[Evolution-hackers] custom labels

[Patrick Ohly <patrick ohly gmx de>]

Hello!

Both Google and Apple support custom labels for basically all of a
contacts properties (telephone, email, address, instant messaging, etc).
They use group tags to associate the extra label with the property:

item4.ADR:;;custom address;;;;
item4.X-ABLabel:custom-label

Does anyone have suggestions for how this could and/or should be handled
by EDS and Evolution?

Obviously the Evolution UI would need to be modified to actually show
the information. As a first step I would already be happy if the
information didn't get lost during a import/edit/export cycle.

I tried grouping, but when editing the field (an EMAIL in my test) its
group tag was removed, thus breaking the connection to the custom label.
After editing in Evolution:

item1.X-ABLabel:foobar
EMAIL;TYPE=WORK;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=1:email value modified

I also tried a custom parameter, but that also got lost:

EMAIL;X-ABLabel=foobar;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=1;TYPE=WORK:email value
->
EMAIL;TYPE=WORK;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=1:email value modified

I tried this with Evolution 3.4 (the one shipped with my current
desktop, Debian Stable). Has perhaps anything been done regarding this
in later versions?

I am undecided about what EDS and Evolution should use internally to
represent custom labels. I lean towards a custom parameter because
although grouping is supported by EVCard, it hasn't been really used,
has it? The concept of "fields of interest" would still work if the
field also has the custom label as parameter (not that we have special
support for anything other than UID and REV, but at least conceptually
something else could also be supported).

On the other hand, deviating from the format of the peers will make
interoperability harder. I'm not sure yet how I would do the conversion
in SyncEvolution between X-ABLabel as parameter and X-ABLabel as
property with group. Importing/exporting vCards manually also is
affected by the choice of the internal format.

Bye, Patrick