[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