Re: [Opensync-users] Some thoughts about Sync of Psion & Symbian

[Joachim L. <Jo...@la...>]

Hi Armin,

> > The Symbian-API provides import and export of vCalendar-Files
> > (Version 1.0); however it seems to be pretty buggy. Time values are
> > pretty messy and reptetitions and alarms seem to be faulty.
> > As I don't know much about the vCalendar file format I would prefer
> > to convert the data to the XML-format used by OpenSync as an
> > interchange format. However I haven't found any documentation on
> > that format.
>
> so do i understand you correctly that you dont want to use the
> symbian api at all, and instead access the content directly?

not quite, as far as I'm aware of, there's no way to read the data in 
the Symbian files of calendar, contact, etc. But there's an API to 
access the data and to enable you to externalise entries.
So my Idea was to externalise the modified entries to the XML format and 
internalise new data from XML. So this would reduce the number of 
conversions.

> how buggy are the generated vcal files? if they arent too buggy,
> another option would be to write an extension to the vcal format
> (like "vcal-symbian") that can work around these bugs.

Well, I'm not that much into vCal/iCal. From the experiences I got from 
the sync of KOrganizer with Psion Agenda I realised a few problems with 
the presentation of times, definition of all-day events, repetitions 
and alarms/reminders.

Even export of Symbian entries and import to another Symbian Agenda 
causes some loss of data.

The biggest drawback however is that I cannot modify events if I use 
export/import. To modify an event would require to delete the old event 
and import the new. It works but's ugly. Also some Symbian-Specific 
information may be lost in this process.

I have done those fixes in my previous attempt but didn't really like 
it, it started to become a real mess. Further more I did the string 
handling with QT on the Linux-box. 
For the Symbian-OpenSync solution I don't want to add another dependency 
and drop QT.
Instead of the conversion of Symbian's buggy vCalendar to a valid 
vCalendar I planned to export it directly to a useful format. I guess 
this would be easier to maintain and would give me the opportunity to 
modify entries. Instead of an export to vCalendar I could also export 
to XML.

> I didnt publish any documentation about this format yet for 2
<snip>
> guarantee stablity of this internal format at this point of time.

What about to introduce file format version numbers? This would ensure 
that the format for the dedicated version is stable and gives the 
flexibility for later changes.

> > Is there a definition/list of attributes for Events, Todos,
> > Contacts, etc?
> at the moment, your best bet is to ask me :) I will help you with
> information about the internal xml format if this is ok.

So, if I give you a list of attributes of the calendar entries, could 
you give me an example of a corresponding XML-File?

As I don't have much experience with XML and neither with vCalendar, 
which way would you propose?

> > Looking forward to get into coding. ;-)
> very good :)
Don't expect anything useful in the near future. :-(

Cheers Jo