Re: [NTLK] Shout out to developers

From: Jon Glass <jonglass_at_usa.net>
Date: Mon Sep 04 2006 - 03:28:08 EDT

On 9/3/06, Steven Frank <stevenf@panic.com> wrote:
> Jon: I posted a pretty lengthy dissection of some of NewtSync's
> problem areas a few months back. There are issues with both specific
> plug ins, and with the core syncing process itself. I did not feel
> qualified to take it on. As I said earlier, syncing, specifically
> conflict resolution, is really hard to get right.

Yeah, I forgot about your words on the subject. I certainly don't
remember the conclusion you came to. Time to Google(R) my email...

> On the surface it seems like all you have to do is compare
> modification dates and push one record or the other, but it gets
> significantly more complex than that, one example being the records
> not having exactly the same fields and capabilities on the two
> platforms (like repeating events), requiring translation between the
> two formats.

Definitely, it seems that Dates is the more complicated in the sense
of different data types, but also Names, it seems, so often have
problems in that one program allows for more phones, or emails, or
addresses.... And then you have the problem with languages and
accented characters or even alphabets!

> Another example is propagating deletion of records. The way NewtSync
> is written now, I believe you'd have to walk every record to find if
> one had been deleted on the Newton side, a.k.a "slow sync". I don't
> know what Apple's utilities did, but they probably had some other
> trick to speed up the process.

That would be yucky, but I thought there was some form of index with
unique numbers, so that only the index had to be polled, and in the
case of, I think, Now Sync, it tracked that stuff, and organized it
before the actual sync. So, for instance, when you start the process,
it checks its index, compares it to the Address Book index, and marks
deletions, and probably also the same for modifications, and then does
an import from the Newton, does the same for that, reconciles, and
writes the data back to the two platforms, but it was index-based,
which would, IMO speed things up, but not have to go through each and
every record right in the databases themselves. But what do I know. I
only ever coded in Hypertalk (and, btw, that's what I always did--copy
the data into memory, and massage it there, and then write it back.
Granted, I usually used hidden fields as a "backup" if it was really
crucial data (and could even "restore" an interrupted process) But
that was Hypercard--the only "programming" I ever did...
>
> If you've ever synced any device to any other device, you've surely
> run into data corruption and duplicated records, etc. Even the best
> minds in the business who do this full time for a living have trouble
> getting it exactly right.

Yeah, I know that Now never did. :-)

> That's the nice thing about Sync Services / iSync. It handles most
> of that nastiness for you. But, it's not cross-platform.

But does Sync Sercices depend on a cross-platform data form? XML,
SyncML or something? I thought somebody here said it did... Wouldn't
that be a start?

> Not trying to be overly pessimistic here, but there's a reason this
> project has such a checkered history.

That's for sure! However, it seems that the move towards
standard-based computing should be a plus here! For instance, vcards
allow for unlimited phones, addresses, email etc, just like the
Newton. Surely the task should be getting easier with time, rather
than more difficult!

My perspective is that, in reality, the biggest bugaboo is the
communications end--getting the Newton to communicate with OS X. In
that respect, I don't know if Windows is as bad off as the Mac, but
that is where the real problem seems to lie. As comms move forward,
the Newton is getting further and further into the horizon--no USB, no
nothing built-in. It seems to me that this is the hurdle that must be
surmounted before we can get to syncing...

-- 
 -Jon Glass
Krakow, Poland
<jonglass@usa.net>
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published
opinion.   --Winston Churchill
-- 
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Received on Mon Sep 4 03:28:10 2006

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