Hi all,
I'm going to try and post regular progress updates to this list, so
that you're all informed of how things are going, and so that people
can speak up in case I'm headed down a bad path. This community has
proven exceptionally helpful thus far.
Basic serial connectivity is finished. I was able to swipe a lot of
Newton-side code from FilePad Link, which was based heavily on a NTJ
article on serial communications. I'm trying to keep the endpoint
communications fairly generic so that they can be adapted to TCP/IP and
perhaps IrDA fairly easily. At this point I have the Mac app
communicating with the Newton and have some basic classes in place to
communicate with the Newton.
UI-wise, I'm working on making the UI as simple and extensible as
possible. The bulk of the UI will be provided by the plug-ins
themselves. The idea is to provide a framework by which people can
connect to the Newton and get information from it via Cocoa. The gist
of the XSync UI is this:
http://www.everchanging.com/images/xsync-picture-1.png
A Setup menu item (and perhaps a button?) will take you to a dialog
where you can input plugin-specific settings. The UI for those settings
will be provided by the plug-ins themselves. There's a communications
log window as well; it shows all of the communications with the Newton,
formatted like an IM conversation. When the user clicks the Synchronize
button, the window will grow to show progress bars for each active
plug-in.
As for the Mac side of things, the AddressBook API makes things fairly
easy to deal with; it's really easy to find entries that are modified
after a given date, and to get/set information. iCal is a bit more
messy; there's no API for it and the calendar is stored in
iCalendar/vCal format, instead of an XML file like so many other system
settings. Plus I don't know what happens if iCal is open when you edit
the calendar files; XSync may have to quit iCal before syncing.
A very crude preview will be available fairly soon so that any cocoa
programmers amongst you can provide input on the API, and everyone can
provide some input on the basic UI. The first preview will most likely
sync only via serial connections, including those through a USB-serial
adapter. (I'm still working on making my wireless network card less
flaky. Anybody want to trade a spare ethernet or wireless card for a
free copy of the finished software?) It will only ship with one
plug-in, the AddressBook plug-in. I want to finalize the basic UI and
API before I work on more than one plug-in.
A couple of questions for everyone:
1. Ideas on a name? XSync is so formulaic. I toyed around with "Parrot"
but I think that may be too abstract.
2. Anybody have or know of a neat-o icon that I can use?
-j.
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