PilotManager News 3/10/1999 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Alan.Harder@Sun.COM www.moshpit.org/pilotmgr ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction - PilotManager is a tool that allows you to synchronize databases on your 3Com PalmPilot with applications on your Unix platform. It is a full Hotsync daemon that is user extensible. Developers can write their own conduits to synchronize Pilot databases with the desktop application of their choice! PilotManager was originally written by Bharat Mediratta (Bharat@Visto.Com) and is currently developed and supported by Alan Harder (Alan.Harder@Sun.Com). ============================================================================= PilotManager 1.107 Released! This release includes two new conduits and lots of small enhancements and bugfixes. Many of these updates were submitted by pilotmanager users... Thanks!! New Stuff in 1.107 (see the ChangeLog file for additional details): +Added daemon mode! When PilotManager is started with the -daemon flag it runs in the background waiting for the pilot to connect. When it gets a connection a text mode sync is started. When it completes pilotmgr waits for another connection... Thanks to Robert King, Aaron Kaplan and Gossamer for this patch! Be careful not to start up two pilotmgr daemons as it doesn't check for another instance. Also, preferences are locked for the daemon, so you need to kill and restart to make changes. Use of this flag is recommended for advanced users only. +Added option to restore previous username/id to a reset pilot! PilotManager prompts you for a username and generates a random id when you sync with a reset or new pilot. This option allows you to restore your previous values if you reset your pilot. This is particularly useful for SyncPlan users since SyncPlan identifies the pilot from the id. Thanks to Bodo Bellut for this patch! +Removed annoying window flicker! Dialogs are moved/centered before being popped up now so you don't see each window appear and then move somewhere else. Thanks to Joe Thomas for the bug report. +More portable/reliable preferences(hopefully)! The main preferences and prefs files for SyncTime and SyncAB are now read with the perl "do" command instead of "eval". Hopefully this is more reliable on all platforms, as some users have experienced lost preferences when restarting pilotmgr. Thanks to Peter Lees for suggesting this patch. +SyncMemo handles private flag! In the SyncMemo config dialog you can now specify to set certain file permissions for private memos, or skip syncing of private memos. Thanks to Richard McAlister for this suggestion. Other fixes/enhancements to SyncMemo: - Use Shell perl module instead of backtick(`) shell calls. This fixes problems with spaces or quotes in filenames. Thanks to Jeff Dairki for this patch! - Bugfix for "archived" memos. They are deleted now (but not archived, hmm!?). Thanks to Robert Terzi for the bug report. +Backup now supports daily/weekly/monthly backups! The backup config dialog has been updated for specifying the time interval for performing backups. Thanks to Erik van Oosten for suggesting porting this functionality over from SyncTime. Other fixes/enhancements to Backup: - Use hardlinks instead of copying from previous archives (faster and uses less disk space). Thanks to Caspar Dik for this patch! - Fix for some special characters in pilot db names. Thanks to Bob Clare for suggesting and testing this fix. +Updates to Installer conduit: - Fix to handle filenames with spaces from Jim Nicholson. (previously released as Installer 1.007). - Use more portable File::Copy perl module instead of system "cp" call. - Avoid crashes when non-prc/pdb files are placed in Installer directory. +Bugfixes to SyncPlan! - Plan communication bugfix from Aaron Kaplan (patch already released as version 0.94 Beta). - Bugfix when netplan is run with -a flag, patch from Chris Keane and Jeff Dairiki. - Bugfix for dates prior to 1970, patch from Jeff Dairiki. +Added SyncAB conduit! SyncAB has been moved from contrib/alan-harder to the top level. This conduit can synchronize the pilot address book with a CSV (comma separated values) file, useful for interacting with scripts, not a very readable format. Two tools are available in the contrib section for viewing and even editing the CSV data (see below). This update also includes more work on support for vCards, with some help from Steve Swales. SyncAB in vCard mode can create vCards from your pilot records, and sychronized changes to those records. It can't yet create new pilot records from existing vCards.... The vCards can be used directly with the Solaris 7 address manager. +Added SendMail conduit! Moved Andy Poggio's conduit from the contrib section and renamed it "SendMail". This conduit retrieves messages from the outbox in the pilot Mail app and sends them. This update includes a bugfix from Chris Keane to not delete messages from the pilot if an error occurs routing the message to the mailer. +New tools available in the contrib section! - EditAB: An address book app called which uses the CSV file generated by SyncAB (see above), allowing you to edit your addresses on the desktop and sync all changes to the pilot! Written by Bodo Bellut. This package is also available on the web from: http://www.ping.de/sites/garfield/pilotmgr.html - LupAB.pl: Script which searches the CSV file created by SyncAB (see above) and outputs the search results in a readable format. Very useful for doing a quick lookup in your pilot address data when logged into your desktop! Written by Andy Poggio. - sync-pilot.pl: Standalone script to sync with the Crosswind "Synchronize" calendar package. Two different versions are available. The original by Dwayne Forsyth and an update/rewrite by Albert Lee. - pi-ldif.pl: Script which can export pilot address book records to an LDIF file suitable for Netscape. Written by Brad Rubenstein. =============================================================================