support for CardBook

[DJCrashdummy]

beforehand: your addon seems awesome and thanks for releasing your work as FOSS! 👍

since the default address book of Thunderbird is pretty outdated and more and more people are switching to CardBook (support for current vcf-versions & CardDAV), is it possible to also support the storage-backends of CardBook? (...or at least any of it?)

i know it could be a workaround to transfer the contacts back (for comparison) and forth, but this is a bit cumbersome and really hard for causal users... not to mention the problems with switching around between the different vcf-versions.

[DDvO]

Thanks for your comment and feature request.
I fully agree that the TB address book is to be strongly improved or replaced.
Good suggestion to consider supporting alternatives. Will do when I have time, which unfortunately is not the case in the near future.

[DJCrashdummy]

thanks for considering my feature request!

btw: CardBook also has a duplicate detection on its own, but yours seem more advanced and mature.
maybe it is possible to exchange code and collaborate with @CardBook (moved to https://gitlab.com/CardBook/CardBook) to "get the best of both worlds"? 😉

possibly integrating your add-on into CardBook (at the latest if CardBook replaces the old TB-addressbook) may also be worth considering... or removing any duplicate detection from CardBook itself at all, and list the "enhanced" Duplicate Contacts Manager as "Compatible and complementary add-ons" can also be reasonable.

[CardBook]

Hi all

ready for all options :O) do not hesitate to contact me directly :)

[stefmorp]

Sorry for entering this chat so many years later, I can add my experience in case someone stumbles upon this. I agree that this duplicates manager is much better than the very primitive one available in CardBook, this is the reason why I have started working on it to port it to TB128+

I work with CardBook and was taken by surprise when I discovered that it is incompatible with TB's built-in AddressBook - I thought they were working off the same db. But this is not the case. Also, add-ons cannot see each other's db so it is impossible to have this add-on see CardBook's db.

Willing to always have my cakes and eat them too, I devised a very simple solution:

1. Installed radicale on my Windows PC, and set it up to start at login with no password (visible only locally)
2. Created a CardDav addressbook on radicale
3. Pointed both CardBook and AddressBook to the radicale addressbook via CardDav
4. Exported all my contacts from CardBook onto a vcf file, and then imported the vcf file into the radicale addressbook, using the CardBook import
5. Run a sync on CardBook and subsequently on AddressBook

Voilà, I now have my addresses readily available in CardBook, and when I run the dedup add-on, it works off the AddressBook, stores the changes on radicale, and at the next sync updates CardBook.

Just a word of caution - do not make change to the contacts from both sides simultaneously or you may encounter sync issues. Run the dedup and then the sync; only after the sync is complete you can start making changes on CardBook.

Of course, if you already host your CardBook on a CardDav contact book server such as Outlook or Gmail, in order to have your contacts both on your PC and your phone, you have no need to use radicale!