Re: [Evolution-hackers] custom labels

[Patrick Ohly <patrick ohly gmx de>]

On Mon, 2014-05-26 at 07:38 +0200, Milan Crha wrote:
> On Sun, 2014-05-25 at 21:41 +0200, Patrick Ohly wrote:
> > Instead if just the pre-defined "Work", "Home", "Other", etc., the user
> > can also enter arbitrary text. For example, instead of "Other Tel: foo"
> > the user can enter "Vacation Tel: bar" for a telephone number that is to
> > be used when that contact is in his vacation home.
> >
> > It's even more important for dates. There might be a lot more dates to
> > be stored than just birthday and anniversary, so a repeating X-ABDate
> > property is used with custom labels to allow that. Same for related
> > persons.
>
>       Hi,
> aha, I see, so it's more like TYPE parameter, with more fine-grained
> values. Would it be too complicated to use TYPE instead?

So you mean something like TYPE=X-<user entered string>? The problem
would be to distinguish between "X-FOOBAR as a TYPE extensions" and
"X-FOOBAR as user entered text".

X-ABLabel avoids that by introducing a new parameter.

> It'll be
> slightly complicated for evolution's UI, but probably easier than
> dealing with it in a separate widget.

I'm not sure whether this is easier for the UI. The whole EContact API
deals poorly with arbitrary number of repeating properties. For some
properties one can iterate over all of them (E_CONTACT_TEL), for others
one can't (E_CONTACT_ADDRESS is documented as a single EContactAddress?
Might be a documentation bug).

For IM information it's definitely not possible to access arbitrary chat
handles; the API only supports those for which a
E_CONTACT_ADDRESS_<service> exists.

-- 
Best Regards, Patrick Ohly

The content of this message is my personal opinion only and although
I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way
represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak
on behalf of Intel on this matter.