9:56 p.m.
Patrick Ohly wrote:
On Fr, 2010-02-19 at 15:09 +0000, Bocklage, Jens wrote:
> Do you have any plans to add sync functionality for emails, SMS/MMS
> and bookmarks? (Always talking of the linux version...)
Not at the moment. But if someone is interested in writing suitable
backends, we would certainly help.
Bookmarks should be fairly easy on the SyncML side, there is a
standardized format that is supported by several SyncML servers and
probably also clients on phones. There is already a field list and
profile for that in the Synthesis XML config. Access to bookmarks on
Linux would be harder and would probably be browser specific. For a
deployment of SyncEvolution as a server, one can always use the file
backend to store items for which there is no dedicated backend.
This a pet peeve of mine: on linux we have a really good opportunity to
do things as "system services" and then use those services in multiple
apps for wonderful results. EDS is a great example of this idea (if not
necessarily a great example of implementation) and Telepathy is doing a
good job on the Instant Messaging department.. Same could be done for
email, bookmarks, SMS...
The problem is that multi-platform apps like Firefox, Chromium or
Thunderbird have very little incentive to work on a model like that...
For emails I don't quite see the use case. Doesn't a central
IMAP server
fit the need? IMAP is a protocol specifically designed for that purpose
and does a better job than SyncML at synchronizing emails. For example,
with IMAP one can download the header of new email. With SyncML, this is
only possible via vendor-specific extensions of the standard.
We discussed this when we started working on the whole synchronization
problem and agreed on the above. I think that:
1. IMAP looks like a better solution to the sync-over-internet problem.
"Syncing" is not a simple problem and it seems different solutions are
required for different sub-problems: Media sync is another problem area.
2. The problem of local email synchronization (laptop to mobile device)
is an anachronism from past times when people actually had devices with
no connection to the network at large -- IMO the amount work isn't
justified by the benefits anymore.
For SMS/MMS the situation is different because they are typically
stored
locally on a phone and not on a central server. Synchronizing them would
make sense. I'm not sure which format is used by phones, assuming they
expose that data via SyncML. I think some Nokia phones do. If not,
perhaps some of the other Bluetooth protocols provide access.
The S60 Sync client does expose SMS, email, bookmarks and whatnot in the
sync UI... I can take a look at the CTCap list at some point with those
enabled, maybe it helps.
The problem with SMS sync is that just syncing SMS isn't enough from a
"user experience" point of view: the natural next step is being able to
send SMS from the other device. I doubt the syncml interface lets you do
that, so it would probably make sense to look at the whole problem at
once and then decide if SyncML is part of the optimal solution.
- Jussi