[GnomeMeeting-list] Re: Common address book (Brian Thompson)

[Brian Thompson <brian eng wayne edu>]

> Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2006 12:39:36 +0200
> From: Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>
> Subject: [GnomeMeeting-list] Common address book
> To: gnomemeeting-list gnome org
> Message-ID: <1143974376 2323 40 camel golgoth01>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> Hello,
>
> I have had private e-mail exchanges with one person who thinks that
> having a common address book shared by GNOME applications like Ekiga and
> Evolution is a bad idea, and that it would be better to have a separate
> address book for Ekiga and a separate one for Evolution.
>
> He also thinks that I am not following the advice of my users and that I
> impose my own view of the project without taking into account external
> ideas. (The same rant about the new name was mentioned again).
>
> So I would like to do a quick poll on the mailing list. 
>
> Please choose a), b) or c) :
> a) I think that it is better to have a common address book for all
> applications if possible
> b) I think it is better that all applications have their own address
> book, I don't want my contacts to be shared between the different
> applications I am using
> c) I do not care.
>
> Thanks!
> --
> _      Damien Sandras
> (o-     
> //\     Ekiga Softphone: http://www.ekiga.org/
> v_/_    FOSDEM 2006    : http://www.fosdem.org/
>        SIP Phone      : sip:dsandras ekiga net
>                         sip:600000 ekiga net


My vote is definitely for (a) as long as it 
doesn't require that those other applications 
actually be installed. I'm really looking 
forward to the Win32 port of Ekiga and I'm not 
sure what sorts of portability issues having 
a common addressbook brings up. 

On a related note, in my own opinion I see the 
personal addressbook as supplementary to a LDAP 
directory. The LDAP directory here where I work 
has over 140,000 contacts in it - all somehow 
related to the university (faculty, staff, 
students, alumni, contractors,...). But, the 
LDAP directory is read-only and populated 
centrally, so any of personal contacts that 
don't have a directory entry need to be stored 
locally one way or another. The search order
should also be such that the personal addressbook
gets searched first and the LDAP directory gets
searched second. That way irrelevant LDAP
entries can be overriden by adding entries to
the local addressbook. This also saves traffic
hits on the LDAP directory; in the event the
contact is first found locally a LDAP search
isn't necessary. 

My opinion applies not only to Ekiga but in 
general to any good communication app. I've
worked here for 14 years and found that a good
contact lookup design can sometimes be the only 
difference between an app being limited to 
use by technical people and being used by 
the computer illiterate. Mozilla/Thunderbird
is a good example. The technical staff here 
install and configure it on most of the faculty 
PCs and then leave it for the faculty to use.
Many users here wouldn't use it if populating 
the To: field was any harder than starting
to type the person's name and seeing it 
autocomplete or seeing a selection list appear 
that gets shorter and shorter as more characters 
are typed. 

-Brian