Address book should show multiple values for LDAP attributes

[patrick]

LDAP can hold multiple values within one attribute. For example if a person has multiple e-mail addresses, one might store them as multiple values of the attribute 'mail' (as I do it in my address book).

Example (in LDIF):

dn: cn=Test Person,ou=addressbook,dc=patrick-nagel,dc=net
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
objectClass: top
givenName: Test
sn: Person
cn: Test Person
mail: test.person@server1.tld
mail: test.person@server2.tld

I'd like to see the address book to show all the values for the 'mail' attribute as a comma separated list in those places that now just show the first value of the 'mail' attribute. Alternatively, they could be shown as multiple contacts, but that would a bit quirky and probably harder to implement.

[thomasb]

The current address book structure only supports one mail address. Question: which one should be taken in case you select multiple contacts from the list and press "compose mail"?

[patrick]

Replying to thomasb:

The current address book structure only supports one mail address. Question: which one should be taken in case you select multiple contacts from the list and press "compose mail"?

I see the problem there... not as easy to fix as I thought (like always) ;) I just checked how KMail solves this: It gives you a dialog which lists all available addresses (as radio buttons) for the first person with multiple addresses... after the user chooses one, it gives a new dialog with a list of all available addresses of the second person with multiple addresses, and so on.

Anyway, it would be better to just choose each multiple-address-contact's first address in this case and offer all addresses in the 'contact details' than not showing multiple addresses at all.