contacts merger

Disappearing plugins

If you have any application that adds buttons to the address book (like the contacts merger), you could have noticed that the buttons recently disappeared. This happened because of a bug in Monorail, the IM file transfer application.
Alban already fixed this bug and uploaded a new version to extras-devel. This new version also fixes other bugs, including a crash caused by the sharing plugin in Conboy.

Update: Note that you need to reboot or kill osso-addressbook after updating monorail to see the plugins again.

Contacts merger 0.1.3 in Maemo extras-testing

Since my previous post about the contacts merger, I fixed a crash, made it handle better broken vcards, improved the partial matching and made the installer quit the address book when the plugin is installed, so no reboot is needed.
The new 0.1.3 merger is now available in Maemo extras-testing, just look for “Merge your duplicate contacts” in the application manager.

What’s next

Suppose I could have some spare time to write some small applications relating to the N900 address book; what would you want me to work on? The application should be small and not require changes to the closed source components. Suggestions are welcome in the comments, but I cannot assure you anything :)

Update: I meant extras-testing of course, not extras

Finding duplicate contacts in your address book

One of the common complaints about the Maemo address book is that it’s easy to get a lot of duplicate contacts as the address book is able to pull your contacts from various IM services. From the beginning there has been a way to merge duplicates, but it meant manually going through all of your contacts hunting down the duplicates.
Today I finished writing the first version of a program that tries to automatically detect duplicates based on the IM names, emails, phone numbers and names. Of course this is just based on heuristics; you still have to go through the list and select the contacts that you want to merge. You can find this utility under the name “Merge your duplicate contacts” in the application manager and it’s available in Maemo extras-devel. Remember that extras-devel contains unstable software: enable it only if you really know what you are doing!
After installing Contacts Merger you have to reboot your phone[1] and then you will get a “Find duplicate contacts” button in the menu of the main address book window.

The window suggesting the possible merges
The window suggesting the possible merges

Update: I released 0.1.1 that fixes a crasher in case of malformed contacts.

Update 2: Forgot to say where to get the code.

[1] Sadly the address book doesn’t automatically load newly installed plugins without a restart; see bug #10542.