[Kexi] Hello! Roadmap and importing

[Jarosław Staniek]

John Fields said the following, On 2006-11-22 08:19:
> First, I love the interface of Kexi. Second, I enjoyed setting up a new
> kexi database up to the point where feature issues stopped me. Third, I
> don't code C but could help with doc and the wiki migration (i'll come back
> to that later).  We (mankind) really need a good open source db manager
> app.

John,
Thanks for your interest and kind words. Wiki migration is already in advanced 
state of development (almost done). Writing (extending existing) docs is of 
course a good idea (contact use first to avoid duplication of the work). 
Writing self-contained tutorials, preferably with an example database 
attached. We can easily publish tutorials on a wiki page, so preferred format 
could be now the Wikipedia's format.

Testing is also a big task many people can be involved in, and you in fact 
started doing this, what I found as nice. More about testing:

http://kexi-project.org/wiki/wikiview/index.php?TestingKexi

> Short version: is there a roadmap, etc. regarding importing?

In general, as I prefer release-as-often-as-possible and release-early 
strategies, there is no definitive roadmap (yet?) as you know them from boxed 
software. No surprise there is no long term shedule (neither ms 
vapor^h^h^h^h^hvista had one too, so I guess we'll really get just before the 
release as the vista time did ;)

I'll answer your questions on particular features, see below. We're more or 
less constrained by KDE4, KOffice2 releases, porting to KDE4, porting to Qt4, 
making the app more compatible with the new KDE HIGs.

More info: http://kexi-project.org/wiki/wikiview/index.php?Porting%20to%20Qt4

> That is the feature that is holding me back, as I need to train a
> non-technical user to import a database we buy on a bi-weekly schedule. In
> particular: 1) appending to an existing table would solve all my issues. 

This is known problem for many real use cases, including mine, so I've 
sheduled it for 1.1.2 version, especially that my customers also demand it. 
It's not so hard to add. If you can compile  the app from the Subversion 
repository, maybe you'll get it even in december.

> 2)
> currently the import assumes the field type and is guessing incorrectly
> (changing my data). I have a CSV line like: 
> 2006,20,"042639","MRK29","Scanda-Lash Hook Up
> Mascara","Winegloss",,-1,-1,0,$5.00,$5.00,"R",0,"N" 
 > Kexi makes the third
> field a number, stripping the leading zero(s) from the SKU. 

Will be fixed (maybe even next week) in the Subversion repository.


3) I originally
> had the field separator as the pipe character, or "|" but couldn't specify
> it on the import. used a text editor to search/replace the pipe to a comma.

Can be added too.

I recommend to file a wish on bugs.kde.org a good way to start contributing.
One wish for 1) and another for 2)+3).

>  4) She would be running windows so the CopyCenter python script is out
> (right?).

Right, at least before Kexi 2.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
  Sponsored by OpenOffice Polska (http://www.openoffice.com.pl/en) to work on
  Kexi & KOffice: http://www.kexi-project.org, http://www.koffice.org
  KDE3 & KDE4 Libraries for MS Windows: http://kdelibs.com, http://www.kde.org