daantje.nl

I like my Mac, the only thing is the iSync app! Apple did everything to the OS to make it realy nice to work with. But when you have a PDA with linux or windows you have a problem syncing it. I have KDE installed, compiled every sync app I could find, but still no luck! Yes with Pocket PC it worked, but I had to buy the missing-sync app. And every nice tool I wanted, is also not available in GPL or freeware. So back to Opie. Again the sync problem… Why is .Mac only SyncML compatible an not free?! Why? Why?! Apple’s Xcode tools includes stuff to build new plugins for other devices, only Cocoa is not my thing… (Any volunteers?) Now found a few possibilities to make my own sync tool. I found out that Opie runs a Qtopia FTP server on port 4242. It’s GPL, so all the commands are in the source ;) Just search for "FTP SERVICE COMMANDS". Opie saves everything in xml. Only I didn’t found the description/reference yet. But it could be backwards engineerd. Apple’s iCal saves standard iCalendar format and can be used in every programming language. Now I know PHP, and this is all do-able with PHP ;) And it’s standard on every Mac OS X box. Just get the datebook.xml from Opie’s FTP and read it into an array. Do the same with the .ics file from the Mac (more work, but again it can be done). Than make a routine that matches/merge the two array’s. That write 2 files again from the merged array and write them back the same way they’ve come. My only consern is the memory the array’s consume. I need a backend. MySQL rules, but isn’t standard. Maybe XML is an option, but slow. (Any ideas are welcome.) As frontend I can use a simple AppleScript app with only one button ‘iFinalySyncOpie’… When this all works, I should thake a look how this can be done with the Addressbook and the notes… And than maybe rewrite it in Java and make a nice frontend. If somebody knows a goodway to sync Opie with Apple’s iCal and Addressbook, please drop me at daantje dot nl a email. Mind the at and dot ;)

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