[Bitpim-devel] Vcard types in Address Book

[Peter Dufault]

For the record:

Here are the built in vcard types in the OS X Address Book. I started
using "main" for the main phone number of a business and they aren't
imported. Of course, there is also a "custom" field for everything
that has a "other" selection.

Attached at the end is a vcard with pretty much everything filled out
from within address book. Apologies to Dostoevsky.


non "X-" items:

TEL:
TYPE=work, home, mobile, main, home fax, work fax, pager, other

EMAIL:
TYPE=work, home, other

ORG: e.g., "ORG:Dostoevsky Museum;"

BDAY: e.g., "BDAY;value=date:1821-10-30"

ADR:
TYPE=home, work, other


"X-" items easily accessed from address book:

Instant messenger, e.g., "X-AIM;type=WORK;type=pref:aim-fyodor"
X-AIM, X-Jabber, X-MSN, X-ICQ, X-Yahoo
TYPE=work, home, other

Strange "itemN.X-AB" stuff maybe for linking to others in the address
book.
For this example I set Tolstoy to be Dostoevsky's friend and Nabakov
his assistant.

item2.X-ABRELATEDNAMES;type=pref:Tolstoy
item2.X-ABLabel:_$!<Friend>!$_
item3.X-ABRELATEDNAMES:Nabakov
item3.X-ABLabel:_$!<Assistant>!$_

X-ABlabel can be:
father, mother, parent, brother, sister, child, friend, spouse,
partner, assistant, manager, other

Peter Dufault
HD Associates, Inc.

[Roger Binns]

For the other record, the vcard fields are defined in rfc2426.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2426.html

Post by Peter Dufault
Here are the built in vcard types in the OS X Address Book. I started
using "main" for the main phone number of a business and they aren't
imported.

"main" is not part of the vcard spec. The only other program I know of
that uses "main" is the Palm. On vCard export, it turns that into
work.

(And it was this field that pissed me off years ago with TrueSync which
ultimately led me to believe I could do a better job. TrueSync converted
all "main" values to "office", and threw any existing "office" you had.
I didn't actually use "main" anywhere, but did use "office", and got
highly annoyed with throwing my data away like that.)

I will put in your fix from the other message of just mapping "main"
to "work". I think this is now 4 ways the Mac differs from the spec :-)

Post by Peter Dufault
TYPE=work, home, mobile, main, home fax, work fax, pager, other

You can see the full complement of types and combinations in the
vCard spec. The bitpim internal fields aren't actually designed
and just happen to be the union of the types supported on LG phones
and Sanyo phones. I guess we need to fix that at some point.
For example BitPim doesn't distinguish between home and work fax
because the cell phones don't either. Also BitPim does have a
"data" type (thanks to the sanyo phones) and several vcard fields
are mapped to that.

Post by Peter Dufault
ORG: e.g., "ORG:Dostoevsky Museum;"

The first org field is converted to company and used as part of the
business address. The remaining fields (semi colon seperated) are
the org units and are ignored.

BitPim doesn't store this, and so the value is ignored.

Post by Peter Dufault
Instant messenger, e.g., "X-AIM;type=WORK;type=pref:aim-fyodor"
X-AIM, X-Jabber, X-MSN, X-ICQ, X-Yahoo
TYPE=work, home, other

I should probably consider storing IM ids since I suspect phones
are going to start doing IM. (You can already get Yahoo messenger
for the VX6000.)

Post by Peter Dufault
Strange "itemN.X-AB" stuff maybe for linking to others in the address
book.

It is just Apple's way of dumping in extra fields. For example they
use X-ABADR to store the address type (country). That isn't needed
since the vcard address format includes a country field.

Post by Peter Dufault
For this example I set Tolstoy to be Dostoevsky's friend and Nabakov
his assistant.
item2.X-ABRELATEDNAMES;type=pref:Tolstoy
item2.X-ABLabel:_$!<Friend>!$_
item3.X-ABRELATEDNAMES:Nabakov
item3.X-ABLabel:_$!<Assistant>!$_
father, mother, parent, brother, sister, child, friend, spouse,
partner, assistant, manager, other

I definitely won't bother with those fields unless any phones do.
I really don't want BitPim to turn into a pim. It's purpose is
to have the minimum user interface necessary to have access to
every feature of your phone. (Of course I shouldn't have done
something like include "pim" as part of the name :-)

Roger

[Peter Dufault]

Post by Roger Binns
I definitely won't bother with those fields unless any phones do.
I really don't want BitPim to turn into a pim. It's purpose is
to have the minimum user interface necessary to have access to
every feature of your phone. (Of course I shouldn't have done
something like include "pim" as part of the name :-)

There is one thing I can see happening, and I alluded to it before.
I'm going to figure out how to extend address book to support ring
tones to make it the repository for my phone info and so I'll add some
vcard extension X-ringtone or X-BPringtone, and if anyone else is doing
similar things via vcards we should keep it cooordinated on this list
(I'll check the vcard spec to see what is already defined).

Peter

Peter Dufault
HD Associates, Inc.