Harry Putnam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> [...] snip explanation of `net' field
>
> > Hope this clarifies things a bit.
>
> Yup, thanks. I agree, its probably time to change the `net' thing but
> can see where it isn't a big deal like it is.
Since this issue has come up...
What I tend to find is that the 'net' fields for most of my long-lived
records gradually cruft up over time with alternative addresses for
all sorts of reasons (company takeovers and rebranding; the vogue for
changing .co.uk to .com; policy decisions to change firstname_lastname
to firstname.lastname; individuals changing ISP or using temporary
web-based mail addresses; misconfigured mailers, and so on).
Even if some of these extra addresses are invalid or out of date,
there are still messages corresponding to almost all of them in my
mailboxes, so deleting them from the BBDB record is not a permanent
solution. For a lot of records they significantly outnumber
still-valid alternative addresses (many records have two or three
valid addresses, but very few have more than three).
I don't really want multiple, named, net fields, each containing a
single address (ie like phone fields) - this would be overkill to
maintain and even more cumbersome to use, and I can always remember
the semantic differences between valid addresses when I see them,
anyway. The model where the 'net' field can be a list, with the first
entry being the default address, works fine for valid addresses.
So what I would like is the ability to 'retire' an individual net
address - meaning that it would stay in the record (for use when
revisiting ancient messages, say) but not be subject to completion,
printing etc.
I don't see any real reason why this can't be done with an extra field
called something like 'obsolete-nets', subject to the addition of new
customizable variables to control how it is used and useful
interactive functions for manipulating it - although of course code
which now matches a net address willynilly would have to be changed
carefully depending on the context in which that net address was going
to be used. Making it a new field meansd upward compatibility should
be easy.
Does this sound sensible, is it the sort of thing which other people
would find useful, or is there a broader requirement and a better way
of doing it?
Patrick
_______________________________________________
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info
BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
