Re: [Linphone-users] How to sync contact list?

[Andrew Savchenko]

Hello,

On Tue, 17 May 2011 12:46:12 +0100 Alastair Johnson wrote:
> I suggest one, other or preferably both of:
> 1 - Use a basic format that EDS, Akonadi, OpenSync and other sync tools can 
> already understand. Such a format should already have libs available to make 
> using it simple and robust. vCard 3.0 with the X-SIP extended attribute is my 
> best guess for this.

You will never be able to satisfy anyone's opinion. There are plenty
of "common" formats and even the sense of what is common and what is
not may differ.

For the very first, it is not so important which format will be used
at all. What matters is that contact data must be stored separated
from program config file, thus synchronization between different
linphone clients will be easy.

> 2 - Make it plugable. People can add support for other backends if they don't 
> like your choice(s), or you can add them as demand appears.
> 
> Whatever the individual merits of Akonadi, EDS, CouchDB/desktopcouch, Google 
> and so on, none are suitable for all situations where linphone might be 
> deployed.

This will take a considerable time effort and will never cover all
possible formats in use these days. 

For my personal opinion something simple and human readable should be
sufficient. I do not want to use complicated and bloated databases
like akonadi just to save simple contact lists. VCards are not so
good also, because UTF-8 strings are often saved there in completely
unreadable format and you need special viewer/editor/script to handle
them.

I am happy with current simple format, but ask to separate contacts
and config options. For the first step this should be sufficient.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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