GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 671996
Dispense with detail type headings
Last modified: 2013-03-21 00:15:24 UTC
Created attachment 209613 [details] wireframe - select detail type Contact details are currently organised by type into subheadings, so we have an 'Email' section and a 'Chat' section, for example. They can also have an additional string associated with them, such as 'Home' or 'Work' or a custom string. This helps to distinguish multiple details of the same type. One idea that has been put forward by Matthew Solle is to remove these headings. When adding a new detail, you would select from types like 'Personal Email' and 'Work Email' (as can be seen in the wireframe that I've attached). This could have a bunch of advantages, including allowing us to have a more streamlined process for adding details and new contacts. I'd like to discuss the feasibility of the idea.
A few questions off the top of my head: * Will this be flexible enough? What if I have three or four email addresses for one person? (We currently provide the facility to enter custom labels for the different details, for example.) * Are we able to detect the IM provider for chat addresses (eg. so that a Skype address is labelled 'Skype')? (I notice that I have to manually select the provider on Android.) If we can't, what do we do? * Can someone have more than one chat account with the same provider? If they can, how do we deal with that? * Do we need different (postal) address types?
Some responses... * Will this be flexible enough? What if I have three or four email addresses for one person? (We currently provide the facility to enter custom labels for the different details, for example.) - I think the model will support multiple email address - user can just add as many fields as they like and select the email address label. At present all the email addresses will group together but (not detailed here) we could also allow the user to easily reorder them to allow contact fields to be grouped in whichever way the user chooses. * Are we able to detect the IM provider for chat addresses (eg. so that a Skype address is labelled 'Skype')? (I notice that I have to manually select the provider on Android.) If we can't, what do we do? - If we can't maybe we just support a selection of different types in the label list * Can someone have more than one chat account with the same provider? If they can, how do we deal with that? - Yes, they should be allowed to. I think the account name would be the differentiator (ie matthew@gmail.com, matthews@gmail.com, matts@gmail.com) * Do we need different (postal) address types? - Do you mean different countries? if so. Yes. I think that works. What is the best way to support it? Some kind of auto detect maybe
This sounds reasonable to me... any views, Alex?
I think this is doable. Its just a new way to create a new piece of data in the contact, selecting both type (email/phone/etc) and detail at the same time. Its sort of relies on the fact that both sets of options are small so that the combined options don't create a huge ass menu of combination. (Although we need not necessarily have all the combinations in the menu, some you could pick a default for and then let you choose the detail after creation). And yes, we do support details for addresses (home/work/other/custom) just like all other fields (this is how vcard works). As for IM fields, well that whole area is a bit tricky. We don't really currently let you edit these fields manually, we just use them to link normal eds personas with telepathy personas for people in your buddy list. Since they are used for this, and since their format is complex, often ugly and need to be right for the linking to work we just ignore showing them inside the eds persona in favour of the just displaying the linked in telepathy persona.
This has been fixed. Thanks for your help, Matthew!