I'm trying to make sense of the setup in kdepim-4.8.2-1.fc16.i686.
I can say at once that this facility is in a terrible mess, The documentation is either non-existent (KAddressBook), out-of-date (http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook), or utterly confused and confusing (The Kontact Handbook).
The best place to start seems to be f=>System Settings=>Personal Information. Clicking on this lists a number of Akonadi "resources".
I have 4 entries here which seem to be relevant to my present purpose: Address Book Personal Contacts LDAP Address Book akonadi_googledata_resource_0
Let me call these my four Contact Lists. On highlighting any of the first three, and clicking on Modify, I get some information about the entry. Address Book points to ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf Personal Contacts points to ~/.local/share/contacts/ LDAP Address Book points to the OpenLDAP database on my server akonadi_googledata_resource_0 points to my Google email address.
Now I've left System Settings, and gone to f=>Office=>Personal Information Manager. (I can get to the same place in many ways.) My 4 Contact Lists appear, together with a Search folder, which I shall ignore for the moment.
I've highlighted Address Book, which is empty at the moment, and added a New Contact, "Anne Murphy", and a New Group, "Knapton Court Residents Association". Checking, I see that the contact is indeed added to ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf The group appears in the file ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/distlists
However, I can see no way to add the contact to the group.
According to http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook ------------------------------- Groups will replace Distribution Lists. Auto completion makes it quite easy to add entries to the group. In KDE SC <= 4.4.2 you can't use the group quite like a distribution list, typing the name and expecting it to be expanded into a list of names. You can, though, copy and paste the list of names from the right-hand panel. ------------------------------- I don't really understand what this means, but I don't see any way of associating or adding a contact to a group.
On 22/04/2012 15:15, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I'm trying to make sense of the setup in kdepim-4.8.2-1.fc16.i686.
I can say at once that this facility is in a terrible mess, The documentation is either non-existent (KAddressBook), out-of-date (http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook), or utterly confused and confusing (The Kontact Handbook).
The best place to start seems to be f=>System Settings=>Personal Information. Clicking on this lists a number of Akonadi "resources".
I have 4 entries here which seem to be relevant to my present purpose: Address Book Personal Contacts LDAP Address Book akonadi_googledata_resource_0
Let me call these my four Contact Lists. On highlighting any of the first three, and clicking on Modify, I get some information about the entry. Address Book points to ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf Personal Contacts points to ~/.local/share/contacts/ LDAP Address Book points to the OpenLDAP database on my server akonadi_googledata_resource_0 points to my Google email address.
Now I've left System Settings, and gone to f=>Office=>Personal Information Manager. (I can get to the same place in many ways.) My 4 Contact Lists appear, together with a Search folder, which I shall ignore for the moment.
I've highlighted Address Book, which is empty at the moment, and added a New Contact, "Anne Murphy", and a New Group, "Knapton Court Residents Association". Checking, I see that the contact is indeed added to ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf The group appears in the file ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/distlists
However, I can see no way to add the contact to the group.
According to http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook
Groups will replace Distribution Lists. Auto completion makes it quite easy to add entries to the group. In KDE SC <= 4.4.2 you can't use the group quite like a distribution list, typing the name and expecting it to be expanded into a list of names. You can, though, copy and paste the list of names from the right-hand panel.
I don't really understand what this means, but I don't see any way of associating or adding a contact to a group.
As you can tell from the version number, that was a workaround written a long time ago.
To add an address you should be able to click on the empty space in the Group popup and paste in addresses - when completion is working again in 4.9 that will be easier.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
To add an address you should be able to click on the empty space in the Group popup and paste in addresses - when completion is working again in 4.9 that will be easier.
Sadly, it is impossible to add a Contact to a Group in an Address Book; it appears for a few seconds, then disappears. I see that this has already been reported to the KDE Bugzilla (bug 294556 "Can't add Kontacts to a Group in Kadressbook"); I've added a comment confirming the problem.
On 23 April 2012 12:42, Timothy Murphy gayleard@alice.it wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
To add an address you should be able to click on the empty space in the Group popup and paste in addresses - when completion is working again in 4.9 that will be easier.
Sadly, it is impossible to add a Contact to a Group in an Address Book; it appears for a few seconds, then disappears. I see that this has already been reported to the KDE Bugzilla (bug 294556 "Can't add Kontacts to a Group in Kadressbook"); I've added a comment confirming the problem.
I'm back in Mageia now, so got a chance to test 4.8.2. I was almost right about the process, it's right click on the group name, Edit the group, then a window should open for editing. Sadly I have to report that it crashed KMail when I tried it.
The good news, though, is that the group did still have contacts listed that I entered some months back. At one time it used to lose them regularly, so it looks as though at at least is improved.
I've commented on the bug report you mentioned.
Anne Wilson wrote:
Sadly, it is impossible to add a Contact to a Group in an Address Book; it appears for a few seconds, then disappears. I see that this has already been reported to the KDE Bugzilla (bug 294556 "Can't add Kontacts to a Group in Kadressbook"); I've added a comment confirming the problem.
I'm back in Mageia now, so got a chance to test 4.8.2. I was almost right about the process, it's right click on the group name, Edit the group, then a window should open for editing.
Are you sure? I just checked this on my laptop. If I right-click on the group name in an addressbook I'm offered three choices: New Contact, New Group and Edit Group. If I click on New Contact, a window opens as you say, but if I add a contact it appears in the address book, but not in the group. If I click on Edit Group I can add a contact to the group, but (bizarrely) it disappears after a few seconds.
The good news, though, is that the group did still have contacts listed that I entered some months back. At one time it used to lose them regularly, so it looks as though at at least is improved.
Not in my case; there seems to be no way of adding a contact permanently to a group.
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On 25/04/12 23:55, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
Sadly, it is impossible to add a Contact to a Group in an Address Book; it appears for a few seconds, then disappears. I see that this has already been reported to the KDE Bugzilla (bug 294556 "Can't add Kontacts to a Group in Kadressbook"); I've added a comment confirming the problem.
I'm back in Mageia now, so got a chance to test 4.8.2. I was almost right about the process, it's right click on the group name, Edit the group, then a window should open for editing.
Are you sure? I just checked this on my laptop. If I right-click on the group name in an addressbook I'm offered three choices: New Contact, New Group and Edit Group. If I click on New Contact, a window opens as you say, but if I add a contact it appears in the address book, but not in the group. If I click on Edit Group I can add a contact to the group, but (bizarrely) it disappears after a few seconds.
The good news, though, is that the group did still have contacts listed that I entered some months back. At one time it used to lose them regularly, so it looks as though at at least is improved.
Not in my case; there seems to be no way of adding a contact permanently to a group.
No idea. I sent back into Kontact today and tried to edit a group. This time it didn't crash (not sure if there has been updates since I last tried). It said 3 contacts didn't exist any more, but I could add a new one. I checked some time later and it was still there.
Did you say you are on 4.7.x? I'd certainly update if that is so. Not all is solved, but much is improved.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
I sent back into Kontact today and tried to edit a group. This time it didn't crash (not sure if there has been updates since I last tried). It said 3 contacts didn't exist any more, but I could add a new one. I checked some time later and it was still there.
Did you say you are on 4.7.x? I'd certainly update if that is so. Not all is solved, but much is improved.
I'm actually running kdepim-4.8.2-1.fc16.i686 I'm just testing kontact again.
No, sadly, when I add a contact to a group it remains there for just 6 seconds.
I added the contact by double-clicking on the group. This brings up a window with a blue strip near the top, with Name and EMail over it, If I click on this strip under Name a white space opens. I type in the name of one of the contacts in the address book, and the contact's email is filled in automatically. I click on OK at the bottom of the window, and the name and address appear in the group window to the right. This entry disappears after 6 seconds, as I said.
I see there is a change to the file .kde/share/apps/kabs/distlists - a number is added after the group in question. But this number is not the UID of the contact.
I should say I find the changes to Kontact/KAddressBook - in particular the facility to add different kinds of contact lists, Google Contacts, LDAP Contacts and local contacts - very exciting, suggesting that kdepim is moving towards an ideal solution.
The fact remains that this particular part of the solution does not work for me at the moment.
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On 29/04/12 23:08, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote:
I sent back into Kontact today and tried to edit a group. This time it didn't crash (not sure if there has been updates since I last tried). It said 3 contacts didn't exist any more, but I could add a new one. I checked some time later and it was still there.
Did you say you are on 4.7.x? I'd certainly update if that is so. Not all is solved, but much is improved.
I'm actually running kdepim-4.8.2-1.fc16.i686 I'm just testing kontact again.
No, sadly, when I add a contact to a group it remains there for just 6 seconds.
I added the contact by double-clicking on the group. This brings up a window with a blue strip near the top, with Name and EMail over it, If I click on this strip under Name a white space opens. I type in the name of one of the contacts in the address book, and the contact's email is filled in automatically. I click on OK at the bottom of the window, and the name and address appear in the group window to the right. This entry disappears after 6 seconds, as I said.
I see there is a change to the file .kde/share/apps/kabs/distlists
- a number is added after the group in question. But this number is
not the UID of the contact.
I should say I find the changes to Kontact/KAddressBook - in particular the facility to add different kinds of contact lists, Google Contacts, LDAP Contacts and local contacts - very exciting, suggesting that kdepim is moving towards an ideal solution.
The fact remains that this particular part of the solution does not work for me at the moment.
The trouble is that we are never sure whether the problem we face is KDE version specific, distro specific, or related to some left-over from previous versions. It makes it very hard to troubleshoot. Your comment about distlists intrigued me, so I checked, but those lists refer to ones I set up long ago, related to std.vcf. Out of curiosity I opened that file, the old list exists, but it contains only messages that the contacts no longer exist.
I feel that contact are lost if they are no longer in the cache, which is a disaster for me.
Anne
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