[coldsync-hackers] Re: Palm-AddressDB Categories

[Shane Owenby <shane@collab.net>]

(Since it has been a few months I have left most of the important
parts of the message)

On Sat, Feb 17, 2001 at 10:47:20AM -0500, Andrew Arensburger wrote:
> On 16 Feb 2001 owner-coldsync-hackers@wallace.lusars.net wrote:
> [This bounced, but it's an interesting question, so I'm forwarding the
> gist and my answer to the list. -- AA]
> 
> > Is it possible to create a new category in AddressDB while leaving
> > the current ones as they are?
> >
> > Here is the situation.  Each person in my company has their Palm
> > with their own contacts, but each person would like to have a special
> > category in their Address book which only contains the
> > company phone/address/email list.
> >
> > I can make the new pdb, but when it gets installed it overwrites
> > the currently installed Address book.  Definitely not what I want
> > to happen.
> >
> > So I am curious if anyone knows how to 'merge' the users current Address
> > book with the output of the perl program I wrote to parse the comma
> > separated list.
> >
> > The perfect scenario would be to keep whatever they have in their
> > current address book, and add a new category which contains
> > the new listings.  I would even be happy with a totally new type
> > of address book....if the above can't be accomplished.
> 
> 	The way I'd do this is with a Fetch conduit: it should read the
> existing AddressDB.pdb (or create it if it doesn't exist), then:
> 	- Create the "Company" category if it doesn't exist. Use
> 	  &Palm::StdAppInfo::addCategory for this.
ok this makes sense, and I have that working.

> 	- Read the company-wide address book from
> 	  /usr/local/etc/company-phone-book, or wherever it lives.
> 	- For each address in the company phone book, add it to
> 	  AddressDB.pdb (and mark it dirty) if it isn't already there.
When I use append_Record there doesn't seem to be a way
to add the newly created record to a specific category.
(at least perldoc Palm::Address didn't give me any hints on how to
do it)

I can add the new record to the "Unfiled" category, but that isn't
what I am trying to accomplish.

Do I have to create the record in the Unfiled category then 
move it to the newly created "Company" category?
(that seems like a hack...but would work)

I am missing something?
> 	- For each record in AddressDB.pdb in category "Company", if
> 	  it's not in the company address book, mark it deleted.
yup.

> 
> 	There's no need for a corresponding Dump conduit since,
> presumably, you want desktop-overwrites-Palm.
> 
> 	You can stick this conduit in /usr/local/etc/coldsync.conf if
> you're running version 1.5.1 or later.

Thanks in advance for your answers.  Once I get this completed
(if I ever stop traveling) then I will submit it to the p5 script
archive we spoke of in the past weeks.

Shane

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