I am using a central LDAP server to manage my address book. After some investigations, I settled with evolutionPerson as schema for addressbook entries and edit the persons in the address book with Evolution, sometimes with JXplorer.
Many applications in my home network consume the entries: Claws Mail, Thunderbird, some custom scripts and even the radios.
Better Thunderbird integration
Mozilla Thunderbird's address book invented its own LDAP schema, mozillaAbPersonAlpha .
Fortunately, Thunderbird lets you change how LDAP fields are mapped to the addressbook fields !
I had some fun (non-working address book) while configuring it (Preferences / Advanced / Editor). This are the settings I had to change to get nearly all information into the Thunderbird address book.
ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.NickName mozillaNickname,xmozillanickname,fileAs ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.PagerNumber pager,pagerphone,otherPhone ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.FaxNumber facsimiletelephonenumber,fax,homeFacsimileTelephoneNumber ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.HomeAddress mozillaHomeStreet,homePostalAddress ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.WorkAddress street,streetaddress,postOfficeBox,postalAddress ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.WorkAddress2 mozillaWorkStreet2,roomNumber ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.JobTitle title,businessRole ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.Notes description,notes,note ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.Custom1 mozillaCustom1,custom1,birthDate ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.Custom2 mozillaCustom2,custom2,anniversary ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.Custom3 mozillaCustom3,custom3,spouseName
Note that address fields (separated with $) are not exploded - but they are at least visible. Multi-value fields like mail are not supported. Thunderbird will display only the first value.