[kdepim-users] What is the status of KPilot?

[George Bourozikas]

On Wednesday 16 September 2009 01:26:06 pm Andre Bischof wrote:
> djmills at netspace.net.au schrieb:
> > Hi George,
> >
> > which version of kpilot do you have?

Version 5.3.0 (KDE 4.3.0)
Using KDE 4.3.1 (KDE 4.3.1)

> > I've got 4.3.1-156.2 and haven't
> > managed to have any success.
> >
> > Do you use cable 

cable

> > or bluetooth.  What device settings/setup did you use?

Treo 650

Port                usb:        (including the trailing colon)
Speed            115200
Workarounds  none
Encoding        Greek ( ISO 8859-7 )

> I would like to get in at that point. I use kontact, kpilot and an Palm
> Treo 680 (and I'm offered a used Iphone for nothing, so maybe the device
> will change in the near future).
> 
> I use a bluetooth cable, which was difficult to set up for me (udev
> rules), but now it works.
> 
> Syncing is not painless, sometimes I have doubled contacts 

me too

> (seems to
> depend on categories, german umlaute - sometimes I get messages like
> "calendar conduit could not be synced". 

that has been my experience as well

> Conflicts are difficult to
> solve, as it is sometimes difficult to see what the content of the
> conflict is.

True.  I often end up with multiple identical events, one with each sync.  
Sometimes I modify an event on one end and end up with a different event on the 
other.  Seems like a result of abundant caution on the part of the developers.  
Even though it's annoying, I'd much rather have duplicate data than lost data.

> I tried multisyncgui and the msynctools, which is not without problems
> either.
> 
> It seems to matter in which order the sync is done - first start kpilot,
> then the sync-button on the mobile device.

That's true of any kind of pilot syncing, on any OS.
 
> George, could you describe or point me to some howto on how to realise
> the sync between google and the mobile device?
> 
> I would appreciate any help on how to get syncing via kpilot without
> problems.
> 
> I use 4:4.3.1-2 with Debian testing/unstable (kpilot, kontact).
> 
> Cheers
> Frisco

Just to clarify:  I never had communications issues between my workstation and 
my Treo.  The various pilot-link programs have always worked and I have always 
been able to backup my device and install files using pilot-xfer.

It is KPilot that has been a little flaky in the last year or so.  The problems 
that I have encountered include:

-- KPilot would go down the various conduits but not synchronize anything
-- KPilot would erase everything on my Treo (backed up, of course, so no harm 
   done)
-- KPilot would erase my Kontact data (also backed up)
-- Duplicate contacts and events (mostly events), incrementing with each 
   hotsync

I have correlated all such issues to the introduction of Akonadi.  As a matter 
of fact, when I moved from Ubuntu Intrepid to Jaunty, I pinned KPilot to the 
version shipped in Intrepid, which still used KDE 3.  Unfortunately, at some 
point the KDE 3 version of KPilot (3.5.10) became totally unresponsive and 
hang my desktop.

At that point I started using Evolution, which is an inferior MUA (the address 
book is horrendous) but had a couple of things going for it:

-- Pilot sync "just worked"
-- google contact/calendar sync seems to work pretty well

Every now and then I'd check KPilot.  As of two days ago KPilot works again 
(except for ToDo's but I don't care too much about those), so I am back to 
Kontact, which I prefer.

I have a couple of ideas re: migration to android/gmail:

-- wait for the google-akonadi resource to stabilize (it is mostly workable 
   now) and figure out a way to transfer my contacts and calendar between
   resources.
-- go via a one-time sync with Evolution and transfer data between resources 
   there
-- massage the ics and vcf databases into csv files and import from gmail/gcal

In an ideal world, I would like to have the following setup:

-- A new modern Treo syncing perfectly with KDE/Kontact

This doesn't look likely (Palm does not look promising), so here is second 
best:

-- Android
-- Over the air sync
-- Good integration with KDE/Kontact

It looks like this will be within reach in a couple of months.

--george


-- 
George Bourozikas
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