Address Preferences in gContactSync 0.2

Google and Thunderbird store postal addresses differently, so converting one format to the other is difficult.  Google’s fields have multiple lines while Thunderbird has 6 separate fields.  gContactSync 0.1 would take Thunderbird’s 6 address fields (Address, Address2, City, State, Zip Code, and Country) and convert them into a new field that allows multiple lines like Google when a new contact from Thunderbird was first synchronized.  Contacts from Google would have their addresses directly synchronized with the new fields in Thunderbird.  However, it converted them in a hard-coded format (the standard US format) and removed the values in the old fields unless a hidden preference was changed.

0.2 will have a new preferences tab, probably similar to the screenshot below that allows for customization of how addresses are converted.

Preferences about postal addresses

As you can see, you can customize how each address is created by placing the name of the property in brackets.  Anything not in brackets, such as spaces or punctuation,  is preserved.

You can find the properties used by Thunderbird here.

Here is the default for the home address, which is identical to the previous hard-coded method.

[HomeAddress]
[HomeAddress2]
[HomeCity], [HomeState]  [HomeZipCode]
[HomeCountry]

Lines that contain no letters are numbers are removed, so a contact with a HomeAddress and HomeCountry only will have two lines.

I’m going back home for the weekend so I won’t get much done with this over the weekend, but I would like to hear some opinions about how this looks and works.  If you don’t fully understand how it works from the description please let me know so I can make it more clear for you and everyone else.

I don’t have a version tested thoroughly enough and won’t for at least a week.  The newest source is in the CVS repository.