__/ [ ANC ] on Friday 28 April 2006 15:46 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Overall, I agree that KPilot adds no glamour to Linux, but it works once
>> you get used to it.
>
> Well, when it works it works fine... but half the time it doesn't.
"Half the time" would appear like figure of speech, at lease to me. KPilot
made my life easier than it has ever been with Windows 98. The only loss was
the ability to 'massage' the data on the desktop-side (Palm Desktop). I
rarely, if ever, install any software. I did that many years ago and it was
an utter belt-and-braces exercise involving bells and whistles.
What I like most about the way things are set up is that I can SSH/telnet to
the machine where synchronisation takes place and then create new memos or
edit existing ones. X is not a necessity.
> I never make entries in my Palm. It's 'read only' for me. (I only use it
> for addresses). So to me, kpilot is a one-way street.... download to the
> palm.
It sometimes seems to be the case, to some extent. The pilot on Linux people
should probably reconvene and discuss how to improve matter and catch up
with some developments. Many are several years behind and often assume a
Pilot. For example: one has to get the latest of pilot-link in order to get
the extra command-line option, which enables to send files directly to SD
cards.
With Palm's move to a Linux-based O/S and the demise of Palm O/S (I think all
will be backward compatible through emulation), perhaps further work on Palm
suited for Linux would be premature.
These compaints of yours remind me of a thread in this group that called
KDevelop a "bazaar". It was nothing of a revelation in the mist and it is
not a very fair statement to make. KDE is community-driven, so the least one
can do is spot bug, report, contribute, or fix. It would be nice if Palm
cared enough for Linux, which they now exploit. They never seemed to support
it directly. The same goes for other POSIX-compliant platforms.
> As I said sometimes it will hot sync and sometimes I have to do the process
> three or four times before I get it to work.
Never happened to me. Always works perfectly. Ever since I installed SuSE.
> One 'problem' is that udev changed things. In the past, when you plugged in
> your Palm to a USB and turned it on, hotplug allocated a dev/ttySxx for
> you. Kpilot had plenty of 'time' to see it before you hit the hot sync
> icon. But with udev the /dev/ttySxx is not created UNTIL you tap the
> hot-sync icon on the Palm and it looks like there are some timing problems
> between kpilot seeing the /dev/ttyS and picking up the protocol. And if it
> hangs, the next time you initiate the hot-sync on the Palm it udev will/may
> allocate a different /dev/ttyS0 and does not update the symlink
> for /dev/pilot.
Let's not forget that kpilot is merely a front end. It relies on a
lower-level layer, which perhaps ought to take the criticisms expressed
herein.
> People have suggested that you start the hot-sync on the Palm _before_ you
> load kpilot and then click the 'reset kplot' icon a few times. Sometimes it
> works, other times it doesn't. And starting kpilot first sometimes works
> and sometimes doesn't. What I hate about the whole thing is having to
> restart KDE to clear out some arcane process that kpilot starts and causes
> it to hang if it is running when it is re-started.
I had to restart my home machine last month. The reason: KPilot could not
connect to my palm. The reboot resolved this. The intersting fact: the
computer was up for about 150 days prior to that reboot. No issues with
KPilot in this long period of time.
> I know this may not make much sense to some of you. Just understand that
> kpilot is a 'mess' right now and I don't know if it is the fault of KDE or
> of udev/hal but as I say, it makes one want to junk the whole thing and buy
> an iMac!!!
Thinking that the iMac would resolve all your problems is the illusionary
approach, not the visionary one. Some people fall back onto Windows only to
reveal how unstable, virus-ridden and expensive it becomes. Atop that, you
have the lack of freedom, on top of which no real contribution can ever be
made.
> If anyone has other suggestions, please let me know.
I hope to find that somebody else participates in this thread and sheds some
light by sharing experiences with KPilot.
Best wishes and good luck,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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