Standard for address books ?

[Antoni Mylka]

Mildred pisze:
> Hi,
> 
> I wonder if it could be possible to elaborate a standard to let all
> applications on current free desktops share the same address book ?
> 
> For example it would permit to share the same contacts between for
> example:
> - claws-mail
> - kopete
> - kmail
> - evolution
> - ...
> 
> Why this is important ? because I don't ant to open my MUA to search
> for phone numbers, because I think my jabber client should be
> integrated with my address book, ...
> 
> I know that actually KDE have a central address book that can be used by
> all KDE applications, but I would like to have this possibility with
> all applications and not to be forced in any way.
> 
> For example we could imagine a standard (and extensible) database using
> for example LDIF and stored in ~/.local/share/addresses/ And then we
> could configure every software to use this database (or not).
> 
> I would like to see the same things with Mails (be able to switch MUA
> without loosing all the mails in local folders), but I think it is more
> important to start with contacts. Moreover, you don't change your MUA
> every day.
> 
> 
> So what do you think ?
> 
> Maybe my idea of a shared database is not really good, but I don't see
> something else. If you have any ideas, please share.
> 
> Also, if a such standard exists, I didn't find it (and it is obviously
> not applied), please give me pointers.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Mildred.
> 

This is what the Nepomuk Semantic Desktop is trying to do. A common data 
format (RDF), a common extensible schema (Nepomuk Contact Ontology), 
single database with everything (RDF Repository) and a multitude of 
various applications that do cool stuff integrating mails with contacts 
with calendar entries (well, maybe not yet :). This is the vision. The 
reality doesn't look that nice (yet), but the technologies themselves 
have been designed exactly for this kind of integration so the potential 
is there.

http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org
http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/2007/03/22/nco/

Antoni Mylka
antoni.mylka at dfki.de