A common problem with address books is that people want to enter data in one program only, and then use it in many other programs, on other computers, and on their Palm pilots.
Bat is pretty good about address import/export, even supporting VCARD. I just downloaded PhoneDeck and was thinking about using it as my standard phone entry program. It's a great program, but right now does not support VCARD and uses a proprietary ASCII data format. Neither Bat nor PhoneDeck support what I really want, which is an XML address book. I am sure such formats have already been defined. What I'd like to suggest here is that Bat find the relevant schemas and use them in its code. There are plenty of free open-source XML parsers to choose from. In the C++ world I think Xerces is popular. XML is really beautiful in that it ensures longevity and migration capability for arbitrary data. It eliminates the need for "custom" file formats that are readable by only one program. This type of flexibility is ideal for address books that should be usable by multiple programs. Regards. Mark ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.62 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
