Conduits, Communication and Synchronization

The main purpose of KPilot is to allow sharing of data between the applications of a handheld computer and their KDE counterparts. KPilot does come with its own built-in memo viewer, address viewer, and file installer, but these cannot be used outside the KPilot environment. Independent KDE applications are available for all functions except the file installer.

For communication between the handheld and the different desktop programs, KPilot relies on conduits. Conduits are external programs that perform synchronization actions. KPilot itself is the program that oversees any data exchange between the two computer devices. Using a particular function of the handheld on your desktop computer requires that the corresponding conduit is enabled and configured. For the most part, these conduits are designed to interact with specific KDE programs, so in general they cannot be used with other desktop applications.

The time synchronization conduit is special in that there is no user-visible program for it. It is activated in the background with each sync operation, but should only be enabled on computers that use a network time server to correct their own time drift.

When a synchronization is started, the conduits are activated one after another to carry out the data transfer. There are two different sync methods: a HotSync operation only synchronizes the data for which any conduits have been enabled while a backup operation performs a full backup of all data stored on the handheld.

Some conduits open a file during a sync operation, which means that the corresponding program should not be running at that time. Specifically, KOrganizer should not be running during a sync operation.