A Project On Integrating VCard File Format For Import And Export

#1

The VCard Contacts .vcf file format seems to me to be the most universal handled by all kinds of devices. It makes sense to have TiddlyWiki one of the ways we can store our contacts.

@pmario posted at “Any CalDAV or WebDAV server plugin?” that .vcf files can be imported properly. I tried it and it works! Thank you, Mario.

Naturally, the thing would be to enable an export of those tiddlers so that they are returned in their original .vcf. The information on how to do that can be found at TiddlyWiki.com:

https://tiddlywiki.com/#Creating%20a%20custom%20export%20format

The instructions take only a couple of minutes to follow. So importing and exporting are IN THE BAG!

However, there remains a small issue. When importing a .vcf file or any file for that matter, the extensions are included in the tiddler title. And that results in the extensions being duplicated when exporting. You might get something like this: AlfieA.vcf.vcf

. So that might need to be worked on.

Another thig that Mario brought up is a way to make the vcards presentable. So perhaps we could work on a list filter tiddler which will show the contacts as you would have them shown on one of your devices (phones).

There are some other things we might want to include such as filtering (work/home/friends, etc.).

Next, we could handle ICalendar ics. That’s going to be a big one.

Your thoughts.

2 Likes
#2

One more thing: I know it’s bad manners to dump a AI chat into a post like this. But it may be helpful to the readers to include an upload of the the query in say, a tiddler. I have saved hundreds of such queries and I would like to share the one I had on this particular topic. I hope this is acceptable, but if it is not, please be sure to let me know. Thank you.
202504-161543-202504-161543-TWRS25-INQR00-Query-TiddlyWiki-VCARD-Adaptability-Import-Export.tid (7.6 KB)

#3

Update: VCards and iCalendars and .gpx and all sorts of files are importable to TiddlyWiki. Are they exportable? They most certainly are! Do this for every .wtv (WhaTdeVer) and you will get the raw text and extension you are looking for. Instructions are here:

[TiddlyWiki v5.3.6 — a non-linear personal web notebook](https://tiddlywiki.com/#Creating%20a%20custom%20export%20format)

VCards, iCalendars, GPX Tracks, and everything are importable and exportable through TiddlyWiki.

Ok.

Now. What to do with the iCalandar? VCard and iCalandar are established formats.

That’s what I am working on now.

But there’s more… !! hint: can TW interpret email .eml? Answer:yes. Just a matter of time.

Could TiddlyWiki ever handle emails? Of course! So, for Project 2036 TW, let’s make it happen.

2 Likes
#4

HTML mailto:// links work in TiddlyWiki and you can place details and body text in these links if carefuly crafted. The key gap is attachments, as a rule we need to convert the payload/attachments to a mime type to embed in the body of a generated email.

  • This allows the local machine or email handler to do the sending

I have long dreamed of being able to send an email with an attachment derived from the activity of a user on a website as a form of content generation and capture.

  • It needs this conversion to mime process.

No doubt there are Already javascript projects that could be installed for tiddlywiki to convert to mime types including images and binaries.

#5

I’ve been thinking about TWX / TW 2036, and this, and I’m thinking that I’d like to see TW understand a wide range of data formats in core.

By “understand” I mean that it can take the data, and present it in a reasonably human readable format, which then provides a foundation for the building of full fledged tools that use it. The pretty-visual handling of text/csv is a good existing example of the idea

So - gpx, vcf, ics all sound fantastic to me. eml in it’s raw format is almost .tid format … or perhaps better to say that .tid is pretty close to RFC2822 format - and from that similarity I’ve been thinking about creating a trivial TW5 (node) → imap folder export script as a proof of concept.

I’m sure there are a bunch of other formats that would be useful (.pem format for SSL certs is one that springs to my mind, but that’s just because I deal with them a bunch professionally already)

A note on ics calendar format - timertools looks like it handles them within it’s calendar solution already, though I’ve not tested any of that myself: It's About Time! — TiddlyTools: "Small Tools for Big Ideas!" (tm)

#6

Please note that https://tiddlytools.com/timer.html is obsolete and has not been updated since August 2022.

The most up-to-date revision of TiddlyTools/Time/Calendar (and all other TiddlyTools add-ons) is hosted directly at https://TiddlyTools.com.

TiddlyTools/Time/Calendar can display “events” defined in several different ways:

  • “Event Lists” are tiddlers tagged with events. The format for an event list tiddler is plain text, where each event is defined on a single line using a simple format of: YYYYMMDD;description text. Multi-day events can be entered using YYYYMMDD-YYYYMMDD;description text to specify the starting and ending dates of the event. If an event is to be repeated on a yearly basis (e.g., the same date each year), then the YYYY portion of the date is replaced with four dots (....). For example: ....0101;New Year's Day, or ....1225;Christmas Day
  • “Time lines” consist of a timeline definition tiddler, tagged with timeline, and a SET of related tiddlers that define individual “timeline events” within that timeline. Timeline events can be associated with a timeline definition in several different ways:
    • by tagging the event with the title of the timeline definition tiddler
    • or, by including the event tiddler title within the list field of the timeline definition tiddler
    • or by matching a filter contained in a filter field of the timeline definition tiddler
  • Each timeline event tiddler consists of a text field containing some description of the event. This content can include any wikitext formatting you like, and can be a single-line, or many paragraphs with transclusions, images, tables, etc. A timeline event tiddler can be used to define “single day”, “multiple day range”, or “repeating annual” events using a combination of timeline.start, timeline.end, timeline.days, and timeline.type fields. See the “TiddlyTools/Time/Events” documentation (TiddlyTools/Time/Info) for more details.
  • TiddlyTools/Time/Calendar can also parse ICalendar files that have been imported as tiddlers whose title ends in .ics. This parsing is currently limited to recognizing the “DTSTART” and “SUMMARY” records with the tiddler to define single day events. The TiddlyTools Calendar admin interface can also be used to convert .ics tiddlers into simple “event list” tiddlers to improve processing performance as well as save space.

enjoy,
-e

1 Like
#7

I agree, completely. Maybe we can have a further discussion on “understand”. As you point out it means to present the data.

Sometimes, more often than not, TW surprises me (in a good way).

Regarding the RFC2822 email text format:
Information on RFC 2822 » RFC Editor

You do not need to go to that link (sorry if you already have). But the main point is that it walks through the “Obsoletes: …” and “Obsoleted by … /Updated by …”. The TW36 project wants to maintain backward compatibility. Of course it can, should and will.

Here’s my biggest beef. TW, I love you right down to the core… but here it comes: Why are so many of the great plugins all over the place? The cleverly entitled “Its About Time” really says it all. I can’t think of anything that TiddlyWiki needs more than a calendar. That, and a spreadsheet. And an SVG drawing tool. And an email SMTP handler. And a file-manager-like tiddler manager.

Little tip for everyone. You can use files and file folders as your calendar.
2025 > 04 > 25 >TW Talk Message -Reply to nemo-san.txt

All while using .txt files and .tid files. Who needs software?

Am I preaching to the choir? It’s all doable.

#8

Sorry this took a bit of time to get back to. My understanding with backwards compatibility is that it’s not as high a priority with TWX as it is within TW5 - which seems fair to me. Sometimes a break is worth it for genuine improvements, but shouldn’t be unless the value is there.

That’s a good direction. I used “Understand” in a very personification way, which really doesn’t help when designing IT systems. Thinking on it, I would say it would mean that TW core can take a file of a format it understands and turn it into TW-code consumable data (ie, field:value pairs that future plugins can search/filter/manipulate/etc), and human-readable data (a relatively simple function that displays the format in a friendly manner. Email again makes a useful example, where headers have a ton of field:value pairs, which email clients use to find threads and perform complex searches, but only display the most basic to users (from/to/date/subject)

So I’d imagine core as being able to understand files, and present data from them in field:value pairs that plugins can then utilise to build complex applications.