Re: GnomeCard conduit for gnome-pilot

[Christian Borup <borup borup com>]

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> 
> > Currently it writes/reads directly to .gcrd files (using functions
> > from card.h)  because current corba idl is not completely enough for
> > all pilot's fields.
> 
> I think it is a mistake that the addressbook CORBA interface is
> specific to the field-level.
> 
> I rather use the approach used in GnomeCal: transfering entire vCard
> records between the conduit and the addressbook.  And having the
> conduit modify this and send an updated version to the calendar.
> 

I agree that the vCard interface is a really awfull, but the notion of
sending formated strings (vCard formated - but still just formatted
strings) is just as bad or even worse.

As Bart points out this forces every client to include a full vCard
parser, thus making the interface much less usefull to scripts (the
problem is even worse for UIMS's which is what I work with). The problem
on the serverside is similar, you force the server to output vCard when
it is not needed. Remember, just because one implementation is vCard
based others needn't be.

For GnomeCard (or gabby for that matter) a sequennce of name/value pairs
make much more sence. I my opinion an interface not unlike the name
service, would be a good thing.

./borup