Re: [Evolution-hackers] Multiple child-addressbooks under an account

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam opengroupware us>]

On Sun, 2011-01-23 at 01:26 +0000, Kirk Wolff wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-01-22 at 14:23 -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: 
> > On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 19:49 +0100, Onyeibo Oku wrote: 
> > > On 01/21/2011 06:30 PM, Kirk Wolff wrote:
> > > > Is there a way to add child-addressbooks under an addressbook account
> > > > with evolution's GUI? I don't see any current implementations that have
> > > > a 'tree' of addressbooks under an addressbook plugin type. As I see it,
> > > > there are plugins for setting up an addressbook, but not for displaying
> > > > and organizing them. It seems the presentation (the left-hand column
> > > > list) of addressbooks is fixed. Is there a simple way to add and
> > > > maintain a tree in the list of addressbooks?
> > > I don't see any special benefit for this feature.  
> > The use case seems *obvious* to be; especially for WebDAV address books
> > since WebDAV supports hierarchical collections [although
> > CalDAV/CardDAV/GroupDAV all place restrictions on how child collections
> > can be structured].
> > If you have multiple server-side collections of contacts you currently
> > have to define multiple addressbooks rather than just one that can
> > expand to list the collections - even supporting descending a single
> > level of collections would be *very* useful.
> I agree, from the CardDAV spec, its natural to want to show all of the
> available addressbooks with a single sign-on, especially if the spec
> supports it.  
> My primary question here is not whether it should be done, but how to
> do it from within a plugin.  
> I presume from your response that its currently not possible but may
> be possible if a plugin is written to allow it.

I'd almost swear that at some point in the last 10+ years I've seen an
addressbook-tree; but it certainly doesn't happen currently.

> Can anyone provide some direction as to how to write this plugin?

Sadly I can't be of any help there.  Perhaps looking at code in the
Exchange or Groupwise plugins might tell you something.