466584 - address book contact merging

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 259531

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

I think we can get a pretty simple yet good contact merging system in place using the existing address book user interface.  To work around a merge problem that can't easily be fixed in the contact editor we can offer to merge the details before we actually make the merge happen.

From the Address Book window.

1. Select Multiple Contacts
  - As multiple contacts are selected show selection results in the CardViewBox
  - Offer actions in CardViewBox applicable to multiple contacts, like ( Merge Contacts... )
2. Click ( Merge Contacts... ) button
  - Change CardViewBox to show ContactMerger interface
3. Choose correct values for contact merging
4. Click ( Merge ) button
  - All instances of the selected contacts are merged into a single instance

- ContactMerger Interface -

The contact merging interface displays the values that require a person to decide which is the correct one to merge.  For values that are exactly the same in each contact we can display as a simple label such that the user understands that value will be included in the new contact.

Example of Merging 3 Contacts into 1

----------------------------------------------------------

- Values from all selected contacts match -

First Name:   / Label with $First_Name /
Last Name:    / Label with $Last_Name /

- Single-Value entry where values from 1 contact didn't match and becomes the 2nd unselected value -

Display Name: (o) $Last_Name, $First_Name
              ( ) $First_Name $Last_Name
              ( ) /Nothing/

- Multi-Value with or without exact matches -

Email:        [x] [e-mail]
              [x] [e-mail]
              [x] [e-mail]

----------------------------------------------------------

This ContactMerger interface doesn't handle editing the values shown, for now we can just allow people to merge what data they have and edit it after the fact.

This change should require that address book contacts can have multiple email addresses.  I have a design for that change that is (a hack) fairly simple to implement on the current address book contact editor.

I'll try to post more designs on this ContactMerge and multiple selection interface soon.