Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 02:22:39AM -0500, Patrice Levesque wrote: So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome. If I found something that could synchronize my (any) phone as well then I'd be *very* happy! :-) My current setup does just that. - OpenLDAP acts as the addressbook container; - Horde's Turba acts as a web-based data entry frontend; - Horde's Turba can also deal with phone two-way synchronization mechanism (via ActiveSync), if you use Horde ≥ 4 and Turba ≥ 3. I've often toyed with Horde but have never actually really got into it, maybe I should revisit it. The phone sync setup can easily accomodate calendars as well if you add Horde's Kronolith. You may also handle mail via Horde's Imp as a web-based plan B (I like a shell environment on my cellphone but I understand it's not everyone's taste, especially for those without a physical keyboard; native smartphone mail apps often suck) and you could even deal with mail filters (think procmail or sieve) using Horde's Ingo. My mail is stored in IMAP, don't know about your setup, so YMMV. Turba works well enough (though clumsily) in a text-based browser like ELinks if you want to add contacts without leaving the comfort of your shell. (No, this is not a Horde selling pitch! I'm getting back to the subject at hand, now!) Mutt accesses OpenLDAP via a thin shell script; my OpenLDAP server is located thousands of miles away and the Ctrl-T completion seldom takes more than 2 seconds. Of course, all that may seem like overhead just to get e-mail address completion, but I like to think of it the other way around; mutt fits in *nicely* in that ecosystem ;) Yes, that's the way round I am really. I want a good/comfortable contacts manager for lots of reasons other than using it with mutt, being able to extract E-Mail addresses to mutt is just a bonus. -- Chris Green
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
Yes, that's the way round I am really. I want a good/comfortable contacts manager for lots of reasons other than using it with mutt, being able to extract E-Mail addresses to mutt is just a bonus. I can't stress enough then that you *want* to build around a LDAP server; maybe Horde won't float your boat but any respectable addressbook application will be able to hook into LDAP. Even Evolution if you ever miss it someday ;) -- --|-- | Patrice Levesque http://ptaff.ca/ mutt.wa...@ptaff.ca | --|-- -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome. If I found something that could synchronize my (any) phone as well then I'd be *very* happy! :-) My current setup does just that. - OpenLDAP acts as the addressbook container; - Horde's Turba acts as a web-based data entry frontend; - Horde's Turba can also deal with phone two-way synchronization mechanism (via ActiveSync), if you use Horde ≥ 4 and Turba ≥ 3. The phone sync setup can easily accomodate calendars as well if you add Horde's Kronolith. You may also handle mail via Horde's Imp as a web-based plan B (I like a shell environment on my cellphone but I understand it's not everyone's taste, especially for those without a physical keyboard; native smartphone mail apps often suck) and you could even deal with mail filters (think procmail or sieve) using Horde's Ingo. My mail is stored in IMAP, don't know about your setup, so YMMV. Turba works well enough (though clumsily) in a text-based browser like ELinks if you want to add contacts without leaving the comfort of your shell. (No, this is not a Horde selling pitch! I'm getting back to the subject at hand, now!) Mutt accesses OpenLDAP via a thin shell script; my OpenLDAP server is located thousands of miles away and the Ctrl-T completion seldom takes more than 2 seconds. Of course, all that may seem like overhead just to get e-mail address completion, but I like to think of it the other way around; mutt fits in *nicely* in that ecosystem ;) -- --|-- | Patrice Levesque http://ptaff.ca/ mutt.wa...@ptaff.ca | --|-- -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
I currently use the Evolution Contacts list for contacts, with a Python script that I have written to extract E-Mail addresses to mutt (via Ctrl-T etc.). I'm getting fed up with Evolution's slowness, crap user interface and non-standard storage format so I'm looking for alternatives, so far I've had very little luck even though I have cast my net pretty far looking at everything from abook to full-blown web groupware. My requirements are:- Storage of full contact information, i.e. postal address and telephone numbers as well as E-Mail address. Standard storage format (e.g. vCard or LDAP) so that it's easy to access, convert and move around. This isn't *absolutely* necessary, a program that provides all I want and stores data in some strange format might be acceptable. Fast and lightweight, I don't want to have to wait a long time while the program loads and I want the UI to be fast. This is where Evolution falls down, on my fairly modern and fast (quad processor, SATA disks) system it takes 5 seconds or so to simply start up. Simple, straightforward data entry, search, etc., again Evolution is bad (IMHO) here, I find the user interface to Contacts confusing and clumsy. I've played with abook but it doesn't really quite do it for me, I've nothing against it being text mode (I'm a mutt user after all) but entering full contact data really isn't its forté and I do want to keep all user contact data in one place. I think a small desktop GUI would be my ideal solution but a web based program (if fast and light) might be a possibility too. So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome. -- Chris Green
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
On Dec 10, 2011 at 02:55 PM +, Chris Green wrote: So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome. This isn't going to be very useful to you since you are using Linux and I'm on OS X, but it might give you some ideas. I use the OS X built in Address Book app. It's got a goofy GUI, but now that Apple has released iCloud (for free!), my contacts sync wirelessly automatically between my phone, my computer, and Apple's iCloud web mail (not that I use that). The syncing between my phone and computer are the big features for me. It is also nice that it keeps track of physical addresses, phone numbers, IM names, etc - all of which my phone can utilize I might add. Lastly, lot's of apps on OS X tap into the Address Book database, so having my contacts in there makes using OS X generally a nicer experience. I also use lbdb in mutt. There's a helper that queries the OS X address book, so I can run a query by hitting ^T and search the address book. I have lbdb setup to also scrape addresses from outgoing messages and store them. So when I run the ^T query, not only does it search the OS X address book, but it also checks the outgoing address list. One could also run searches against LDAP if you desired. I also use a simple mutt alias file for my most commonly used addresses where I want to define a nickname to use. Like 'mom' or 'mike'. I have many Mike's I correspond with, including both my brother and my boss. You can imagine I send completely different types of correspondences to those two, so I want to make sure I have no mix ups. I've defined 'mike' as my brother and 'boss' as my boss. The last bit of glue I use is a python script that dumps the OS X address book into mutt alias format. This happens nightly via a cron job. I do this so I can quickly use tab completion when typing in addresses and also to access the groups I have defined in the OS X address book. This way I can define hooks in mutt based on those groups. It all sounds much more complicated than it actually is in use. When getting a new contact, I enter it in my phone if on the road, or add it to the Address Book app. When composing emails, I start typing who I want to address an email to and hit tab. If that alias doesn't come up either from my commonly used alias file or from the Address Book dump alias file, I hit ^T and query lbdb.
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 11:25:28AM -0500, Tim Gray wrote: On Dec 10, 2011 at 02:55 PM +, Chris Green wrote: So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome. This isn't going to be very useful to you since you are using Linux and I'm on OS X, but it might give you some ideas. I use the OS X built in Address Book app. It's got a goofy GUI, but now that Apple has released iCloud (for free!), my contacts sync wirelessly automatically between my phone, my computer, and Apple's iCloud web mail (not that I use that). The syncing between my phone and computer are the big features for me. It is also nice that it keeps track of physical addresses, phone numbers, IM names, etc - all of which my phone can utilize I might add. Lastly, lot's of apps on OS X tap into the Address Book database, so having my contacts in there makes using OS X generally a nicer experience. If I found something that could synchronize my (any) phone as well then I'd be *very* happy! :-) I also use lbdb in mutt. There's a helper that queries the OS X address book, so I can run a query by hitting ^T and search the address book. I have lbdb setup to also scrape addresses from outgoing messages and store them. So when I run the ^T query, not only does it search the OS X address book, but it also checks the outgoing address list. One could also run searches against LDAP if you desired. lbdb is good to know about, thank you. It means that I can choose almost any program for my address book and can link it to mutt. I also use a simple mutt alias file for my most commonly used addresses where I want to define a nickname to use. Like 'mom' or 'mike'. I have many Mike's I correspond with, including both my brother and my boss. You can imagine I send completely different types of correspondences to those two, so I want to make sure I have no mix ups. I've defined 'mike' as my brother and 'boss' as my boss. The last bit of glue I use is a python script that dumps the OS X address book into mutt alias format. This happens nightly via a cron job. I do this so I can quickly use tab completion when typing in addresses and also to access the groups I have defined in the OS X address book. This way I can define hooks in mutt based on those groups. It all sounds much more complicated than it actually is in use. When getting a new contact, I enter it in my phone if on the road, or add it to the Address Book app. When composing emails, I start typing who I want to address an email to and hit tab. If that alias doesn't come up either from my commonly used alias file or from the Address Book dump alias file, I hit ^T and query lbdb. No, doesn't sound very complex, what I need is the equivalent of that Address Book program you're using. -- Chris Green
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
On Saturday, 10 December 2011 at 17:38, Chris Green wrote: No, doesn't sound very complex, what I need is the equivalent of that Address Book program you're using. There's also goobook (which could easily be wired into lbdb) for synchronizing everything with google contacts. It'll let you sync with your android phone too.
Re: Address Book/Contacts utilities that work (well) with mutt - what's out there?
On Dec 10, 2011 at 05:38 PM +, Chris Green wrote: lbdb is good to know about, thank you. It means that I can choose almost any program for my address book and can link it to mutt. lbdb is the glue which makes it all happen really. It's a great program.