I have had various problems with Kontact. Most recently I could not edit any entry in the address book. The default "bogofilter" Spam filter was not working. The option to change the header type was not working. The Summary view tended to crash. And there have been other more or less bizarre deviations from the norm. I see there have been some bug-reports for these and other issues, but no solution seems to offer itself. People try to uninstall/purge Kontact to get a "clean" new intall, but new installs always inherit the old settings.
Today the Adept manager notified me of a lot of new PIM upgrades, and I hoped that all would be well at last. But alas. So I had an idea about what might be wrong and acted upon it. And now everything is working just beautifully. I know nothing about programming and the like, but I am an experienced "end-user".
My idea is like this: Kontact is a whole package of program modules, if only a few of all the modules that make up KDEPIM, if I understand correctly. They are supposed to be integrated, i.e. they interact. But within each module, within each view, even, of each module, there are a whole range of configuration options for shortcuts, toolbars and program behaviour for other modules. In other words, we end up setting numerous configurations for the same object/script or whatever have you. But the end-user does not necessarily remember what options he chose when he was configuring them in another view. So all the configurations end up conflicting with one another, and this leads to unpredictable and faulty behaviour. That is my theory.
What I did about it, having backed up my contacts, email and calender, was to delete all the configuration files I could find before I went to Adept to purge Kontact. I do not remember in detail what I deleted, but it went along these lines:
In ~/.kde/share/config/kresources/
I deleted the folders: calender, contact, notes
In ~/.kde/share/config/
I deleted all files with filenames that had the string 'email' or 'address' in them. This may have been risky, and I may live to regret it, as some of those files may have been totally unrelated.
I even deleted folders in ~/.kde/share/apps/
kaddressbook
kmail
kontact
After purging and reinstalling, THERE WAS STILL some leftover configuration, though most was gone, and none of it seems to be making trouble so far.
Then I carefully elected my configuration options from inside KONTACT, not from within kmail., kaddressbook, etc.
MY SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT:
I
Without reducing the number of configuration options, force the end user to make all configurations from within only one module, either in Kontact OR within each of the component modules (kmail, kaddressbook, etc.) in such a way that they are inherited by the other modules.
II
Allow the user to reinstall a "clean" Kontact. It seems that configuration data is spread. If we have to go to /.kde to do manual deletes, we should at least be able to find all configuration files in a delimited area.
Today the Adept manager notified me of a lot of new PIM upgrades, and I hoped that all would be well at last. But alas. So I had an idea about what might be wrong and acted upon it. And now everything is working just beautifully. I know nothing about programming and the like, but I am an experienced "end-user".
My idea is like this: Kontact is a whole package of program modules, if only a few of all the modules that make up KDEPIM, if I understand correctly. They are supposed to be integrated, i.e. they interact. But within each module, within each view, even, of each module, there are a whole range of configuration options for shortcuts, toolbars and program behaviour for other modules. In other words, we end up setting numerous configurations for the same object/script or whatever have you. But the end-user does not necessarily remember what options he chose when he was configuring them in another view. So all the configurations end up conflicting with one another, and this leads to unpredictable and faulty behaviour. That is my theory.
What I did about it, having backed up my contacts, email and calender, was to delete all the configuration files I could find before I went to Adept to purge Kontact. I do not remember in detail what I deleted, but it went along these lines:
In ~/.kde/share/config/kresources/
I deleted the folders: calender, contact, notes
In ~/.kde/share/config/
I deleted all files with filenames that had the string 'email' or 'address' in them. This may have been risky, and I may live to regret it, as some of those files may have been totally unrelated.
I even deleted folders in ~/.kde/share/apps/
kaddressbook
kmail
kontact
After purging and reinstalling, THERE WAS STILL some leftover configuration, though most was gone, and none of it seems to be making trouble so far.
Then I carefully elected my configuration options from inside KONTACT, not from within kmail., kaddressbook, etc.
MY SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT:
I
Without reducing the number of configuration options, force the end user to make all configurations from within only one module, either in Kontact OR within each of the component modules (kmail, kaddressbook, etc.) in such a way that they are inherited by the other modules.
II
Allow the user to reinstall a "clean" Kontact. It seems that configuration data is spread. If we have to go to /.kde to do manual deletes, we should at least be able to find all configuration files in a delimited area.