Re: [Evolution] Funambol, syncing, etc.

[Chris G <cl isbd net>]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:56:27PM +1100, Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi Patrick,
>
> Thank you very much for the great explanations and information!
>
> > Writing up your experience for LWN would be useful to get the attention
> > of other developers and potential packagers.
>
> I sent LWN a rough draft to see if they were interested, but the
> response was "no":
>
> > The article, as written, is not really suitable for LWN.  We tend to
> > avoid how-to articles in general; we also write in a very different
> > style than is found here.
> >
> > There could be a place for a look at this topic.  But there would be a
> > lot more interest in a local, free-software solution than in
> > somebody's web application.
>
> So I think you're in need of someone who is a) a better writer than me,
> and b) preferably someone who has set up a local server.
>
> However, in the course of doing the very rough draft, I found myself
> wondering whether SyncML could ultimately do for contacts + calendars +
> notes + tasks what IMAP does for email (make it live "in the cloud", and
> be remotely accessible & usable by a wide variety of clients). However
> to fulfil that potential, it seems to me it would ideally need two more
> things:
> a) syncing of multiple folders (e.g. I have 5 notes folders, 9 contacts
> folders, 24 tasks folders) - whereas currently the UIs in both the
> phone's sync client and in Genesis-Sync seem to imply
> single-folder-syncing only.
> b) Support for SyncML built into multiple PIM clients (e.g. Evolution,
> Kontact, Outlook, etc.), in the same way that IMAP comes "as standard".
> However, even just having it integrated into one client, such as
> Evolution, would be useful for people who seamlessly want the same data
> synced on both a laptop & desktop, or work machine & home machine.
I think one of the issues/problems with this is much the same as the
problems one sees with IMAP.  That protocol isn't tightly enough
defined so each client/server pair acts slightly differently.  I have
tried to use IMAP on and off over the years but I always find that the
implementations of different mixes of IMAP server and client are such
that, for me at least, it's not a viable solution.  It's *fine* if you
only ever use one client and one server but otherwise it's still not
quite there yet.

I believe that SyncMl is in the same sort of place.  You only have to
look at the differences you found (and I did too) synchronizing a
Nokia phone to Evolution via different servers - myFunambol,
ScheduleWorld and a funambol installation of one's own.  If you then
add in a requirement for different clients to work as well and you
have a very difficult to solve mattrix of requirements.


> Of course, my perspective is entirely from that of a end-user, I have no
> idea any whether of this is actually possible, and the amount I know
> about the technical details of SyncML and it's capacities and
> limitations would not even fill the back of a postage stamp :-)
>
> > I wonder why you didn't find estamos.de first. It's the first hit for
> > "syncevolution". Probably you searched for "syncevolution Ubuntu".
>
> I'm pretty sure that "syncevolution Ubuntu" is exactly what I searched
> for, hence the wrong page :-) Updating the
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SyncEvolution is probably a good idea, as it's
> not immediately obvious to the reader that it's out of date information.
>
> > Funambol only supports one address in the current release. A few days
> > ago they announced the features planned for 8.0 and support for a
> > second
> > address is listed. With ScheduleWorld you shouldn't have had that
> > problem.
>
> I tried ScheduleWorld and it seems better for the problems I
> encountered. I'd probably recommend this above the My.Funambol site at
> the current time for anyone else wanting to try syncing.
Yes, I believe ScheduleWorld is the best server at present but it's a
great pity that so much 'tuning' has to be done to get a satisfactory
solution. 

-- 
Chris Green