On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 16:07, June Tate wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 15:34, Bill Lindley wrote:
> > It's my understanding LDAP only works "read-only" for shared contacts?  
> > Meaning, users can read the shared address book, but there's no way to 
> > write to it?
> 
> Actually, if you have write privileges in that DN (i.e. not just
> anonymously accessing the server), then supposedly any client can make
> changes to it. The trick is, however, finding a client that will
> actually _do_ something like that. Virtually all mail clients that I
> have seen that can access an LDAP database do not allow you to add
> entries (that includes Mozilla, Netscape, Thunderbird, and the current
> stable version of Evolution).
> 
> Evolution currently has a bounty out on it's address book component to
> provide LDAP writing capability for it, however, so we may soon see this
> functionality in a future stable version.
> 
> If anyone knows of any other clients that can write, I'd be interested
> to know -- we're trying to move to an LDAP backend for most of our
> servers and other LDAP aware software, and having a client that is
> capable would make the transition a little easier.
----
client writing is pretty much left to a roll your own since there truly
is no exact standard of interfacing to the various ldap servers, which
objectclasses and attributes you are using, etc. Then of course, there
are issues of the structure of the tree and ACL's, various
implementations of LDAP by different vendors, and schema checking and a
few required fields that would cause consternation by casual users so
the thought of a pre-packaged solution for user maintained addressbooks
on LDAP via a smooth user interface just isn't available.

phpldapadmin does allow for custom templates so you can get a web
interface for data input up and running fairly quickly but that is a far
cry from a typical address book interface for data entry purposes.

the HEAD version of horde's turba allows for an LDAP write addressbook
for individual users and there is some import export functionality too.
In fact, I would think that pound for pound, horde <www.horde.org> is
probably the best overall project at this time for open source
groupware.

Craig