On Thursday, 16 July 2020 at 14:46:05 UTC-5 ipv2...@parris.org wrote:

Hi Robert,

Excerpts from Robert Winkler's message of 2020-07-16 08:15:56 -0700:
> Hi, I already got extensive contact lists (>1,000) in various formats and
> run a manually maintained list on an LDAP server for the really important
> contacts.
>
> How can I easily use or import contacts for the To: CC: and BCC: fields?

General contacts usage is:

- Global keybinding "C" - list contacts.

- To specify a recipient (To/Cc/Bcc): when prompted to enter the
recipient (e.g., after pressing "c" for "compose"), start typing,
then press "tab" for suggestions.

- In thread-view-mode, press "i" to be prompted to add to Sup's
contacts list, with an optional alias.

The contacts are sourced from file ~/.sup/contacts.txt, and from calling
the "extra-contact-addresses" hook.

So you have two main options.

(1) ~/.sup/contacts.txt

- Sup's built-in contacts file is ~/.sup/contacts.txt

- This is written/read when Sup stops/starts, so make sure to quit
Sup before editing it manually.

- File format is one contact per line, with an optional alias.

- Each line is in format like:

alias: Person Name <person...@example.com>

- "alias" is optional, and if omitted, then the line will look like:

: Another Person <per...@example.com>

- If you converted your contacts into this style, then you could
create your own contacts.txt file, and Sup would use it.

(2) extra-contact-addresses hook

- This hook takes no input, and returns an array of email address
strings that Sup is then aware of for tab-completion.

- So you could alternatively write this hook to call any external
program, and return in the format expected by Sup.

- Two examples with "goobook" (for Google Account contacts) and
"abook" (a general contact manager program that runs in the
terminal) are here:
<https://github.com/sup-heliotrope/sup/wiki/External-contacts-search>.

- So if (for example) you chose "abook", then you could use any
method to import your contacts into "abook", and then use the Sup
hook to make Sup aware of abook's contacts.

- abook is able to import ldif, so may be a natural choice. Further
reading on abook:
<https://hund0b1.gitlab.io/2018/06/25/abook-a-ncurses-adress-book-program.html>.

For other general information about Sup's contact lists, see also:
<https://sup-heliotrope.github.io/community/sup-talk/msg00965.html>.

Kind regards,
Iain