[kde-linux] KNotes Migration Tool: ARGH!!!!

[James Tyrer]

On 07/29/2014 12:10 PM, Alex Schuster wrote:
> James Tyrer writes:
>
>> I really don't care if (some of) the developers hate me because I
>> am too much like Steve Jobs.  I was born that way.  I just think
>> that this stuff should work correctly before it escapes into the
>> wild instead of being like Ebola -- a nightmare for users.

<SNIP>

> Anyway. It's open source, so I can't be angry.

Well, that is that thing.  I think that users do have a right to be
angry.  The problem is that what should be labeled as a development
release is labeled as a stable release.  That is what users have a right
to be angry about.  You have a right to expect stable releases to work
and for bugs in them to be fixed.

People would get mad at me for filing bug reports.  When the bugs didn't 
get fixed, I would sometimes resort to fixing them myself.  I studied EE 
& CS in college.  I can fix them as long as C++ complications aren't 
required.  I can read the "fine" manual and use functions that I didn't 
really know about previously.

> I'm sure the developers do their best.

It is strange to me that developers resent people filing bug reports.
They often try to close them without fixing the bugs.  Even more, I
cannot really understand why they resent people fixing the bugs for
them.  Would they really rather have the bug than to have someone else
fix it?  I thought to start with that they just resented me because I 
had college training but that isn't it.

> Seems like they had way too high ambitions, and underestimated how
> big a task this KDE 4 project would be.

If you recall, Microsoft made the same error with a one of the releases
of MS-Windows.  Perhaps it is an easy mistake to make -- not realizing
what a great value the existing code base is and what a great product
you will have if you can only perfect it.  So, you start over and make a 
fine mess of things.

> But it's hard to know tis beforehand. Maybe they also expected mor
> efunding, I believe in the KDE 3 days more devs were actually being
> paid for their work. So, I'm thankful for their work, and just hope
> it will become mature eventually. But then, I fear that the same
> trouble will start again with KDE 5.

It is hard to say what they should do with KDE 5.  Should they try to 
learn from their mistakes and try to fix them?  No matter what they do, 
what they need is more help and they reject that without really knowing 
that they do so while at the same time saying that they want more help. 
  I doubt very much that they can get away from the 'me centered' 
approach that was KDE 4's downfall.  The big mistake was made in KDE 3 
when they thought that there needed to be a difference between a web 
browser and a file manager.  They thought that they needed to get rid of 
KDE's best feature the Browser with plugins to do whatever.

>
>> What am I supposed to do with the: KNotes Migration Tool?
>>
>> It said that it would take a quite a while to run.  Well, it has
>> been running about 6 hours (AMD 4400+) and it has eaten _ALL_ my
>> alarms from KAlarm.  There were pop up error messages to go with
>> that, but it now appears to be doing nothing but hanging on to a
>> very small amount of CPU time.  The last line in the message
>> window is:
>>
>> Root fetch finished
>>
>> The button to close the window has not activated and I have no idea
>> what the little window is for.  Drag help doesn't work (why is it
>> there?) <F1> doesn't produce any help.
>>
>> Is it safe to kill this? or should I let it run for a few days?
>> :-^)
>
> Apparently it's not doing anything any more, so I'd kill it. Try to
> start it manually then (knotes-migrator --interactive), maybe it
> works tis time. I doubt it, this utility did not work for me, too.
>
> Next you can try to remove the KNotes Akonadi resource and re-create
> it.
Yes, I also found some files and directories in $HOME/.local/share/notes 
and some that only made it to $HOME/.local/share.  One directory "new" 
appeared to have the converted notes which I kept and I removed all of 
the other stuff which was sprayed over several directories.

I ran knotes-migrator --interactive and it finished, but it didn't 
produce the needed output.

I'm not on my Linux PC right now, there is some GUI utility for
> this. There's also akonaditray, which can launch it. remove your
> knotes resources, create a new one, and point it to the location of
> your current knotes. For me, it is
> ~/.kde4/share/apps/knotes/notes.ics - you can open it in a text
> editor and verify it has the correct content. For some people, this
> helped. Not for me though :)

Yes, I still have the old file.  I made a backup copy just in case. 
However, it appears that the new version of KNotes doesn't use it.

> I don't know how to get them back.

So, I could go to the trouble of extracting the notes from the 
semi-human readable ics file.  However, I find that I am not able to 
make any new notes.  Using the older version of notes was self 
explanatory, but the new versions would appear to need documentation 
and, there is no new documentation.  When I try to create a new Note, 
the attached window pops up.  I have no idea what to do here.  But, 
there is no default and no way that I can create new Notes.

It also appears that every time that KDE is started up, or the relevant 
app is started up, that a bunch of new files: 
akondi_<type>_resource_<#><|rc>.  Some of these are redundant and/or 
errors.  These make it impossible to use Kalarm.  And would probably 
make it impossible to use Knotes if I figured it out.

So, the developers should congratulate themselves.  In a stable release, 
they have destroyed two very common applets that probably everybody 
uses.  Somebody broke Kget too.  Another applet that almost everybody 
uses.  That was a middle number ago and it still isn't fixed.

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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