Re: Converting org-mode/org-contacts to VCard (importing to Android)

["Rüdiger Sonderfeld" <ruediger@c-plusplus.de>]

On Friday 22 November 2013 18:09:42 Karl Voit wrote:
> I have to admit that I don't know the feature-set of the Org-mode
> export. I would be very surprised, if the Org-mode export method is
> able to follow my custom "photo:" link I am using, grab the image
> file, test if it has a image format that works with VCard
> 2.1 on Android, and encodes it in base64 accordingly.

Org-contacts has an :ICON: property and supports Gravatar.  It doesn't seem to 
be handled in the VCard export though.
 
> You see: I want to have ways to tweak the export process. And as
> long as I don't know ELISP that well, I stick to the tools I know.

I understand that and it solved your problem for now.  But having an external 
tool in a different programming language is usually not a good idea to solve 
the problem in the long run.  The code base of org-contacts and your tool is 
under the risk of diverting quickly.  If it's in org-contacts then it is 
maintained in one piece and easily accessible to other users.

So my point is you should take a look at elisp.  It's a lot of fun to use and 
if you are using org-mode and Emacs then you will have to learn it sooner or 
later.

> A side remark of mine: a couple of months ago I tried to find out
> how to store address information, phone numbers, and so on in
> org-contact properties. AFAIR I could not find anything except the
> 
> :EMAIL: property. Is there a standard out there that answers
> 
> questions like "separate street from house number?", "how to cope
> with multiple addresses for one contact?", and so forth? I created
> something on my own as you can see on [1].

I have to admit the org-contacts format is pretty much ad-hoc and not really 
well designed.  It is documented a bit in the file itself 
(contrib/lisp/contacts.el).  M-x customize-group RET org-contacts RET should 
also tell you more about the options.

Your format choice is not fully compatible with the existing org-contacts.  
Right now multiple entries are separated by space (which sadly breaks for 
addresses) and different entry names are used.

However I'd look forward to some new ideas and improvements.  Right now it's 
not ideal solution.

Regards,
Rüdiger