Closed Bug 359277 Opened 18 years ago Closed 17 years ago

OSX: System Address Book integration

Categories

(Penelope Graveyard :: General, defect, P5)

Product:
Penelope Graveyard
Component:
General
Platform:
PowerPC
macOS
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED
Milestone:
Future

People

(Reporter: mdudziak, Assigned: beckley)

References

Details

Penelope needs to integrate in some form with the OS X system-wide Address Book. At a minimum Penelope should mirror the OS X Address Book as Mac Eudora Currently does. Ideally, changes made to entries in Penelope would be reflected in the OS X Address Book as well.
Assignee: mozilla-bugs → sdorner
Eudora's address book contains not only manually added entries, but also the history list of people you have sent to (or received from?) in recent time. Not sure I would want all that cluttering up my OSX address book.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Depends on: 203927
(In reply to comment #0) > Penelope needs to integrate in some form with the OS X system-wide Address > Book. At a minimum Penelope should mirror the OS X Address Book as Mac Eudora > Currently does. Ideally, changes made to entries in Penelope would be reflected > in the OS X Address Book as well. > Yes Penelope needs to do something similar for Win users. Like outlook address book. more of a system wide address book.
(In reply to comment #1) > Eudora's address book contains not only manually added entries, but also the > history list of people you have sent to (or received from?) in recent time. > Not sure I would want all that cluttering up my OSX address book. The fact that Eudora's address book is cluttered up with a whole bunch of entries that are distinct from the core purpose of an address book (people to whose contact info you want to have and to whom you want to send stuff) is a problem not a feature. I've always found it really annoying that, for example, every time I mark a message as "not junk" it's added to my Eudora address book. If Eudora thought it was junk in the first place, it's probably commercial mail, from an address I would not want to e-mail (or even an automated address that won't take replies at all). I also have never been a fan of Eudora's current approach... mirroring the OSX Address Book in one's Eudora address book. It just creates duplicate entries, and means I need to check two different places to find someone's address. I've read the entire Mozilla thread on this (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203927), and they certainly seem to claim (though I'm no programmer) that they're far along. In short, I agree with the comment "Not sure I would want all that cluttering up my OSX address book." But I think the solution, rather than merely avoiding "infecting" the OSX address book with that clutter, is to unclutter Penelope's address book. Put "not junked" addresses (etc.) somewhere else and address the ramifications elsewhere (such as having the junking routine treat not only the address book but also this other repository as white lists). Finally, I agree this is a very important issue. A Eudora user since at least '93, I regard this as one of the two biggest deficiencies in Eudora 6.x (along with the poor html mail capabilities). In an ideal world, the switch to Penelope would provide an opportunity to consider radically simplified solutions (such as merely using the OS X Address Book, which would bring all kinds of advantages for syncability).
(In reply to comment #4) > The fact that Eudora's address book is cluttered up with a whole bunch of > entries that are distinct from the core purpose of an address book (people to > whose contact info you want to have and to whom you want to send stuff) is a > problem not a feature. I've always found it really annoying that, for example, > every time I mark a message as "not junk" it's added to my Eudora address book. You realize, of course, that you can tell Eudora NOT to add "not-junked" senders to your Address Book by unchecking "Put Not Junk-ed senders in Address Book" in the "Junk Mail Settings panel"... > If Eudora thought it was junk in the first place, it's probably commercial > mail, from an address I would not want to e-mail (or even an automated address > that won't take replies at all). > > I also have never been a fan of Eudora's current approach... mirroring the OSX > Address Book in one's Eudora address book. It just creates duplicate entries, > and means I need to check two different places to find someone's address. Mirroring was not intended to be the long-term solution. The long-term solution was to be full(er) integration with the OS X Address Book. It unfortunately never happened... You can tell Eudora NOT to mirror the OS X Address Book by unchecking "Show OS X Address Book" in the "Address Book" settings panel....
(In reply to comment #5) > You realize, of course, that you can tell Eudora NOT to add "not-junked" > senders to your Address Book by unchecking "Put Not Junk-ed senders in Address > Book" in the "Junk Mail Settings panel"... Yes, but isn't that the only way (under the current regime) to get the functionality of white-listing the sender? I'll admit I've never tried it with the option unchecked, but assumed this was the case as the "Put Not Junk-ed senders in Address Book" option is subsidiary to the "mail isn't junk if the sender is in an address book" check box. > Mirroring was not intended to be the long-term solution. The long-term > solution was to be full(er) integration with the OS X Address Book. It > unfortunately never happened... I'm not surprised. Then I think we're in agreement. > You can tell Eudora NOT to mirror the OS X Address Book by unchecking "Show OS > X Address Book" in the "Address Book" settings panel.... Acknowledged. But again, not without loss of the functionality of having access to that address book. Thanks for all your work!
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #5) > > You realize, of course, that you can tell Eudora NOT to add "not-junked" > > senders to your Address Book by unchecking "Put Not Junk-ed senders in Address > > Book" in the "Junk Mail Settings panel"... > > Yes, but isn't that the only way (under the current regime) to get the > functionality of white-listing the sender? I'll admit I've never tried it with > the option unchecked, but assumed this was the case as the "Put Not Junk-ed > senders in Address Book" option is subsidiary to the "mail isn't junk if the > sender is in an address book" check box. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to make sure this is clear. The functionality of a white list needs to be separate from the address book. There should be the option to consider addresses in the address book as white listed senders, but addresses like: do-not-reply@mybank.com do not belong in the address book and should not be required to be added just to whitelist the address. Ray
> > I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to make sure this is clear. The > functionality of a white list needs to be separate from the address book. There > should be the option to consider addresses in the address book as white listed > senders, but addresses like: do-not-reply@mybank.com do not belong in the > address book and should not be required to be added just to whitelist the > address. > > Ray > OK, then what sort of user interface needs to be provided to the whitelist? The user is going to need some way to add to the whitelist, and just as important, remove addresses from the whitelist, or view the list. The Address Book is already designed to store addresses, so it is a logical place to put the whitelist. It does not need to be in the same Address Book as all your regular contacts, but the Address Book UI seems the logical place for the user to view/edit the entries. If not the Address Book, what sort of UI do you suggest?
(In reply to comment #8) > OK, then what sort of user interface needs to be provided to the whitelist? The > user is going to need some way to add to the whitelist, and just as important, > remove addresses from the whitelist, or view the list. Any kind of a list manager should do. Allowing you to sort, filer, edit, etc. It seems pretty trivial, it's just a list of single values. Use something like the existing "Link History" window. Just allow sorting strict alphabetically (ascending, descending) or by top level domain and ID (ascending, descending) and adding filtering based on TLD and/or ID. It would also be useful to add an option to MOVE the rare e-mail address that would warrant a reply into the Address Book. > The Address Book is already designed to store addresses, so it is a logical > place to put the whitelist. I and others emphatically disagree. The Address Book (especially if it's tied to the OS X System-wide Address Book) is a list of names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, snail mail addresses, IM addresses, Company names, associations and misc. other information for people that you want to contact. All that a whitelist is is a list of e-mail addresses that should automatically be trusted. There is no names, snail mail addresses, IM user ID's, etc. associated with this data. It makes no sense to send e-mail to these addresses. It makes no sense to stuff it into an address book. >It does not need to be in the same Address Book as all your regular > contacts, This might make sense if Eudora was still going to run it's own address book scheme and not properly integrate with the OS X System-wide address book. > but the Address Book UI seems the logical place for the user to > view/edit the entries. No, it doesn't seem logical at all. It's no more logical than listing every non-junk mail snail mail address in your physical address book. It is convenient for the developers, but illogical for the users. > If not the Address Book, what sort of UI do you suggest? See above, something like the "Link History" window. Ray
(In reply to comment #9) > (In reply to comment #8) > > OK, then what sort of user interface needs to be provided to the whitelist? > > The user is going to need some way to add to the whitelist, and just as > > important, remove addresses from the whitelist, or view the list. > > Any kind of a list manager should do. Allowing you to sort, filer, edit, etc. > It seems pretty trivial, it's just a list of single values. Use something like > the existing "Link History" window. Just allow sorting strict alphabetically > (ascending, descending) or by top level domain and ID (ascending, descending) > and adding filtering based on TLD and/or ID. It would also be useful to add an > option to MOVE the rare e-mail address that would warrant a reply into the > Address Book. To Matt's point, I think there's no reason that this separate white list can't LOOK similar to (and presumably be based on code from) the Address Book. The look of the Address Book is certainly more efficient for listing many items than the Link History window, although you'll want to strip out all the fields that are superfluous in this context (which Ray itemizes). Merely an e-mail address, and perhaps an optional name and/or notes field ("this is the address my bank sends my statements from") would probably do it. But I think Ray's point (and mine) is that, whatever the cosmetic appearance of this thing is, the white list: a) should be _separate_ from the Address Book (although I agree the Address Book should also be an white list by default) b) does not integrate with the OS X Address Book c) is called something different and probably is accessed by a different menu item (/whatever) than "Address Book" so users know what it is. Since it will be accessed much less frequently, it could even be accessed via a mere "Edit White List" button on the Junk Mail settings pane. Again, thanks.
I support most of these suggestions. I think the address book shouldn't be linked to the OS (be it Mac or Win) to make it usable in different platforms. It should be structured like a book with sections, subsections, subsubsections etc to facilitate navigation and ease of use and eventually contain a section where emails of not-junked correspondents could be stored. This could either be so or implemented as a separate directory but with inbuilt links in order to make it possible to transfer names between them. If it could be integratable with Lotus Organizer that would be heaven. But I wouldn't ask for the moon.
Cefe raises a good point whether cross-platform compatibility of an address book is incompatible with integration with system address books on OS X and Windows. Ideally, there might be support for a third, common format that could be accessed by both versions for shared address books stored on a network location. (There's some discussion on that here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359320) But for local address books, the benefits of system integration, which on OS X include access in other programs, syncing with mobile phones, Palm, and .mac, as well as integration with calendaring programs (or at least iCal), far outweigh the benefits of cross-platform compatibility, for me.
I think one possible answer to the "clutter" problem would be to have Penelope create one or more groups in the Address book to add entries into. Perhaps one named "Penelope Addresses" and another "Penelope Whitelist" On the other hand, taking a page out of the Mail.app playbook might make sense. It basically uses the system AB for lookups, but also keeps track of previous recipients as a simple list of email addresses and provides a simple interface for adding to the AB from that list. Such an approach, rather than making the mailer the heavy-duty contact manager, probably is a better approach for the Mac side. How to make that consistent on the Windows side would be a different question...
MacAB is an xml-file, readable also as text but as xml structured in a more standardized way than Eudora AB (due to the tags more voluminous). Additional fields/tags may be introduced. Handled as added customized labels in MacAB. This may be used as a platform independent structure (As I assume other than some of the win structures). Additional to similar/simpified separate White-/black-/history-lists (files?).
I like the way Eudora handles addresses and the whitelist. In fact, I like that I can show my OS X address book as a Eudora address book. Know why? Because all the addresses I want to keep are there and the regular Eudora address book is mostly used as the whitelist. I like having OS X address book as a viewable address book. That way if I need to add or change an entry I don't have to go through 10 different address books and do it. Too easy to forget to update one. The OS X address book is my address book. I have been trying to use Thunderbird to see how it compares and I immediately hated that I had to take the time to enter all of my co-workers to its address book. I'm no programmer, but how hard could it be to change a bit of code for the Windows side so that they could use their OS address book in the same manner, for those who want it? Please, please, please put that feature into Penelope. And please, please, please get a true email client out...not a TB extension. Thank you.
I agree with most of the above. I very much like the idea of either using or synchronizing with the OS X Address Book. I have a FMP db I keep my contacts in, but three "address" books is too much, so the more Eudora/Penelope harmonizes with the OS X Address Book the better. I agree I don't want my History recipients pushed in the to Address Book, but to remain separate in Eudora.
The corresponding bug for Thunderbird to read from the OS X Address Book (Bug 203927) has been fixed. Adding write support is another (still unfixed) bug: Bug 391057
The new beta of Eudora (8.0.0b2) is based on the trunk code for Thunderbird. Like others have mentioned, the trunk TB code has an implementation of reading from the OS X Address Book. Bug 203927 is the one to look at. It gives the details on how it was implemented and what you have to do to enable the functionality. Give the new beta a test drive: <http://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases>.
Assignee: sdorner → beckley
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Priority: -- → P5
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Request for separate, non-Address Book whitelist moved to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425028 Request for integration with a WINDOWS system-wide Address Book moved to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425027
Target Milestone: 0.1 → Future
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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