Bug 58706 - custom types for addresses and phone numbers
Summary: custom types for addresses and phone numbers
Status: REOPENED
Alias: None
Product: kaddressbook
Classification: Applications
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Tobias Koenig
URL:
Keywords:
: 224032 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2003-05-20 12:49 UTC by Michael Reiher
Modified: 2021-03-09 02:34 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

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Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description Michael Reiher 2003-05-20 12:49:44 UTC
Version:            (using KDE Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources

Hi! it would be  very helpful to be able to define custom types of addresses and phone numbers or have a comment field for further description. Labels like "Home" and "Home(2)" or even "Work" and "Work" are not very distinguishing. 

Many people have more than one phone number at home e.g. several ISDN numbers in different rooms, or a normal phone plus a mobile with an additional local number("home zone"). Also for work  phone numbers there might be several like a desk phone and a central number. So a comment like "Home(Living Room)" and "Home(somewhereelse)" or "Work" and "Work(Central)" would help a lot.

Same for addresses many people I know have more than one home address e.g. their normal address and ther parents address. 

And being able to assign phone numbers to addresses and then group them together with the related address in the contact view pane(instead of listing all that exist subsequently) would help a lot to make things clearer.

Greets Michael
Comment 1 Tobias Koenig 2003-05-23 22:40:28 UTC
Hi Michael,

we use the vCard format as standard storage format, so we can save only data, which
are supported by this format. For this reason additional telephone or address formats
aren't possible. The vCard standard supports so called X-Entries for custom types,
but we can't reflect them in the GUI.

Ciao,
Tobias
Comment 2 Michael Reiher 2003-09-03 23:04:53 UTC
Subject: Re:  custom types for addresses and phone numbers

On Friday 23 May 2003 22:40, you wrote:
> ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
> You reported the bug, or are watching the reporter.
>
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58706
> tokoe@kde.org changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>- Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
>          Resolution|                            |WONTFIX
>
>
>
> ------- Additional Comments From tokoe@kde.org  2003-05-23 22:40 -------
> Hi Michael,
>
> we use the vCard format as standard storage format, so we can save only
> data, which are supported by this format. For this reason additional
> telephone or address formats aren't possible. The vCard standard supports
> so called X-Entries for custom types, but we can't reflect them in the GUI.
>
> Ciao,
> Tobias

Hi Tobias,

I just found your answer in my inbox, it must have got lost somehow. Sorry 
about that! But as I'd really like to make kaddressbook replace my current 
plain text file, I need to reply anyway:) But to the topic. I don't quite 
understand why you closed the report with WONTFIX? I mean that's why I made a 
wishlist item, and I can't see why it shouldn't be possible to implement 
that. Even if it's a KDE only solution, I think more flexibility is really 
needed here. 

Looking at it from a developers POV the clean solution is of course to do only 
what the standard supports. But I look on that problem from a users point of 
view, and as user I find an address book kind of useless if I e.g. can't 
distinct three similar looking ISDN numbers which are all just labeled "Home" 
because they are somehow all "Home". I will have to write down and look up 
that information additionally elsewhere. If the standard gives a possbility 
to work around that limitaion with those X-Entries, shoudn't it be tried? And 
I don't see why you can't reflect those X-Entries in the GUI? 

On the vCard side wouldn't it be possible to do the following? (Or something 
similar) For each address:

"ADR;TYPE=home:;;Street 1;Town;;12345;" 

write:

"X-ADR;TYPE=home:<ID>;<Address Description>;;;Street 1;Town;;12345;" 

to associate the address with an id and a description. Then for the phone 
numbers like:

"TEL;TYPE=home:0123/456789"

write:

"X-TEL;TYPE=home:<ID>;<Phone Description>;0123/456789"

to associate the phone number with a description and an address. (As usually 
phone numbers are tied to an address, except for mobiles where <ID> would be 
empty.) That gives you all compatibility to other vCard apps(as they would 
simply ignore X-* if I see it right) while still having additional 
information within KDE. 

Just my thoughts on that topic. Kaddressbook should IMHO be made to fit to the 
reality, not the other way round. Unfortunately I don't have the time to 
implement it myself, so I can just add a wish.

Greetings

Michael

Comment 3 Dotan Cohen 2008-05-23 16:25:20 UTC
I would also like to see this bug be reopened as a wishlist and not left WONTFIX. Today, some people have three mobile phone numbers. While one could create custom fields in KAddressBook, the custom fields do not have the advantages that the phone fields have.

@Tobias: Please reconsider reopening this wishlist item. If you decide against it, please tell why. With Akonadi in KDE4, this should be entirely possible. Thanks.
Comment 4 Dotan Cohen 2008-07-19 16:18:00 UTC
A possible solution to this bug would be to take advantage of the vCard custom fields. For each phone number of a custom type there could be a specially-formated vCard custom field, like so:
X-KADDRESSBOOK-PHONE-OrangeCellphone:123-456-7890

Note that KAddressBook currently uses this format for regular custom fields:
X-KADDRESSBOOK-OrangeCellphone:123-456-7890

So simply appending "-PHONE" after "X-KADDRESSBOOK" would work. This is 100% vCard legal.
Comment 5 Dotan Cohen 2008-12-04 22:58:45 UTC
Now that Kaddressbook will be using Akonadi as the internal file format could this feature please be implemented? For export compatibility, see comment #4.
Comment 6 Tobias Koenig 2009-08-05 15:52:53 UTC
The development of the old KAddressBook will be discontinued for KDE 4.4.
Since the new application has the same name, but a completly new code base we close all bug reports against the old version and ask the submitters to resend there reports against the new product.
Comment 7 Dotan Cohen 2009-10-16 11:44:46 UTC
Thanks, Tobias, I am moving this feature request to the new Kaddressbook Product.
Comment 8 Tobias Koenig 2010-06-20 13:37:34 UTC
*** Bug 224032 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Janet 2010-06-20 18:54:30 UTC
As it is already possible to distinguish between Home, Work, Mobile, and so on phone numbers, the more important part IMHO is to accomplish the same for email addresses . You can collect a lot of email addresses for one person, but you have to remember which is work, which is private to not accidentally use the wrong address.
Comment 10 Justin Zobel 2021-03-09 02:34:08 UTC
Thank you for the bug report.

As this report hasn't seen any changes in 5 years or more, we ask if you can please confirm that the issue still persists.

If this bug is no longer persisting or relevant please change the status to resolved.