensions that follow the basic standard for creating extensions, like MFFAB.  That doesn't include other synchronization applications using the same address book, particularly synchronizing the same address book and the same Google account with two different extensions.