Re: making address formatting more flexible

2011-02-09 Thread Luca Capello 
Hi there!

Please do not Cc: me, I read the list.

On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:13:39 +0100, Johnny wrote:
> Luca Capello  writes:
>
>> I do not think there is even a *used* standard within a single country,
>> at least here in Switzerland I saw different layouts sometime according
>> to where the sender lives (French/German/Italian part).  And none of the
>> examples at the UPU website uses this ISO-3166 supposed standard:
>>
>>   
>> <http://www.upu.int/en/activities/addressing/postal-addressing-systems-in-member-countries.html>
> This is an international problem of cooperation. If there is an
> International Standard, supported by an Organisation (yes, ISO was
> intentionally capitalised), it should be adhered to, unless there is
> compelling evidence to the contrary (of outstanding benefit).

Fully agree.

> I think, in this case, it is merely a topic of custom and practice I
> think, and if any practice is to be adopted for an application with
> international usage, an internationally accepted standard should be
> adhered to, if at least to support and strengthen the collaborative
> effort, which I believe FOSS and Gnu is all about.
>
> If bbdb is going to use any country abbreviations, they should be
> according to ISO is my opinion. However, as far as I am aware, postcodes
> do not appear in ISO and should be locally (user) specified.

Please note that we were not discussing about country abbreviations, but
about the label for the postal code.  Now that I thought a bit more
about it, given that we use "postcards" we should use "postcode" and not
"postal code" as I previously suggested.

Going back to country abbreviations, FWIW BBDB-2 already adheres to the
EU standard (which as I reported is not even respected by the UPU):

  |-+-|
  | file| elisp code  |
  |-+-|
  | bbdb.el | `bbdb-format-address-continental'   |
  | bbdb-com.el | `bbdb-legal-zip-codes'  |
  | bbdb-migrate.el | ` bbdb-unmigrate-zip-codes-to-strings'  |
  | bbdb-print.el   | `bbdb-print-format-address-continental' |
  |-+-|

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca


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Re: making address formatting more flexible

2011-02-07 Thread Luca Capello 
Hi there!

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 05:31:50 +0100, Roland Winkler wrote:
> On Wed Feb 2 2011 Johnny wrote:
>> This is a good idea; the current BBDB handling seems very
>> US-centered. For one, I think "Postal code" should replace the American
>> term "Zip code" as default naming, as this seems to be the generic
>> term.
>
> This becomes yet more complicated. I vaguely remember that some
> other english-speaking countries use yet different names instead of
> "zip code" and "postal code", but I forgot where it was and what
> their alternative terminology was...

Well, I would say that by default we should use the same term used by
the UPU, which is "Postcode" [1], albeit quite surprisingly the main
article on Wikipedia is referred as "Postal Code":

  
  

FWIW, here a small survey on some websites:

  easyJet.com > Postcode/Zip
  Amazon.com  > ZIP
  eBay.it > CAP (Italian for 'Postal Code')
  PayPal.com  > Postal Code (localized, CH-...)
  FSF.org > ZIP/Postal Code
  FSFE.org> Post Code

>> > If I remember correctly, Europe introduced zip codes like CH-8052,
>> > NL-2300RA, and SE-132 54
>> I guess this stems from ISO-3166? It does seem appealing to use this
>> standard, but it could take some effort to implement; e.g. would a
>> lookup table be necessary?
>
> I am impressed what is covered by some ISO-xyz! Yet I guess what
> matters in the end is what people actually like to use in real life...

I do not think there is even a *used* standard within a single country,
at least here in Switzerland I saw different layouts sometime according
to where the sender lives (French/German/Italian part).  And none of the
examples at the UPU website uses this ISO-3166 supposed standard:

  


>> > I am not yet sure what is the best way how to combine a look-up table
>> > based on country names with a zip-based scheme.
>> Wikipedia lists a few formattings of postal codes; however this is not
>> defined in ISO-3166. Maybe there's some other source for this though...
>
> Well, I want to ask: Is the scheme I proposed general enough to make
> most people happy? Or is it necessary to have something yet more
> complicated (and possibly less user-friendly? I wouldn't like that
> either...)

Your proposed scheme is enough customizable, so the situation will be
improved anyway WRT the actual US/EU dichotomy ;-)

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca


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Different www-* fields (was Re: Name with title)

2007-12-04 Thread Luca Capello 
Hi all!

Sorry for my intrusion ;-)

On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:27:40 +0100, Robert Widhopf-Fenk wrote:
> On Monday, December 3, 2007 at 02:14:01, Leo wrote:
>> On 2007-11-26 22:57 +, Robert Widhopf-Fenk wrote:
>>> On Saturday, November 24, 2007 at 00:24:28, Leo wrote:
 BTW, more and more I find bbdb can not record some info
 correctly. For example some contacts have work and personal 'www'
 and there is no easy way to indicate this in bbdb.
>>>
>>> Add a new field www-home. 
>>
>> www-home can do but looks ugly.
>
> So what looks "cute"?
>
> Do you want the www field to be an associative list?
>
> How would it look like?

I think the main problem with `www' (and with `net') is that people can
have a professional and a private address (like the `address' or `phone'
fields).

I don't know how the vcard format describes these fields, however.  So I
don't really know the best answer to this problem.

Thx, bye,
Gismo / lUca

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Re: OpenSync plugin

2007-05-07 Thread Luca Capello 
Hello!

On Sun, 06 May 2007 20:38:44 +0200, Aaron Kaplan wrote:
> On Sun, 06 May 2007 16:11:13 +0200, "Luca Capello" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>> While I think my original flowchart is still the best option, it
>> implies that emacs is running.  Thus I started thinking about a
>> different solution, where all the steps are executed by the OpenSync
>> plugin.  This means that the plugin should be able to extracts BBDB
>> contacts and then insert them back if modified, maybe performing a
>> backup of the BBDB file and writing into a new one.
>
> That's what SyncBBDB does.

Oh, I forgot about SyncBBDB, thank you for reminding me about it.

> You have to be careful about the possiblity of a write conflict
> between the sync program and a running emacs: if you have unsaved
> bbdb changes in emacs when you sync, and you save them after the
> sync, you'll wipe out the changes that the sync program made.

Yes, I'm aware of this possibility.

> In its default configuration, SyncBBDB avoids this by using emacs
> client to tell emacs to evaluate (bbdb-save-bbdb) before syncing and
> (bbdb-records) after syncing.  If emacs isn't running, then
> emacsclient fails, but then there's no risk so you can just ignore
> the error.

Well, I'd like to avoid any interaction with emacs, because otherwise
I'd more inclined to code a part of the plugin in elisp.

Moreover, AFAIK you missed one situation: emacs is running, but
`server-start' hasn't been executed, thus emacsclient cannot connect
to the running emacs.

I think that for now I won't care about this point, putting a big
warning about the fact that it's better to save any BBDB changes
before syncing :-D

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

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OpenSync plugin

2007-05-06 Thread Luca Capello 
Hello,

sorry if it's considered too off-topic.

Quite a long time ago I expressed my idea to synchronize
Emacs-PIM-data with my mobile phone [1].  And now I'm going to start
coding it, but I refactored my idea and I'd like some comments.
Moreover, I posted here because I care the most for my contatcs than
my calendar.

While I think my original flowchart is still the best option, it
implies that emacs is running.  Thus I started thinking about a
different solution, where all the steps are executed by the OpenSync
plugin.  This means that the plugin should be able to extracts BBDB
contacts and then insert them back if modified, maybe performing a
backup of the BBDB file and writing into a new one.

Suggestions and/or comments?

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

Footnotes: 
[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.wiki.general/3805

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Re: ensure ~/.bbdb never becomes non utf-8 again

2006-02-27 Thread Luca Capello 
Hello!

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:20:02 +0100, Sam Steingold wrote:
>> * Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-02-26 10:47:24 +0800]:
>>
>> OK, I am putting
>> ;; -*-coding: utf-8;-*-
>> at the top of ~/.bbdb .
[...]
> I have not had this problem since I put in my .emacs this:
>
> (setq bbdb-file-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)
> (add-hook 'bbdb-load-hook
>   (lambda () (setq bbdb-file-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)))

I don't know when I found the following, but I've in my .emacs:

=
;; define the coding system
;; http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/faq.html
(setq file-coding-system-alist 
  (cons '("\\.bbdb" utf-8 . utf-8) 
file-coding-system-alist))
=

I just checked the FAQ page and there's no reference to the coding
system, but I'm sure I got from the BBDB FAQ page.  And it seems to
work ;-)

HTH!

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca


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