MailNews:Address Book RoadMap

This isn't detailed, nor does it have timescales, nor has it been agreed between developers, it is more where we currently appear to be heading in the short term. Eventually, if we get some more active support, we may be able to improve it a bit more.

Work In Progress

• Drag and Drop fixes (bug 35837 & others).
• Tidy up and rework of the address book preferences/settings backend - Standard8.
  • This will give us a more flexible back end that will make it easier to add new types of address book.
  • This includes:
    • removal of redundant code.
    • removal of duplicate code/optimisation of existing code.
    • possible moving of pref backend functions from nsDirPrefs into the classes that define the directories themselves as this would be more appropriate.
    • finally the removal of the nsDirPrefs code.

Short Term Goals

• Address Book autocomplete transfer to toolkit.
• Basic vcard redesign work - Mhovis
  • Expand contact database to include a superset of all supported protocols / card versions, including sync tokens.
  • Provide a framework to allow third-party protocols bi-directional interaction with a persistance abstraction layer for the contact database(s). This would possibly use a network of contact observers.
  • Each consumer of the framework would implement a "view" of the abstracted contact persistence layer, adding columns and interfaces to the persistence layer if needed.
  • Translations between the different "views" would have to be considered if inputting from one interface and outputting to another (in essence using the persistence layer) is not sufficient.
  • Possible relevant link libvcard? http://freshmeat.net/projects/libvc/

Medium Term Goals

• Relayout the new/edit card dialogs.
  • This would be to solve our current screen size issue,
  • And would also be in preparation for the addition of more fields.
  • MailNews: Address Book Card Fields - what fields do we want?
• Writeable LDAP address books.
• A possible new backend for the address book, see MailNews:Address Book Native Formats.

Long Term Goals

• Pluggable address books
  • A system whereby extra definitions for different formats/address book interfaces may be bolted onto the main address book code without need for major code rework. (things to remember: device synchronisation)
• Device Synchronisation Interfaces
  • See Device Sync
• Some kind of generic interface for import/export etc of different types of cards and books.
• Extension of formats that we interface to: MailNews:Address Book Interface Formats.
• Better Handling of Large Searches in Address Book MailNews:LDAP and Large Searches.