Manage your contacts with abook

I'm constantly looking for applications that can comfortably be used even with an old computer. Some days ago, I posted an article about lightweight personal organizer OSMO. Now I have found something even more lightweight!

My new address book manager is abook. It is a simple text mode organizer for storing contact information. It has a simple to use user interface (using ncurses) and does not force the users to remember obscure CTRL sequences or vi-like keyboard shortcuts. On the contrary, the keyboard shortcuts are few and they can be seen on the top of the screen.

Abook utilizes a simple card view for the contacts. The contact information is divided on five tabs where address, phone, other information and custom information have been dedicated a tab. Abook can be used as a standalone application or it can be used as the addressbook for mutt email application.



It is possible to import and export contact information using the command line option --convert. Abook can convert the the contact information from the following formats:

• ldif
• mutt
• pine
• csv
• palmcsv

The following output formats are supported:

• abook
• ldif
• mutt
• html
• pine
• gcrd
• csv
• palmcsv
• elm
• text
• spruce
• wl

All the contacts are of course stored in a plain text file (default: ~/.abook/addressbook) that has an easy to understand format.