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Peter Bart wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:1209005096.4481.77.camel@peter-notebook.site"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 10:13 -0600, Mark Haury wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I have to say that the critical deal killer for me is that even though
it may be possible to jump through a few hoops and *import* data into
gpe, there doesn't seem to be any way to *export* it back out.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I'm not sure about what's going wrong for you, I imported my data
several years ago w/o any problems. 300 plus individual entries as one
file.
</pre>
</blockquote>
I edited my vcf file manually with Kate on my kubuntu system, replaced
the two umlauted characters with plain characters, and the file
successfully imported. The success is muted, however, by the fact that
most of the fields are mixed up, and some weren't imported at all. For
example, only the phone and name were put in the "Home" fields, and the
state was put before the city in the addresses.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1209005096.4481.77.camel@peter-notebook.site"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I would
be a lot more willing to put more effort into getting my data into gpe
if I was sure of a reasonably easy way of not only backing it up,
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
There's a built in backup utility from Nokia that backs up the GPE
directories. You can use rsync to "backup" your home directory to
another drive, memory card, etc. Last but not least you can also simply
copy the GPE directories to another location.
</pre>
</blockquote>
I completely screwed up my explanation on this one. What I meant was
that I want to be able to specify the working directory and keep all my
data in an easily found and copied directory on one of the SDHC cards,
where it's completely safe from reflashes and easily copied and
transported to other machines/drives.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1209005096.4481.77.camel@peter-notebook.site"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> but
moving/copying it into other apps as needed. As I tend to do that a lot,
ease of import and export is a very big deal for me. What I'm saying is
that for me, it's not a matter of a one-time import and then I'd be
done. It would be a constant process of import and export, and therefore
those processes are critical to whether or not it's worth it to me to
use the app.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I don't need that kind of functionality the way you do. So far I I've
used load applet to take a screenshot of a specific entry and send that
off. For me, the less I move my data around, the more time I have to do
real work.
</pre>
</blockquote>
For me, moving my data around *is* what I need to do. I use the data in
different ways, with different apps, most of which don't understand vcf
files but all of which do understand csv files.<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1209005096.4481.77.camel@peter-notebook.site"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""></pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">For me, the ideal import/export method is csv files.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
ok
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I never had a problem with import or export with either my Visor Deluxe
(Palm OS) or my Psion Series 5. It was always quick, painless and accurate.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Then by all means use those devices.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Unfortunately, I dropped the Visor recently, and the screen is dying.
The Psion wasn't well supported even when it was new, and while it's a
great gadget, it only has a 10MHz processor, and is completely
incapable of any kind of networking. Between the two, the Visor is more
portable and versatile, but as I said, it's dying. Anyway, yours is not
a very helpful comment. Both devices are more than 10 years old, and
while highly capable as address books and for playing games, are pretty
much obsolete for any other purpose. When I bought the Nokia, I (quite
reasonably) assumed that it would have a decent PIM. Much less powerful
and much more inexpensive units have very capable PIMs (come on, even
my 10-plus-year-old Visor and Psion have better PIMs!). There's really
no excuse for Nokia not porting Kontacts or Evolution or some other
full-featured Linux PIM. I probably would have got an eee PC instead if
I had known: the form factor of the Nokia isn't been nearly as much of
an advantage without that particular functionality. <br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1209005096.4481.77.camel@peter-notebook.site"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">And no, "syncing" is not the answer. I need to be able to work with the
data much more directly than that.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I'm not sure I understand. I can sync GPE to Evolution, Schedule World,
Google, etc and work with the data from there. You don't get much more
direct than that. Why wouldn't you want a matching set of records on
another device? I had mine set up to sync to Evolution once, from there
I can save, email, etc individual or multiple contacts as I need. The
Nokia is a great device but it is limited when compared to my notebook.
Each in it's place.
</pre>
</blockquote>
I don't use Evolution, Schedule world, or Google. I use Access and up
until now my Visor. I've been trying for a long time to migrate my
Access databases to OOo Base, but it can't import tables or csv files
any more than gpe can, and when connecting to the original Access
database can't deal with any of the other database objects at all. Its
report formatting is also incredibly limited at this point. (In my
opinion, Base is still alpha level software, utterly unlike the rest of
the suite.)<br>
<br>
If anybody can point me to a different cross-platform (mainly Windows
and Linux, but Mac would be a plus) database that has most of the power
and ease of Access (and the most important features are reliable
import/export of csv and the ability to create report layouts from
scratch), I would be *extremely* appreciative. I've tried to learn
about SQL and frontends for it, but everything I can find basically
assumes one already knows all about it and seem to be based on
scripting, and I need to work from a GUI, including creating databases
from scratch. The reason I need cross-platform and GUI is so I can
share it with others in my organization who are not all that
computer-literate and have different OS's than me.<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
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