bbdb anniversaries [was: BBDB ELPA-style packaging]

[Roland W. <wi...@gn...>]

On Sun Feb 27 2011 Roland Winkler wrote:
> On Wed Feb 23 2011 Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> > RW> I'll try to make some kind of table that shows how the functionality
> > RW> in the current code (functions and variables) relates to the old
> > RW> BBDB code. Then hopefully it will become more clear to what extent
> > RW> which parts of BBDB still contain old code. Then we can go from there.
> > 
> > Any updates?
> 
> Unfortunately, I need to say that my time for such things is
> limited. I am doing my best, but it's hard to make more specific
> predictions. All I can say is that right now my schedule is filled
> yet more with other stuff.

I thought I could / should also mention here:

Various changes and extensions that I added to BBDB took me further
away from the original code. So I want to mention that I have one
more somewhat larger idea in the back of my mind.

Currently, it is required that the values of BBDB note fields are
strings. It would be nice if these fields could be made more
flexible by allowing them to have values that can be any lisp object
suitable for a particular field.

More specifically, I have in mind that one could define "handlers"
which include a list of functions that allow one to create, edit,
and format a particular note field, such as `foo'. If such a handler
is defined, it will be used for handling a note field. Otherwise, it
will be assumed that the field has the conventionel string format.

One particular application I have in mind here are anniversaries
associated with a record. There was an old extension `bbdb-anniv.el'
for adding anniversaries to BBDB records written by Ivar Rummelhoff.
Here the value of the anniversary field was a conventionel string
that was parsed in a sophisticated way to extract a list of
anniversaries that was then fed into the emacs diary. It seems to me
that it would be much cleaner to store such anniversaries using a
list of numbers similar to the argument list used by the
diary-anniversary function.

Such a feature would provide a proof of concept for the more general
note handlers. Once this is working properly, maybe other people
have more ideas for adding other note handlers.

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Once this last larger project on my bbdb todo list has been added,
it might be more meaningful to check carefully to what extent the
new and old bbdb share the same code.

Roland