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Re: Netscape and Pilotmgr
Martin,
I'm looking for the simplest and most direct way of syncing my PalmPilot with
my Solaris 2.5.1 Netscape Calendar. Judging from CS&T's home page, you're
correct that the technology in Netscape Calendar is theirs, although Netscape
doesn't seem to give them credit on their web site. Unfortunately, neither
site provides much insight as to how the product works.
Netscape FAQ's note that there are two daemons running on the server and
listening on specific ports. If you could figure out how to connect to
these, you could probably bypass the browser to get a stream of Calendar
data. Both sites hint, although they never explicitly state it, that what
you'd get would be a stream of vCalendar data. This is very likely what the
PC plugin for HotSync (also a CS&T product, apparently) does. If anyone has
more information about the internals of the product they can share, it
would be very useful.
In lieu of an elegant solution like a plugin or standalone program, it's
possible to use the .vcs files that Netscape Calendar exports. You can use
these whether you have a standalone workstation or a remote server. Thanks to
Jeff Cheeney, I now have a copy of the vCalendar spec which they purport
to meet. From what I can tell looking at what I've exported, they only
meet the minimum requirements, if that. I intend to try an experiment,
importing a file or files that utilize the full spec to see if Netscape
Calendar can at least read it correctly. If anyone has already done this,
say with vCalendar files from some source other than Netscape Calendar, I'd
like to hear what results you had.
What seems to make the best sense right now is first to build a vCalendar
parser module, along the lines of the CSA module, that implements the full
vCalendar spec. I checked CPAN to see if anyone has already done this. There
doesn't appear to be anything, but if anyone knows of something, I'd like to
hear about it. Then, it should be fairly straightforward to write some glue
code to connect the parser to PilotManager. Alan Harder has suggested a couple
of different ways to do this.
I hope that answers some of your questions. Unfortunately, at this stage I
still have far more questions than answers, but I'm getting a little closer.
Frank Holtry
On Feb 17, 9:47am, Martin von Weissenberg wrote:
> HoltryF writes:
> >I asked a similar question a couple of days ago. No one has come forward
> >so far. I have looked at the problem and believe that SyncCM could be
> >modified to use .vcs files, which Netscape can export and import. I don't
> >have a full spec for them, but looking at what my Netscape produces, they
> >look fairly straight forward. The biggest problem may be in trying to deduce
> >repetition frequencies and exceptions, since what's in the file appears to be
> >an entry for each appointment.
> >
> >If I don't find anything off-the-shelf, I will begin trying to code something.
> >But this is definitely 'in the cracks' work, so it may take awhile.
>
> Frank,
>
> Are you thinking of a conduit that would sync with a server or with the
> .vcs files of a single-user?
>
> I would be quite interested in a conduit syncing with a Netscape server.
> Netscape's server is compatible with (or identical to) the CorporateTime
> server made by Corporate Software & Technologies (http://www.cst.ca/).
> The server is also repackaged and sold by HP under the name OpenTime.
> The reason you don't hear about this this time management software is
> that it's targeted at medium to large enterprises with tens of thousands
> of employees.
>
> Even though Netscape sources are free now, I don't know if this applies
> to the Netscape Calendar too as it may be partly copyrighted to CS&T.
> Otherwise these sources would be the obvious place to start.
>
> --Martin
>
> Martin von Weissenberg <http://www.hut.fi/~mweissen>
> "Caffeine tabs? Almost, but not entirely unlike coffee."
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