Server Setting to not Rewrite vCards

[haraldrudell]

I suggest a server setting causing Radicale to not rewrite vCards this would allow Radicale of today to return code-point-perfect text/vcard of any version

Radicale 3.8.1 rewrites perfectly fine vCards

re-parsing vCards is poor practice because:

1. an increased likelihood that bugs in the server will completely fail the client and what the customer is trying to do
2. forcefully denying the customer control over the data and introducing irrelevant data updates
3. opens for ping-pong bugs between server and client-code

Radicale could work for vCard 4.0 today:

1. A related issue is that Radicale as of yet cannot serialize 4.0 vCards which breaks everything and there’s no fix date
2. Radicale could be used for vCard 4.0 today
3. it provides the basic function required by a CardDAV server: storage. not pushing changes onto a powerless customer

even a mediocre legacy 1996 parser can get VERSION and UID out of a 4.0 vCard

This setting would be excellent whenever a fatal issue is discovered in Radicale This setting could be used until Radicale have things sorted

[pbiering]

There is no Radicale "3.8.1" version btw, latest is 3.5.5...

Unparsed storage of item content is currently not possible without major change in the caching layer, which currently stores a structured data of an item after parsing.

Imho it's much better to spend work to the vobject project to get vCard 4.0 support fully implemented.

[haraldrudell]

version is 3.1.8

[pbiering]

relates to https://github.com/Kozea/Radicale/issues/1863