What tools are need to code an addressbook?

ruby-talk
1

Dear fellow ruby-enthusiasts,

once again I come to you for guidance. I want to code my own address-book
management program but could use your expertise with respect to the
tools I should use to achieve this end. Concretely:

1 - What is a good file storage format ?
2 - What can I use to code some kind of interface ?
3 - How do I ‘pretty-print’ my address-book ?

I’ve did some thinking on these questions with limited success … I
think YAML is a good file storage choice in my situation and it is very
easy to use. I’ve thought about a web-interface for the UI but they are
awkward to code. I’d love to use libncurses-ruby but since I have no
experience whatsoever in ncurses I wonder if it is not too difficult …
As for my third point … I have no idea how to generate pretty
postscript files from ruby.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this matter and/or your
experiences with the above-mentioned approaches. Keep in mind that I am
looking for a reasonably easy solution that is to be deployed on a Linux
system.

Thanks in advance,
Simon

P.S.: For those of you who wonder why I am coding my own address-book
while so many already exist I will say: show me an address-book that
meets all the following criteria and I will be more than happy to give
up my program.

  1. Allows for an unlimited number of addresses and email-addresses per person.
    Supports filtering people by category.
  2. Several ways to print the information: by category, phone-list,
    birthday-list, …
  3. File-format that can easily be parsed (by a ruby-script for example) so
    that I am not locked in.
  4. Super-light user interface (no mozilla, kde, and the like), preferably
    text-based.
···

–
There are 10 types of people in the world…
those who understand binary and those who don’t.

2

i would reccomend an embedded database such as sqlite or berkeley db, both of
which have interfaces on the raa. sqlite would seem more attractive for
excuting searches…

-a

···

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Simon Vandemoortele wrote:

Dear fellow ruby-enthusiasts,

once again I come to you for guidance. I want to code my own address-book
management program but could use your expertise with respect to the
tools I should use to achieve this end. Concretely:

1 - What is a good file storage format ?

–

Ara Howard
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory
Information and Technology Services
Data Systems Group
R/FST 325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80305-3328
Email: ahoward@fsl.noaa.gov
Phone: 303-497-7238
Fax: 303-497-7259
====================================

3

1 - What is a good file storage format ? … why not LDAP ?
2 - What can I use to code some kind of interface ?.. ruby/tk =)

Simon Vandemoortele wrote:

···

Dear fellow ruby-enthusiasts,

once again I come to you for guidance. I want to code my own address-book
management program but could use your expertise with respect to the
tools I should use to achieve this end. Concretely:

1 - What is a good file storage format ?
2 - What can I use to code some kind of interface ?
3 - How do I ‘pretty-print’ my address-book ?

I’ve did some thinking on these questions with limited success … I
think YAML is a good file storage choice in my situation and it is very
easy to use. I’ve thought about a web-interface for the UI but they are
awkward to code. I’d love to use libncurses-ruby but since I have no
experience whatsoever in ncurses I wonder if it is not too difficult …
As for my third point … I have no idea how to generate pretty
postscript files from ruby.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this matter and/or your
experiences with the above-mentioned approaches. Keep in mind that I am
looking for a reasonably easy solution that is to be deployed on a Linux
system.

Thanks in advance,
Simon

P.S.: For those of you who wonder why I am coding my own address-book
while so many already exist I will say: show me an address-book that
meets all the following criteria and I will be more than happy to give
up my program.

  1. Allows for an unlimited number of addresses and email-addresses per person.
    Supports filtering people by category.
  2. Several ways to print the information: by category, phone-list,
    birthday-list, …
  3. File-format that can easily be parsed (by a ruby-script for example) so
    that I am not locked in.
  4. Super-light user interface (no mozilla, kde, and the like), preferably
    text-based.