opensync-users

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

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

Hi,

a few weeks / months ago I stared to write a sync application to sync=20
Psion PDAs and Symbian based phones with KOrganizer.
Now that I have a first shot ready for public testing I found out about=20
OpenSync. I realised that OpenSync is a nice framework for the task I=20
wanted to achieve and it's probably much more stable and feature rich=20
at this time than my programs will ever be.

So I thought it'd be better to halt my development and try to get a=20
Psion/Symbian plugin ready. I know there's a lot of work for SyncML=20
which is supported on some Symbian phones but Psion does not support=20
SyncML.

As the file format of the Psion/Symbian Applications is not publically=20
known and may change in the future, programmers are supposed to access=20
the data files through the APIs provided by Symbian.

=46rom what I found out so far it should't be hard to write a=20
client-server application, where the Psion application communicates=20
with the plugin to transfer the data.

The Symbian-API provides import and export of vCalendar-Files (Version=20
1.0); however it seems to be pretty buggy. Time values are pretty messy=20
and reptetitions and alarms seem to be faulty.
As I don't know much about the vCalendar file format I would prefer to=20
convert the data to the XML-format used by OpenSync as an interchange=20
format. However I haven't found any documentation on that format.

Is there some documentation on that XML-Format available?=20
Is there a definition/list of attributes for Events, Todos, Contacts,=20
etc?

Looking forward to get into coding. ;-)

Bye Jo

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

[Armin B. <arm...@de...>]

Joachim Laier wrote:
> Hi,

Hi!

> 
> a few weeks / months ago I stared to write a sync application to sync 
> Psion PDAs and Symbian based phones with KOrganizer.
> Now that I have a first shot ready for public testing I found out about 
> OpenSync. I realised that OpenSync is a nice framework for the task I 
> wanted to achieve and it's probably much more stable and feature rich 
> at this time than my programs will ever be.
> 
> So I thought it'd be better to halt my development and try to get a 
> Psion/Symbian plugin ready. I know there's a lot of work for SyncML 
> which is supported on some Symbian phones but Psion does not support 
> SyncML.
> 
> As the file format of the Psion/Symbian Applications is not publically 
> known and may change in the future, programmers are supposed to access 
> the data files through the APIs provided by Symbian.
> 
> From what I found out so far it should't be hard to write a 
> client-server application, where the Psion application communicates 
> with the plugin to transfer the data.

Thats correct. opensync has support for "server" plugins that listen to
incoming connection from devices and notify the sync engine about this.

> 
> 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?

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.

> 
> Is there some documentation on that XML-Format available? 

I didnt publish any documentation about this format yet for 2 reasons:
- at the moment opensync does not support merging of changes. but this
is a big thing on our todo list. to support merging, the xml format
probably has to be changed slightly to make the merging algorithm as
simple as possible. so i dont want to guarantee stablity of this
internal format at this point of time.
- i would like to provide a api for better handling of the xml format
(like searching for nodes, getting node content etc) that hides the
internal complexity of format.

> 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.

> 
> Looking forward to get into coding. ;-)

very good :)

Regards,
Armin

> 
> Bye Jo
> 
> 
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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

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

[Armin B. <arm...@de...>]

Joachim Laier wrote:
> 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.
> 

ok. in which format does the symbian api offer your the entries? Is it a
 symbian specific format?

> 
>>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.

hmm that would really be ugly. :)

> 
> 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.

hmm... that would definitely be good. Maybe we even could add this
version info the the format information. This way we could register the
same format several times with different version numbers which would
always ensure that we have backward compatibility.

> 
> 
>>>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?

sure!

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

I think the best way is to look at the already existing converters like
the internal xml to vcal converters. Another good source might be the
format conversion of the palm plugin which converts xml to the palm
internal format.

Armin

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

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

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

Hi Armin,

On Tuesday 15 November 2005 18:16, Armin Bauer wrote:
> ok. in which format does the symbian api offer your the entries? Is
> it a symbian specific format?

You connect to a calendar server instance through C++ and retrieve the 
data as C++ calendar objects. So the attributes are available as 
strings, DateTime objects, numbers, etc. With that you're free to 
export/externalise to a format whatever you want.

> > As I don't have much experience with XML and neither with
> > vCalendar, which way would you propose?
>
> I think the best way is to look at the already existing converters
> like the internal xml to vcal converters. Another good source might
> be the format conversion of the palm plugin which converts xml to the
> palm internal format.

Actually I was wondering, whether you'd suggest to convert to vCalendar 
or XML. I guess for the time being it'd be easier for me to get quick 
results to export to vCalendar. (I want to include contacts and notes 
later on as well, but would concentrate on calendar first)

Bye Jo

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

[Armin B. <arm...@de...>]

Joachim Laier wrote:
> Hi Armin,
> 
> On Tuesday 15 November 2005 18:16, Armin Bauer wrote:
> 
>>ok. in which format does the symbian api offer your the entries? Is
>>it a symbian specific format?
> 
> 
> You connect to a calendar server instance through C++ and retrieve the 
> data as C++ calendar objects. So the attributes are available as 
> strings, DateTime objects, numbers, etc. With that you're free to 
> export/externalise to a format whatever you want.
> 

Ah. should work just fine then. This is similar to the palm format then.

> 
>>>As I don't have much experience with XML and neither with
>>>vCalendar, which way would you propose?
>>
>>I think the best way is to look at the already existing converters
>>like the internal xml to vcal converters. Another good source might
>>be the format conversion of the palm plugin which converts xml to the
>>palm internal format.
> 
> 
> Actually I was wondering, whether you'd suggest to convert to vCalendar 
> or XML. I guess for the time being it'd be easier for me to get quick 
> results to export to vCalendar. (I want to include contacts and notes 
> later on as well, but would concentrate on calendar first)

It is basically up to you. both approaches have advantages and
disadvantages. if you export to xml, you save one conversion (which
should not matter too much on a normal pc), if you export to vcal, you
dont have to worry that the internal xml might change at some point.

BTW: opensync offers some routines for dealing with vformats easily. you
can take a look at formats/vformats-xml/vformat.h. If you need it i can
make a library out of it and install the header file as well.

Armin

> 
> Bye Jo
> 

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

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

Alright, I'll give vCal a try for the start.

On Tuesday 15 November 2005 18:47, Armin Bauer wrote:
> BTW: opensync offers some routines for dealing with vformats easily.
> you can take a look at formats/vformats-xml/vformat.h. If you need it
> i can make a library out of it and install the header file as well.
>
Actually, this may be very useful, however I think I'd need this library 
on the Psion/Symbian-Device. From the sources I see that you use glib 
(especially glib's GList) within vformat.c/h. Would it make sense to 
replace GList by a Symbian list object?

Bye Jo

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

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

On Tuesday 15 November 2005 19:16, Joachim Laier wrote:
> Actually, this may be very useful, however I think I'd need this
> library on the Psion/Symbian-Device. From the sources I see that you
> use glib (especially glib's GList) within vformat.c/h. Would it make
> sense to replace GList by a Symbian list object?
>
Hi,

while looking for an alternative library for vCalendar I found out that 
the conversion that is used within Psion's Agenda can be used by other 
applications as well. It supports iCalendar version 1.0.

I will test those classes first and will come back to you if I don't 
succeed with them.

Bye Jo