[distribution widened, as I think .mail-news readers are likely to care
about this]
Csaba Borbola wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> thanks for the answers Kevin and Dan.
> I won't do much work this week, because I'm on a course.
>
> My part in the LDAP address book project is to do the preferences.
> I would like to know, how did you think to do the preferences settings
> for the autocompletion.
A very timely question... a few of us eClient folks sat down just
yesterday and came up with a straw-man proposal on this very thing.
> If you want to use the autocompletion, somewhere you have to specify the
> Directory Server settings, don't you?
> Are you going to do the way as Netscape 4.x has?
What we came up with is something like what Netscape 4.x does, but put
together in a way that fits into the Mozilla preferences style. It has
separate panes for Directory, Addressbook, and Autocompletion prefs, and
we've started out only by specifying the Directory and Autocompletion
panes, since that's what we're concentrating on first.
<http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/proposals/LDAPAddressingPrefs.html>
is an approximate description of what we came up with (unfortunately
couched in my rather terse note-taking style). We'd love to hear
feedback from any and all corners, especially from the current Mozilla
owners of the addressbook preferences UI.
> I did a short investigation at the beginning about the problem. This is
> really a short description. I attach that at the end of my mail.
>
> So it would be really nice to clarify the overlapping tasks
> corresponding the preferences work, because there is no point to
> do the same work twice.
Absolutely; I look forward to your comments.
> Thanks
>
>
> Csaba
>
>
>
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> LDAP related settings in Netscape 4.7:
>
> In address book :
> Add directory menu point -> Dialog is asking for the followings:
>
> Description - name appearing in the left pane
> LDAP server - name of the LDAP directory server
> Server Root - this is the search base inside the directory tree
> Port number - LDAP directory server port number
> Max. number of hits - max number of matches for the query
>
> checkbox for login with name and password - if you tick it, the
> Netscape will drop you out a login name and password dialog
> box before connedcting the directory server
>
> checkbox for secure mode
>
>
>
> Edit menu point -> Preferences -> Mail & Newsgroups -> Addressing
>
> Look for addresses in the following:
> checkbox for local addressbook
> checkbox for Directory server
> drop down box for selecting from the installed directory servers
>
> When there are multiple addresses found:
> show me a list of choices and accept what i have typed selective
> radio buttons
> checkbox for the case, if there is one match in autocompletion
>
>
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> Classification of the features above:
>
> The whole Addressing section in preferences is related to the
> autocompletion.
>
> There are two types of preferences:
> - one is stored in the prefs.js file in the ~/.mozilla/default
> directory
>
> - the other is stored in an other java script file, which is stored
> among the installed binary files (I'll call them hidden)
>
> Almost all the autocompletion related settings are stored in the hidden
> preferences.
I guess I don't understand the point of the hidden file. Why not store
all preferences in prefs.js?
> There are stored the following settings in the prefs.js file:
> -autocompletion enabled
> -csid (UTF-8)
What's a csid?
> -description of the LDAP server
> -filename of the adressbook file
For storing a local copy of the LDAP data?
> -max. hits
> -port number of LDAP server
> -position of the addressbook in the adressbook list
> -search base, ie. Server Root
> -LDAP server name
>
> ********************************************************************
>
> I suggest to store the following extra preferences:
>
> - list of secondary ldap server in case of a not responding primary
> LDAP server
Is this necessary? I would assume that when an admin has multiple LDAP
servers, they'd just have multiple DNS A records pointing the single
server name to multiple IP addresses, which would be returned in a
single array by gethostbyname().
Dan
