gmailagent-devel

[Gmailagent-devel] About a contacts frontend + RFC

[Stas Z <sta...@gm...>]

Hi,

I'm currently hacking GmailAgent to add the new contacts support.
After about 16 hours of hacking I came to the conclusion that my approach o=
f
a local contacts file in conjunction with the online contacts is
terrible to maintain :-(
It's to difficult to get the the two in sync under all circumstances
and it breaks my beautiful
designed GA app ;-)

So I will start over with a new approach :-)

RFC:
My idea is to create a separate GUI as a local frontend to the whole
Gmail contacts
framework, including editing, adding and removal. When there's support
for the export
of the contacts into other formats, like discussed in a prior post, I
will include that also.
This frontend will import the contacts, the user can do his thing and
saves the contacts
to disk. (That should perhaps also be the default action when the user
closes the app)

So GA for example will just use the contacts file that is saved to
disk by the contacts frontend.
When there's no contacts file known to GA it will suggest ask the user
if the contacts
frontend should be started.

The benefits of a separate tool would be that it can also be used as a
tool just to synchronize ones local and online contacts as well as
provide a contacts application for other projects
besides GA.

The frontend will be developed with the QT tool kit using a MVC
pattern to make it easier
to develop other GUI's using wxwindows, GTK++ etc.

Stas


--=20
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual
 who can labor in freedom."
-Albert Einstein

Re: [Gmailagent-devel] About a contacts frontend + RFC

[Waseem S. D. <wd...@MI...>]

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Stas Z wrote:
> After about 16 hours of hacking I came to the conclusion that my approach of
> a local contacts file in conjunction with the online contacts is
> terrible to maintain :-(

I definitely don't disagree here. Maintaining some sort of coherency
between two copies of data is always icky.

> RFC:
> My idea is to create a separate GUI as a local frontend to the whole
> Gmail contacts
> framework, including editing, adding and removal. When there's support
> for the export
> of the contacts into other formats, like discussed in a prior post, I
> will include that also.
> This frontend will import the contacts, the user can do his thing and
> saves the contacts
> to disk. (That should perhaps also be the default action when the user
> closes the app)

Maybe this is the part I don't understand. Would this frontend run only
once, on initial GmailAgent start? Or would it start at the beginning of
each session, constantly getting the revised contacts list?

I guess the only reason I don't like the idea is that you won't always
have the most up-to-date Gmail contacts. But I guess it's hard to design
an elegant solution to do that ... so I suppose this is a reasonable
second best. Though there should be an option to invoke the updater
yourself.

What about not maintaining your own list at all, though, and just reading
from Gmail every time you want to do a contacts transaction? The downside
there is you have to be online and it might consume a bit of bandwidth.

In short: I think it is certainly a reasonable approach.
I intend to do the vCard export at some point in the near future (perhaps
this weekend).

- W

Re: [Gmailagent-devel] About a contacts frontend + RFC

[Stas Z <sta...@gm...>]

On 6/10/05, Waseem S. Daher <wd...@mi...> wrote:
>
> > RFC:
> > My idea is to create a separate GUI as a local frontend to the whole
> > Gmail contacts
> > framework, including editing, adding and removal. When there's support
> > for the export
> > of the contacts into other formats, like discussed in a prior post, I
> > will include that also.
> > This frontend will import the contacts, the user can do his thing and
> > saves the contacts
> > to disk. (That should perhaps also be the default action when the user
> > closes the app)
>=20
> Maybe this is the part I don't understand. Would this frontend run only
> once, on initial GmailAgent start? Or would it start at the beginning of
> each session, constantly getting the revised contacts list?
First of all this frontend has nothing todo with GA, it's a graphical front=
end
for the contacts support currently in libgmail2.
It could be used without installing GA, it's just a way to interact
with the Gmail
contacts. GA is just happen to be the first project that uses it.
How it would update/revise the contacts will be resolved when I start codin=
g :-)
 =20
> I guess the only reason I don't like the idea is that you won't always
> have the most up-to-date Gmail contacts. But I guess it's hard to design
> an elegant solution to do that ... so I suppose this is a reasonable
> second best. Though there should be an option to invoke the updater
> yourself.
The contacts GUI would have a button to update the list of course.:-)
(see the screenshot, it's just the first design attempt)
 =20
> What about not maintaining your own list at all, though, and just reading
> from Gmail every time you want to do a contacts transaction? The downside
> there is you have to be online and it might consume a bit of bandwidth.
Indeed, it can be a problem if one uses a dial up account.
And it's also a speed issue, a local cache works much faster.

> In short: I think it is certainly a reasonable approach.
> I intend to do the vCard export at some point in the near future (perhaps
> this weekend).
Cool, I assume that the export follows the 'official' VCard specifications?

Stas

--=20
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual
 who can labor in freedom."
-Albert Einstein

Re: [Gmailagent-devel] About a contacts frontend + RFC

[Waseem S. D. <wd...@MI...>]

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Stas Z wrote:
> > I intend to do the vCard export at some point in the near future (perhaps
> > this weekend).
> Cool, I assume that the export follows the 'official' VCard specifications?

Yeah, I'll conform to whatever the RFC standard was that you sent me
earlier. (Hopefully I'm not promising too much here -- I haven't even
looked at the standard yet :-))

As for the mockup, that looks good.

- W

Re: [Gmailagent-devel] About a contacts frontend + RFC

[Stas Z <sta...@gm...>]

On 6/10/05, Waseem S. Daher <wd...@mi...> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Stas Z wrote:
> > > I intend to do the vCard export at some point in the near future (per=
haps
> > > this weekend).
> > Cool, I assume that the export follows the 'official' VCard specificati=
ons?
>=20
> Yeah, I'll conform to whatever the RFC standard was that you sent me
> earlier. (Hopefully I'm not promising too much here -- I haven't even
> looked at the standard yet :-))
As always the description of the standard is much more complicated then the
actual implementation :-)

I've attached a VCard I just made with evolution, I guess if we just comply
to something evolution can grok were fine :-)

PS, some interesting stuff I've found related to this:
http://www.mepis.org/node/2916


Stas

--=20
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual
 who can labor in freedom."
-Albert Einstein