Re: [Bitpim-devel] Phonebook/Calendar sync w/external programs?

[Chris C. <cle...@oc...>]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Steven Palm wrote:

> I have wrapped methods in Python to allow the ability to interact with 
> both AddressBook and iCal on MacOS X. I can retrieve/set information in 
> both applications, but I'm not sure the best way to slip this into 
> bitpim. (Actually, I have code that works, but to make it user friendly 
> I should wrap it into modules that abstract the details to a simpler 
> higher level API. My current approach is to use Python to wrap 
> AppleScript to actually talk to the respective applications. Works 
> pretty well in my initial testing.)

Cool.  Those higher level APIs should be designed such that they could be 
useful for accessing any external calendar, including things like Yahoo! 
calendar, etc.  Basically, the existing modules you designed would be 
replicated for other calendar backends, and the higher level API (that 
doesn't yet exist) would be the generic API.

> One thought I had on the phonebook was that you may not want to have 
> your entire computer address book in the phone. Perhaps there should be 
> a setting somewhere for a particular group name that gets synchronized? 
> Just a thought...  Same thing with calendars... You can have multiple 
> calendars in iCal, I suspect only one would synchronize to your phone.

This is definitely the same way I was thinking.  I would also like to be able 
to import schedule information from somebody else's calendar, e.g., my 
wife's, and have each entry auto-prefixed with some character or string so 
that I can easily discern my events from hers.

As far as pushing schedules onto the phone, I can think of several ways in 
which one might want to constrain/filter a calendar, e.g., by date range, by 
time slot, etc.  Maybe the best way to allow this is to allow arbitrary 
python code to be written?  However, that could be a giant security hole...


-- 
  Chris Cleeland, cleeland_c @ ociweb.com, http://www.milodesigns.com/~chris
     Principal Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc., +1 314 579 0066
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