# &kpilot; User's Guide

## Introduction

&kpilot; &kpilotver; is an application that synchronizes your &PalmPilot; or similar device (like the &Handspring; &Visor; or the &Sony; &Clie;) with your &kde; desktop, much like the Palm Desktop &HotSync; software does for &Windows;. &kpilot; can back-up, restore, and &HotSync; your &PalmPilot;. It can synchronize the built-in applications with their &kde; counterparts. It also features additional conduits for third-party software.

There is a web page for &kpilot;: the Official &kpilot; Home Page . The KDE-PIM website also offers useful information on the subject of PIM in general. &kpilot; shares the kdepim-users mailing list, kdepim-users@kde.org. See the mailing lists page for more information on subscribing and unsubscribing from the list.

A word about version numbers: &kpilot; 4.4.x is current and still unstable as of June 2004. It does not work with KDE versions lower that 3.2.

### Trademarks

&kpilot; describes synchronization operations with &PalmOS; devices, and it uses the word &HotSync; to name those synchronization operations, while recognizing that &HotSync; is a trademark of Palm, Inc. Holders of other trademarks, such as &Handspring; &Visor;, &Sony; &Clie;, and the Palm, Inc. trademarks &PalmPilot; and Zire are recognized as well.

## Overview of &kpilot;

&kpilot; consists of two parts: the &kpilot; daemon, which sits in the system tray and handles the actual communication with the &handheld;, and the normal &kpilot; program, which lets you configure the daemon and view the databases on your &handheld;. In normal operation, you will not need to use &kpilot; itself very much, since the daemon handles communication unobtrusively and synchronizes your data to &kde; applications like &korganizer; and &knotes;. &kpilot; is integrated into Kontact as well.

It is vital to configure &kpilot; before use. At the very least, you need to tell it which hardware device to use to communicate with your &handheld;. Configuration settings are described at length in the section on configuring &kpilot;. For the impatient, the configuration wizard can set up most things for you.

Once &kpilot; is configured, you should make a backup of your &handheld; first. That is to be on the safe side. Once that is done, you can just leave the &kpilot; daemon running in the system tray, and all you need to do is press the &HotSync; button, and changes in the &handheld; data and the &kde; applications will be synchronized, so that the information matches again on both the &handheld; and the desktop.

If you want to examine the data stored on your &handheld;, the built in viewers can be used. This allows you to view memos, addresses, &etc;. There is a generic hexadecimal database viewer for advanced use.

Finally, &kpilot; can be used to install new programs and databases on your &handheld;.

### Changes in &kpilotver;

The expressiveness of the No Backup configuration item, which prevents specific databases from being backed up (for space, speed, or stability reasons), has been extended. In particular, the old format listed only creator values, while the new format can list wildcard database names as well as creator values. The value set in the configuration dialog will be automatically adjusted to the new format.

In &kpilot; &kpilotver;, the way conduits are programmed changed, and you will need to use newly compiled conduits. If there are old conduits on your system, &kpilot; will prompt you to remove them.

Please take the time to review all of the configuration settings.

&configuring-kpilot; &using-kpilot; &synchronization; &kpilot-faq;

## Credits and License

&kpilot; Program copyright 1998-2000 by Dan Pilone pilone@slac.com

Contributors:

- Adriaan de Groot groot@kde.org

- Preston Brown pbrown@redhat.com

- VCal and Todo Conduits by: Herwin Jan Steehouwer, Kenneth Albanowski, Michael Kropfberger

- Popmail Conduit overhaul: Marko Grönroos

- &kaddressbook; Conduit: Greg Stern

- Patches by: Jörn Ahrens, Robert Ambrose, Jörg Habenicht, Philipp Hullmann, Dag Nygren, Scott Presnell, Heiko Purnhagen, Chuck Robey and Jay Summet

Documentation copyright 2000,2001 Adriaan de Groot groot@kde.org. Documentation copyright 2004 Carlos Leonhard Woelz carloswoelz@imap-mail.com

&underFDL; &underGPL;
&documentation.index;