Re: ANN: MyFolks Framework (Apple AddressBook comp...

[Alex Perez]

> Hi,
>
> I've put an initial version of my MyFolks framework on my server. This
> framework adds Apple AddressBook API compatibility to GNUstep. It's
> been
Excellent! I have long awaited this. But, see below.
> written entirely from Apple's documentation; no code has been copied.
> Although this is only an initial release, everything is supported
> except for setting the "Me" record and searching. shane@gnufoo.org's
> "contacts" tool (available at
> http://gnufoo.org/contacts/contacts.html) compiles and works
> perfectly, as should most other applications that use Apple's API.
> There are probably still bugs which I haven't found yet.

1) By choosing the name MyFolks for the API (you may name the contacts
app whatever you choose, I could care less), we are doing what I see as
intentionally obfuscating what the API does. It's an Address Book api.
With all due respect to your choice of names, I don't like the term
MyFolks, and I know I'm not alone with that sentiment. In my opinion,
which I feel *very* strongly about in this instance, this framework
should be named the *SAME* (AddressBook, with the AB prefix) as Apple's
as it is basically 100% API compatible. You can't copyright or trademark
the term "Address Book". We use NS *everywhere* in GNUstep and this has
never been a problem.

I urge other people that either agree or disagree with me to chip in and
state their opinions on this issue. I think the API should be renamed,
and I think it should be done *before* it's in widespread use. Lets have
some balls here, naming something by its function is not something we're
going to get sued over.

As to the issue of API compatibility being a good reason for the
difference in naming (AB vs. MF), I think this is a non-issue as the API
is completely compatible. There's no real reason why you'd want to use the
MyFolks API on OS X that I can think of. The downsides outweigh the
upsides to this choice, IMHO.

Alex Perez
aperez@student.santarosa.edu

> I've not yet completed migration of Contacts.app to the new framework,
> so this is probably mostly of interest for app developers. However,
> the framework uses a different storage format than Contacts.app (a
> conversion should be trivial to write; anyone want to do that?).
> Therefore everybody who is using Contacts.app should stop doing so
> ASAP; an update is in the works and will be available in the next few
> days. I've pulled Contacts.app from my webpage.
>
> The framework is called "MyFolks" to avoid confusion with Apple's
> framework. For a similar reason, Contacts.app will be renamed to
> MyFolks.app to avoid confusion with the "contacts" command-line tool.
> The classes have been named differently (MF* instead of AB*) to be
> able to use both AddressBook.framework and MyFolks.framework in the
> same application, e.g. for migrating OSX address books to GNUstep.
> Please read the enclosed README file for further explanation on
> changes and extensions.
>
> MyFolks can be downloaded at
>         http://giesler.biz/bjoern/Downloads/MyFolks-0.1pre.tar.gz
>
> The archive contains the framework and a command-line tool which
> allows address book manipulation from the command line.
>
> Please test away!
>
> Regards,
> Björn