Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
- Subject: Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
- From: Chilton Webb <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 13:58:48 -0600
I'd like to know why there's a proprietary format here anyway. I thought
with the proliferation of XML, we'd at least be able to store something
as simple as our contact info in such a format.
As for the fear of having it used by viruses, etc., I'm more fearful of
a virus actually *destroying* my data than doing something annoying with
it.
-Chilton
On Sunday, December 30, 2001, at 01:32 PM, Brant Vasilieff wrote:
I've been asking for access for over a year now. So far no one from
Apple wants to comment. It's a shame really, because, if Apple doesn't
make it accessible to developers, I'll be forced to write my own
address book. It's not a pretty thought from an end users point of
view, as it would be so much nicer to have one centralized location for
tracking the people you need to reach.
I can certainly understand any reluctance to have it silently used by
viruses and trojan horses, but there are ways to solve that. When an
application wants to access the address book, the address book could
authenticate the request, and ask the user if it's OK for your calendar
or other application to access the data.
You can drag contacts from the address book, they drag as VCards
(ABVCardStringPBoardType), and accept the drop in your application,
They also supply a record ID as one of the drag flavors, but I have yet
to figure out how to extract data from the address book directly.