[Kde-pim] KDE Addressbook on an Appliance

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Wednesday 05 May 2010, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 May 2010 21:31:22 Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > > There's a good deal of confusion around, about this.  On this
> > > laptop, for instance, it was brand-new, therefore a clean
> > > install.  When I started kontact, it carried out first-run.  At
> > > that point I had no addressbok set up - so I ended up with an
> > > empty
> > > ~/.local/share/contacts.  At that point I'm left guessing.  And I
> > > might say, that I've seen other users perplexed at the same
> > > point.
> > 
> > Guessing? Guessing what?
> 
> What to do next.  They know this is something new.  New things are
> often fragile.  There is a natural fear of doing something that may
> interfere with the proper working of the new system.
> 
> > > In fact I copied my std.vcf from the old laptop, set it as an
> > > addressbook, then simply copied all the entries into Personal
> > > Contacts.  As far as I can tell there were no ill effects.  But
> > > users shouldn't be left guessing like this.
> > 
> > I'm not sure where you are getting at. What are you trying to tell
> > us? What should we do differently/better?
> 
> There needs to be some easily understood documentation to give the
> simplest possible setup.  At the moment, a clean install leaves you
> with an empty addressbook, and no documented way of filling it,
> other than entering each record by hand.

I think the problem we are having is that you are stating a problem 
without first stating the situation or the use case. You seem to be 
talking about a user who does already have an address book in electronic 
form. Otherwise there wouldn't be an alternative to entering each record 
by hand.

But if one does already have data then the first thing I would look for 
is a way to import this data. And indeed there is an entry Import in the 
File menu. Of course, I'm not Joe User so I'm not the kind of person we 
are talking about.


> If you do it the way I did, you have two addressbooks, and then have
> to go through the process of marking one of them as default.  Anyone
> who tries to remove the std.vcf after simply copying across the
> entries is likely to find that he can't, because it could well be
> being seen as the default.  Of course it's all editable, but it's a
> hassle that should be avoided.

The problem here is that your way of doing it is extremely complicated. 
It's not the recommended way of getting your old data into KAddressBook. 
The recommended way is to use the import functionality provided by the 
application.


> IMO what would really help is if the first run could register whether
> it found any records to migrate.  If it didn't, it should re-run at
> the next boot - and each time until it actually finds records.  That
> would allow for users to panic and close the addressbook because
> it's empty, realise that the old one has to be made available, fix
> that, and still have an automatic migration.

Maybe. OTOH, for automatic migration to work the user will have to copy 
the old address book to a specific location. That's error-prone and IMO 
too complicated. Instead, if auto-migration didn't find an old address 
book, then the first-run assistant should offer importing an old address 
book (giving the user a hint where he has to look for the old address 
book).


> Of course it's easy to tell others what to do :-)  I would have
> thought that just setting a flag might accomplish this, but if it's
> not so easy, I apologise.  I'm simply reflecting the problems that
> some users have reported.

Understood. What do you think about the proposal outlined by me?


Regards,
Ingo
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