Ekiga doesn't show me the (normal) phone numbers I have stored in Evolution

[Duncan Lithgow]

Binary package hint: ekiga

Ubuntu 8.04
ekiga 2.0.12-0ubuntu2

Summary: Ekiga doesn't show me the (normal) phone numbers I have stored in Evolution.

What happens:
* I start Ekiga to ring someone who I know is in my Evolution contacts list
* I open 'Tools > Address Book' and a window opens listing my Evolution contacts
* I select the relevant contacts list and type the persons name to find him.
* I find him and double click, but nothing happens because there is no number for him
* I right click and select 'Properties' which opens a small window for this person with a small list of fields. None of these fields contains the phone numbers I have for him.
* I have to close this Phone Book as it cannot help help me find the number which I know is there.

What I expect:
* I start Ekiga to ring someone who I know is in my Evolution contacts list
* I open the phone book and find him, double clicking does nothing so I choose properties.
* There is no number in the 'VoIP URL' field but I can see the other telephone numbers I have for that contact so I select one of the phone numbers in some way, probably just using copy/paste.
* I can now close this window and double click again, now Ekiga tries to connect me.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Jul 22 17:30:13 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/ekiga
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: ekiga 2.0.12-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ekiga
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

This is a known upstream bug

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

I only use Ekiga to call real phones, so this is an important RFE for me.

IMHO it shouldn't need to be all that complicated. The automation Łukasz suggests would be great but not a priority. I think the priority is something that works, then it can be improved.

What about a collapsible dialog which presents all the numbers evolution has for that person and a radio button to select one.

(Can Ekiga probe the PC-to-Phone to see if a number is acceptable without actually calling it?)

With a number selected Ekiga can then launch a popup dialog with the number ready to edit which says something like:

--------------
Please confirm Ekiga's phone number for this contact.

[ [phone] (extension 345) ]

Please check that this number is formatted in a way your PC-to-Phone account supports. Typical problems are:
 * Missing country and regional codes
 * Missing '0' or '00' starting the country code
 * Using plus to start a dialing code, ie. <i>+45</i>
 * Using brackets around a dialing code ie. <i>(45)</i>
 * Spaces in the phone number, ie. <i>0045 12345678</i>

Please refer to your PC_to-Phone account documentation for specific issues.
----------------

If the number is rejected Ekiga can recreate the popup dialog with a warning at the top something like:

----------------
! Error. Your PC-to-Phone account has rejected this number.

Please confirm Ekiga's phone number for this contact.

[ [phone] (extension 345) ]

Please check that this number is formatted in a way your PC-to-Phone account supports. Typical problems are:
 * Missing country and regional codes
 * Missing '0' or '00' starting the country code
 * Using plus to start a dialing code, ie. <i>+45</i>
 * Using brackets around a dialing code ie. <i>(45)</i>
 * Spaces in the phone number, ie. <i>0045 12345678</i>

Please refer to your PC_to-Phone account documentation for specific issues.
----------------

I hope this proposal can minimise developer effort without causing new
problems. And then people can submit patches to improve it.

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Hi again. I just had another idea which might be even easier.

Current behaviour:
* Open Phone Book
* Select Person and try to call - fails
* Right click with options:
   * -----------
   * Call Contact
   * Send Message
   * Copy URL to Clipboard
   * Write e-mail
   * -----------
   * Properties
   * -----------
   * Delete
   * -----------
   * New Contact
   * -----------
* None of these can show the potential phone numbers to call if Evolution Contact has no entry in the 'Video Chat' field

Possible behaviour:
* Open Phone Book
* Select Person and try to call - fails
* Right click with options:
   * -----------
   * Call Contact
   * Send Message
   * Copy URL to Clipboard
   * Write e-mail
   * -----------
   * Properties
-->* Edit Contact - Tooltip: "Edit this Contact with Evolution's Contacts manager"
   * -----------
   * Delete
   * -----------
   * New Contact
   * -----------

... of course at the moment there is a bug/RFE which means that Ekiga doesn't see changes to Evolution's Contacts before restart ... but that's a different bug (bug #251758)

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

From upstream:
Comment #11 from Snark (ekiga developer, points: 20)

Ekiga's current svn (future 3.00) shows several Call/Message actions if your evolution contact has several phone numbers, and should see them change without restart... could you have a look?

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hello,

You can easily install Ekiga SVN from this page:
http://snapshots.ekiga.net/

Best regards,
Yannick

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

@Yannick: See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544853 "Bug 544853 – ekiga-snapshot 20080724 fails to install. unmet dependencies."