Re: [Proposal] New EUDC backend for macOS address book

[Alexander Adolf <alexander.adolf@condition-alpha.com>]

Hello Thomas,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. 

Thomas Fitzsimmons <fitzsim@fitzsim.org> writes:

> [...]
> It sounds like the AppleScript-based approach is superior and the way
> forward.  However, I'd still like to know more about how eudcb-mab.el
> failed, so that we can discuss backward compatibility.  Was the
> incorrect file path the only issue preventing eudcb-mab.el from working
> for you?

Frankly, I hadn't researched any further after discovering the file name
change. I suspected that Apple would have changed the file name for a
reason, and that further incompatibilities might be lurking.

> [...]
> Do you have a sense for how far back the AppleScript method will work?
> i.e., would it work on all systems on which eudcb-mab.el currently
> works?

Quoting from `man osascript`:

        [...]
        HISTORY

             osascript in Mac OS X 10.0 would translate `\r' characters
             in the output to `\n' and provided c and r modifiers for
             the -s option to change this.  osascript now always leaves
             the output alone; pipe through tr(1) if necessary.

             Prior to Mac OS X 10.4, osascript did not allow passing
             arguments to the script.
        [...]

I guess we can read this as osascript being available since macOS 10.0,
i.e. the year 2001. Thus, my take would be that wherever eudcb-mab.el
works, the AppleScript method works, too.

> Do you think we should maintain eudcb-mab and eudcb-macos-contacts in
> parallel, at least for a few releases, and recommend
> eudcb-macos-contacts to existing eudcb-mab users?
> [...]

That seems like a good thing to do, IMHO.


Cheers,

  --alexander