Standard for address books ?

[jamie]

On Thu, 2007-11-29 at 18:44 +0100, Antoni Mylka wrote:
> 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.

Its actually covered by freedesktop XESAM which both tracker and nepomuk
will implement. (think of tracker as a cutdown nepomuk without the nasty
rdf complexity!)

They both have the storage and metadata capability to fulfill this
requirement

It is as you say a long term move to replace the incumbent stores

jamie