Version: 3.2.1 (using KDE 3.2.3, (testing/unstable)) Compiler: gcc version 3.3.4 (Debian 1:3.3.4-4) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.6.7 It seems the format of the distlists file has slightly changed and so the new kaddressbook version simply ingnores the old entries. The new format looks like this: [orsajNLkrU] ISA=cuDjpyj89,,jajVGVBir, Thats the old version: [/home/jochen/.kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf] ISA=cuDjpyj89,,jajVGVBir, So the difference is only with the '[...]', this is easy to, but its really annoying to explain or do it for all people in my workgroup. Dear developers, please, updating kde from one release to higher version always makes so much un-necessary work. When you change file formats, please make sure, that the old version still works! Really, just imagine a large company wants to use kde, there it MUST NOT happen that upgrades break the settings of all users!!! Thanks, Bernd
Hi Bernd, we know of this difference, but the change was necessary, otherwise whenever you added/removed a resource, your distribution list changed, a really ugly bug. I know changing file formats is bad, but to provide good software, backward compatibility is a big limitation. Microsoft didn't had the courage to break backward compatibility and you see how their products suffered from this fact from release to release... Apple made a hard cut and by this new freedom they were able to implement new cool and powerfull concepts. Free software isn't bound to financial or economical limits, so we shouldn't impose additional ourself. Ciao, Tobias
Hello Tobias, I really don't mind when formats change, however, I really think that configuration files should be converted automatically. This is a general problem of kde (and many other software packages), but it would be so easy to solve, e.g.: 1.) Configuration files should contain a version number. 2.) On starting kde the kde version is compared with the kde-version of e.g. $HOME/.kde/kdevers. If they don't match, so kdevers is is smaller than the installed version, a config-file update program is started. 3.) For speed and simplicity this program just calles a perl scripts, one for each configuration file. 4.) Those perl scripts consist of functions that can convert from one config version to another, so that one just needs to add a new function for every newer config version and so that one can update from any config version to the current version. I really think that this would work, espicially for those small changes as they were necessary for kaddressook. Anyway, I think this should be discussed on a mailling list, what do you think, should we discuss this on kde-devel? Cheers, Bernd
The development of the old KAddressBook will be discontinued for KDE 4.4. Since the new application has the same name, but a completly new code base we close all bug reports against the old version and ask the submitters to resend there reports against the new product.