On Dec 10, 2011 at 02:55 PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
So, does everyone here use abook, or nothing, or just have all their E-Mail addresses in mutt aliases, or what? Any suggestions would be very welcome.
This isn't going to be very useful to you since you are using Linux and I'm on OS X, but it might give you some ideas. I use the OS X built in Address Book app. It's got a goofy GUI, but now that Apple has released iCloud (for free!), my contacts sync wirelessly automatically between my phone, my computer, and Apple's iCloud web mail (not that I use that). The syncing between my phone and computer are the big features for me. It is also nice that it keeps track of physical addresses, phone numbers, IM names, etc - all of which my phone can utilize I might add. Lastly, lot's of apps on OS X tap into the Address Book database, so having my contacts in there makes using OS X generally a nicer experience.
I also use lbdb in mutt. There's a helper that queries the OS X address book, so I can run a query by hitting ^T and search the address book. I have lbdb setup to also scrape addresses from outgoing messages and store them. So when I run the ^T query, not only does it search the OS X address book, but it also checks the outgoing address list. One could also run searches against LDAP if you desired.
I also use a simple mutt alias file for my most commonly used addresses where I want to define a nickname to use. Like 'mom' or 'mike'. I have many Mike's I correspond with, including both my brother and my boss. You can imagine I send completely different types of correspondences to those two, so I want to make sure I have no mix ups. I've defined 'mike' as my brother and 'boss' as my boss.
The last bit of glue I use is a python script that dumps the OS X address book into mutt alias format. This happens nightly via a cron job. I do this so I can quickly use tab completion when typing in addresses and also to access the groups I have defined in the OS X address book. This way I can define hooks in mutt based on those groups.
It all sounds much more complicated than it actually is in use. When getting a new contact, I enter it in my phone if on the road, or add it to the Address Book app. When composing emails, I start typing who I want to address an email to and hit tab. If that alias doesn't come up either from my commonly used alias file or from the Address Book dump alias file, I hit ^T and query lbdb.
