Calendar:Device Sync
Device Sync
We are working on the ability to synchronize calendar with handhelds (pda's). This should with a wide range of devices, and on the main platforms (windows, linux, mac). It should work with all types of calendars that we offer (ics, caldav, sqlite)
- On linux, communicating with the handheld can either be done directly (libvisor) or by third party software, such as multisync/opensync
- On windows, there is activesync and hotsync (iirc). But I don't know enough of them to decide what to use. What are its capabilities? Does it have sync logic build in?
- On mac, i don't know the situation at all.
Calendar already needs to have support for syncing two calICalendars (see Calendar:Networking Sharing Syncing). The logic to sync two calendars could be reused, either by implementing a calICalendar for the handheld, or by making the logic a little bit more general.
Another approach is to make the third party app export the handheld data into a file calendar can read. This calendar can then be synced, and after that the third party app can send the data back to the handheld.
The third way is to create some ipc between calendar and the thirdparty app, and let that app do the logic. multisync has the logic build in, but what about windows and mac? And do we want to depend on multisync?
The downside with those approaches is that calendar needs to run while syncing. This is mainly because we also want syncing to work with non-ics calendars, like caldav.
SyncML
SyncML is a standard, but can we use it safely without any worries?
Help Wanted
To make a plan that will work, we need to know what the situation is on Windows and on MacOSX. What apis are available to talk to handhelds? What logic is available?
If you know more about those platforms from a developers perspective, please note it.