I started this project for two reasons; to have a text file address book that would be portable across as many devices as possible, and to write a non-trivial application with an XML back end.
I wanted to experiment with XML document creation, parsing, validation and manipulation. In particular I wanted to use the ElementTree library.
Over time I added the Whoswho Web Access module to allow searching via a page. I then added the ability to output an address book to an HTML script to produce a compact, portable and readable version of an address book. This is useful for keeping on a phone or tablet.