From: Juerd Date: 13:57 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Hating it already The past hours I have been searching for software that: - runs on Linux - lets one easily administer addresses - prints labels (standard 4x8 sheets) - won't confuse my grandpa with terms like "ldif" and "merge" This seems like a reasonable thing to expect the world to have produced. Unfortunately, I still haven't come across anything that remotely looks like what I'm looking for. Everyone seems to suggest using OpenOffice and document merging, but that's ten times too complex. But if it exists, I'm hating it already. Juerd
From: Walt Mankowski Date: 15:57 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already --M9NhX3UHpAaciwkO Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 02:57:34PM +0200, Juerd wrote: > The past hours I have been searching for software that: >=20 > - runs on Linux > - lets one easily administer addresses > - prints labels (standard 4x8 sheets) > - won't confuse my grandpa with terms like "ldif" and "merge" >=20 > This seems like a reasonable thing to expect the world to have produced. > Unfortunately, I still haven't come across anything that remotely looks > like what I'm looking for. Everyone seems to suggest using OpenOffice > and document merging, but that's ten times too complex. >=20 > But if it exists, I'm hating it already. A quick "apt-cache search label" turned up "glabels" and "kbarcode" as possibilities. I haven't tried either of them, so I don't know how hateful they are. Walt --M9NhX3UHpAaciwkO Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFE6xttXfGeK2entYQRAumwAJ4t03T2Ka+Gr4valMfhoBu27TvCdgCgmZJV 4jm0pbyr+yFqma1N9SqiMqE= =n6xt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --M9NhX3UHpAaciwkO--
From: Juerd Date: 15:21 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already Walt Mankowski skribis 2006-08-22 10:57 (-0400): > A quick "apt-cache search label" turned up "glabels" and "kbarcode" as > possibilities. I haven't tried either of them, so I don't know how > hateful they are. These are nice for printing any *single* label. When it comes to more than that, it needs to merge data from an external source. Merging is an undescribably complex task for someone who has lived without computers for most of their life. Besides that, these things require designing your own labels. What we need is simply text. We don't need images or barcodes. Heck, any font will do, and any size as long as it fits (automatic scaling would be nice, but I don't want to be too demanding just yet). glabels can use Evolution's address book. Nice, finally some integration. Unfortunately, Evolution won't be anything less than a complete PIM. You can't tell it to hide the unused portions, so this cannot work. Migrating e-mail to another application again is not an option, we like Thunderbird. Oh, and: "We were unable to open this addressbook. Please check that the path /home/juerd/.evolution/addressbook/local/system exists and that you have permission to access it." Very nice: I have to manually create the data directories? Fuck this. kbarcode looks promising. Database management built-in! It needs some QT database drivers. So let's try SQLite: KCrash: Application 'kbarcode' crashing... Okay. I'll install mysql, then. With all its dependencies, this will take 10 minutes. - TO BE CONTINUED -
From: Juerd Date: 15:51 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already Juerd skribis 2006-08-22 16:21 (+0200): > kbarcode looks promising. Database management built-in! It needs some QT > database drivers. So let's try SQLite: > KCrash: Application 'kbarcode' crashing... > Okay. I'll install mysql, then. With all its dependencies, this will > take 10 minutes. > - TO BE CONTINUED - kbarcode doesn't do addresses. Juerd
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 22:51 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 16:21 +0200, Juerd wrote: > glabels can use Evolution's address book. Nice, finally some > integration. Unfortunately, Evolution won't be anything less than a > complete PIM. You can't tell it to hide the unused portions, so this > cannot work. Yes, it's a shame that. It's a good email client, and pretty alright at contacts and calender too. But I so wish it didn't insist on doing them all at the same time. Hateful. I want an email program that does email. And a contacts program that does contacts. I want them to talk to each other but I don't want them to be each other. Fortunately evolution is not just a front end, but has a separate back end too. People seem to be noticing this finally and starting to take advantage of it. Here's a contacts program that just does contacts: http://chrislord.net/blog/Software/Contacts/ (1) It uses evolution's own address book and hence would presumably (ha!) work with glabels. There's also an email program out there that uses the evolution backend but just does email. Revolutionary! Cheers, Martin. (1) Designed for handhelds but it's gtk so I'm guessing it works ok on a desktop (ha!).
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 16:11 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already [software that] > > - runs on Linux > > - won't confuse my grandpa [...] That's likely to be an empty set even without the extra conditions.
From: Juerd Date: 14:58 on 22 Aug 2006 Subject: Re: Hating it already Peter da Silva skribis 2006-08-22 10:11 (-0500): > [software that] > > > - runs on Linux > > > - won't confuse my grandpa [...] > That's likely to be an empty set even without the extra conditions. So far, Kubuntu, stripped just a little bit more than default, has worked PERFECTLY for him. Thunderbird for mail, Firefox for browsing. kpat for the necessary card games, and OpenOffice.org for writing letters. He had a usable program for addresses in Windows, but it won't run with Wine. Windows is no longer an option because it gets more and more complex, and because I no longer want to do any maintenance of his computer. Defragging is not my thing. Juerd
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