[Kde-pim] KDE Addressbook on an Appliance

[Anne Wilson]

On Wednesday 05 May 2010 20:30:07 Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> 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.
> 
True.  There are two cases, then.  One where no addressbook exists - but then 
users would expect to simply add addresses as they needed to, so I didn't 
consider this as a problem.  

The other case, the one I addressed, is that the user has had an addressbook, 
either in a previous install or on another computer, and wants to use that 
existing addressbook.

> 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.
> 
That was the first thing I looked at.  What I saw was

Import vCard
Import CSV file
Import LDIF file
Import from LDAP server
Import GMX file.

None of these seemed to me to fit the bill.  The only possible one was the 
first one - but logic said that that would import a single address card - and 
what I had was a file with 100 or so addresses.

> > 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.
> 
See above.

> > 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).
> 
Copying a single file to a directory known to have been its address in earlier 
releases is a natural enough thing to do, for anyone that has used file 
managers.  Yes, the first-run pausing and allowing you to point to a location 
would help a lot.  Particularly if it happily waits for a usb drive to be 
added.

> > 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?

I'm not happy about the Import situation - either the descriptions are not 
good, or there isn't one for the job in hand.  OTOH, your suggestion of 
pausing the first-run assistant to allow for a location to be defined sounds a 
good one to me - although I'm not sure that it could hint at the location, as 
it would have found the addressbook automatically if it was in the expected 
place.

Anne
-- 
KDE Community Working Group
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