Roger Binns
2003-10-30 04:18:34 UTC
I thought I would let everyone know what I have been working on.
I am doing the precursor work to importing phone number details.
I have written code that reads Vcard as well as the Windows Address
Book. I wanted to do that so I understand a lot better exactly
how they model phonebook entries before trying to write code
that will do imports.
The programmer at Microsoft responsible for WAB has some
apologising to do! Neither WAB nor the Palm Desktop handle
Vcards correctly according to the spec - they work fine
for most trivial cases, and the spec is somewhat disgusting
anyway.
I also tried interfacing to Palm Desktop using COM. Unfortunately
it looks like you can only execute inside the Palm Desktop process,
rather than using their code as a slave to manipulate the data.
If there is anyone who has more experience at COM and wants to
fight Palm Desktop a bit, let me know.
I also looked at the CSV output from WAB and Palm, and they will
be relatively trivial to deal with.
Finally I also looked at Mozilla which didn't know about vcards
at all! Of course none of the CSV exports bother putting in
header rows to make it just that little bit harder to
interoperate with.
I also figured out how I am going to do the new UI for the phonebook.
My next steps will be to write the CSV import code and gui.
Roger
I am doing the precursor work to importing phone number details.
I have written code that reads Vcard as well as the Windows Address
Book. I wanted to do that so I understand a lot better exactly
how they model phonebook entries before trying to write code
that will do imports.
The programmer at Microsoft responsible for WAB has some
apologising to do! Neither WAB nor the Palm Desktop handle
Vcards correctly according to the spec - they work fine
for most trivial cases, and the spec is somewhat disgusting
anyway.
I also tried interfacing to Palm Desktop using COM. Unfortunately
it looks like you can only execute inside the Palm Desktop process,
rather than using their code as a slave to manipulate the data.
If there is anyone who has more experience at COM and wants to
fight Palm Desktop a bit, let me know.
I also looked at the CSV output from WAB and Palm, and they will
be relatively trivial to deal with.
Finally I also looked at Mozilla which didn't know about vcards
at all! Of course none of the CSV exports bother putting in
header rows to make it just that little bit harder to
interoperate with.
I also figured out how I am going to do the new UI for the phonebook.
My next steps will be to write the CSV import code and gui.
Roger