GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 730636
preserve parameter extensions (X-ABLabel)
Last modified: 2021-05-19 12:27:26 UTC
As described on the hackers list, SyncEvolution now stores custom labels as used by Apple and Google in a X-ABLabel parameter: EMAIL;X-ABLabel="new-remote-email-label":foo@example.com URL;X-ABLabel="example-url-label":http://www.example.com/foobar When editing any of these fields, the X-ABLabel gets lost. IMHO Evolution (and in general, any EDS client) should preserve unknown extensions. Tested with Evolution 3.4, the latest version I have readily available. If you think that this might be fixed in a later version, then please let me know and I'll try to test that.
Confirming, the custom parameters are lost after editing a contact in a contact editor, in current git master (before 3.13.3). The thing is that the editor usually just cleans up all the attributes it writes to and replaces the values with those in the editor, changed or not. Doing some kind of pairing of the widgets with vCard attributes would be possible for simple widgets like URL, but not for complex, like EMAIL and others, which use the dynamic table in current master. Against a real merge talks the ability to change (update or fix) the email address, should be left there the custom parameter? And what if only the type is changed, from Home to Work? What if user deletes the text and starts typing from an empty field? I think the most appropriate would be to use the labels and visually show them in UI, thus the user will be able to decide whether the labels should be there or not. This approach will not preserve any generic X-parameters, but I hope the few immediate issues I named above give enough explanation why it might not be doable in the general case.
I agree, if generic unknown parameter extensions cannot be preserved, then exposing X-ABLabel as a supported parameter is the right first step. It then can be followed by actually using the information in Evolution.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/Community/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new bug report ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.