Re: [Evolution] Regenerating addressbook.db

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 20:15 -0500, Jeff wrote:
> Ugh, I have an additional problem: what if someone has multiple homes?
> In Evolution, I edited a contact with two home phone numbers, so it
> looks like:
> TEL;TYPE=CELL;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=3:1 613 something   # shows up
> TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=2:1 613 something2   # shows
> up
> TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE;X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=1:514 something3   # doesn't
> show up
> I understand that it doesn't want to display two phone numbers in a
> column, but I don't see why the third one (which happens to be UI slot
> 1) doesn't show up in the preview pane. Kind of a show-stopper. I'm
> not sure what to "trust" will be displayed anymore.

How is this a "show-stopper"?  What you are looking at is *preview*
mode; it seems unreasonable to see *all* the contact information in
*preview* mode.

I'm assuming that it displays one of every kind of number; I would have
expected it to prefer X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=1 over X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=2
but I can understand that the X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT attribute may only be
used by the edit dialog.

I see that exact behavior of only seeing one "Business Fax" number in
preview mode for a contact with multiple Business Fax numbers [in
Address Card or List Mode].  And it is choosing X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=4
over X-EVOLUTION-UI-SLOT=2 [or perhaps it is just showing the
arbitrarily-first, in the vCard representation, of each type, since they
seem to reliably listed in reverse order in the vCard].  Assuming both
Business Fax#s are correct - it doesn't make any difference which one I
use.

> The reason I was trying to do this migration/conversion is to ensure
> that the data is somewhat "safe" from this kind of weirdness in the
> first place! (I know that Contacts doesn't quite handle the fact that
> evolution's folder paths have changed in recent versions, so I fear
> running into trouble in the long term). 

I don't understand what "Contacts doesn't quite handle the fact that
evolution's folder paths have changed in recent versions" means.

Have you lost data?  I wouldn't equate not seeing data in preview mode
to data-loss.  Evolution's very good vCard management [import / export]
I consider to be a killer-feature where I never need to worry about the
safety or portability of my data.