KDEPIM and Libre Office

[Thomas Hejze]

Hi,
I use KDEPIM for more than 15 years and I have always been maintaining my
adressbook, not only for E-Mail but also "snail mail" (as it is called
sometimes). I run a small enterprise, my customers are in my KDE adressbook
and yes, there are still letters to be written on paper.

My current problem is the integration into Libre Office. I remember once it was
possible to connect to KDE-Adressbook from Libre Office by database connection,
but for some reason this functionality got lost. Currently I use the following
workaround:

1) Export the data to a csv file.
2) Create a database connection in Libre Office to that file.
3) In case of updates: rewrite that specific csv file.

This workaround has two big disadvantages: First, this is a very static
solution, which requires a lot of extra maintainance work. Second, the libre
office database connection has a problem with special characters (üöäß), so data
are not provided correctly. There is no way to set the correct codepage
(except maybe by sophisticated macro programming).

AFAIK Akonadi is nothing else but some sort of database management system on
top of mariadb. So I wonder, what would necessary to make Libre Office connect
to KDEPIM (again).

Currently Libre Office offers the following types of adressbook connections:
- Firefox/Iceweasel
- Thunderbird/Icedove
- dBase
- JDBC
- Groupwise
- Evolution LDAP
- Table/CSV
- Text
- MySQL
- ODBC

Responses to my email are very appreciated.

Best regards
Thomas Hejze

[Daniel Vrátil]

Hi Thomas,

in short, connecting directly to the Akonadi database is not a good idea - the
data are not all in the DB and the database schema may change sometimes.

Ideally what you would need to support modern KAddressbook integration is to
write a plugin that interacts with Akonadi through the Akonadi Core library. I
don't know if LO supports some form of plugins to do that that we could
distribute with KAddressbook or if we would have to actually get the code into
LO (in which case this is not likely going to happen). Any input from someone
more knowledgable about LO code is welcomed.

Dan

Post by Thomas Hejze
Hi,
I use KDEPIM for more than 15 years and I have always been maintaining my
adressbook, not only for E-Mail but also "snail mail" (as it is called
sometimes). I run a small enterprise, my customers are in my KDE adressbook
and yes, there are still letters to be written on paper.
My current problem is the integration into Libre Office. I remember once it
was possible to connect to KDE-Adressbook from Libre Office by database
connection, but for some reason this functionality got lost. Currently I
1) Export the data to a csv file.
2) Create a database connection in Libre Office to that file.
3) In case of updates: rewrite that specific csv file.
This workaround has two big disadvantages: First, this is a very static
solution, which requires a lot of extra maintainance work. Second, the libre
office database connection has a problem with special characters (üöäß), so
data are not provided correctly. There is no way to set the correct
codepage (except maybe by sophisticated macro programming).
AFAIK Akonadi is nothing else but some sort of database management system on
top of mariadb. So I wonder, what would necessary to make Libre Office
connect to KDEPIM (again).
- Firefox/Iceweasel
- Thunderbird/Icedove
- dBase
- JDBC
- Groupwise
- Evolution LDAP
- Table/CSV
- Text
- MySQL
- ODBC
Responses to my email are very appreciated.
Best regards
Thomas Hejze

[Thomas Hejze]

Dobrý večer Daniel,
first of all thanks for your answer.

Post by Daniel Vrátil
in short, connecting directly to the Akonadi database is not a good idea -
the data are not all in the DB and the database schema may change
sometimes.
Ideally what you would need to support modern KAddressbook integration is to
write a plugin that interacts with Akonadi through the Akonadi Core
library.

This is exactly the answer I have been afraid of. So, as far as I understand,
it needs more than a database connection. I wonder what effort it would take,
to write such a plugin (in manhours, Euros etc.). I am a chemical engineer, so
it is hard for me to estimate the size of resources required. I would be ready
to sponsor such an effort or make at least a contribution.

Post by Daniel Vrátil
I don't know if LO supports some form of plugins to do that that
we could distribute with KAddressbook or if we would have to actually get
the code into LO (in which case this is not likely going to happen). Any
input from someone more knowledgable about LO code is welcomed.

Well, I am a LO user. All I can say that LO wants to treat any addressbook
resource as a database connection. It offers quite a number of database
drivers from simple text to sophisticated SQL based systems. But it has to be
a database connection.

LO offers three programming interfaces to extend its functionality: Python,
JavaScript and LO Basic. The required code could be shipped in the form of so
called "extensions". The biggest problem I see is, that kdepim developers
might say "I can't do it, because I do not know enough about LO", while LO
developers might say "I can't do it, because I do not know enough about
kdepim".

I remember there was a time when the kdepim addressbook could be integrated by
the LO (maybe OOO) addessbook wizard. I suspect that stopped with the
implementation of akonadi.

Greetings from your neighbor from Austria.

Thomas Hejze