Palm Sync?

Discussion of features in Mozilla Thunderbird
JMF
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Post by JMF »

I love ThunderBird and I think the Palm adress book synch would be a killer feature/extension.
Synching the mails is not important for me but synching the adress book is very important IMHO.

Thanks to the ones that are working on this. :)
DIGITALgimpus
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Post by DIGITALgimpus »

I echo the need for palm sync.

I can't switch until I have it (and Im itching to give Thunderbird some real attention).


Could we possibly get it built as an extension or something?

I use it constantly.
kepardue
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Joined: May 14th, 2003, 9:43 am

Post by kepardue »

I think the addressbook itself would need to get a workover before this sort of functionality could happen well.

For instance, instead of creating new addressbooks for all of the categories on my palm, why not put them in an addressbook of my choice (Personal Address Book) and allow me to select a category from within that? There have been a number of talks about features that the address book coulda shoulda woulda have/had, even to the point of being a stand alone application itself... I wish it could be improved upon. If it is to be a standalone application, let it be able to be tightly integrated with Mail, Calendar, etc.

Just my thoughts.
Kenneth
DIGITALgimpus
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Post by DIGITALgimpus »

There is already palm sync for Mozilla App Suite.

Lets get that going...

and redesign later.
elempoimen
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Post by elempoimen »

Amen to that.

I've had to switch to MozMail for now (which is more bloated than I like...and I have to cut 'n' paste URL's) because I NEED this feature. Still trying to think through a solution, though.

Maybe we should put a bounty on this? Any takers?
<a href="http://thegateway.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Journey to the Gateway :: a postmodern journey of faith</a>
swalker
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Post by swalker »

User avatar
jhirshon
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Post by jhirshon »

I've got a Palm Tungsten C - will try this now - fingers crossed!

Update: Unzipped, did not replace my existing Tbird folder - launched Tbird from this new build, got an error message saying could not find a dll - no luck but I could be doing something wrong here. :(

REALLY hope that I am, because I've been waiting a long time for this!

cheers, JH
swalker
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Post by swalker »

Ok, the dll problem should be fixed. Please try again.
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jhirshon
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Post by jhirshon »

DLL problem is fixed, Mozilla conduit shows up in hotsync manager - but still no syncing. :( Also, no Mozilla program group shpws up under Start menu, per instructions.

Hope we're gettig closer on this!

cheers, JH
swalker
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Post by swalker »

Can you try to log the conduit and see if the log contains anything useful? Details on http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews ... msync.html under the "Use the logging facility" heading.
DIGITALgimpus
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Post by DIGITALgimpus »

I've done a fair amount of digging around...

There is something wrong with that dll.

I used the Seamonkey verison previously... worked flawlessly. Can't get it working in thunderbird... so here's what I did.

Tried using hotsync in verbose... noticed no address sync attempted. Not listed when you go into "custom" to configure the sync.

Uninstalled thunderbird palmsync using Seamonkey uninstaller (should be included in thunderbird btw).

Installed Seamonkey Address book.

Edited registry, to point to: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Accettura\Desktop\bin\mozABConduit.dll rather than to seamonkey's verison of the dll.


Once again uninstalled.. and addressbook came back.

So for some reason it won't load the dll, is my guess.


BTW: tried using the CDK version of hotsync, as it has better debugging capabilities... but no success there. Didn't provide any relevent info.
emwi
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Joined: June 22nd, 2003, 5:41 am

Post by emwi »

Hello all,

I think that it would be a quite nifty "killer"-feature to sync or include Palm's address book to Thunderbird.

I'd like to point out that it doesn't necessarily have to be synchronization: I'd be happy if I could just *import* Palm address books.
While the Palm desktop software is able to export data as csv, the output is complete garbage, as empty fields are not included, thus breaking any repetitive logic to read it out. An export as vCard (either single or all addresses in one big file) is also possible, but unfortunately Thunderbirds address book is unable to import vcards.
I tried several ways to export Palm addresses into Outlook Express and from there into Thunderbird etc. Right now, the most convenient way for me is:
1. Export all addresses from Palm Desktop as one big vcard
2. Import vCard into Outlook Express
3. Import Outlook addressbook into Thunderbird

This imports names and emails, but no other data, particularly streets and zip-codes are lost, perhaps because I use international versions of Palm Desktop and OE. If someone knows of a better way to do this, please let me know.

A direct import of vcards would be a nice solution until a real hotsync solution would be found. A simple import would be platform independent- keep in mind that Palm's hotsync environment is platform specific and there is no official Linux version.

I think that a standalone address book would greatly improve the Mozilla project. As someone else pointed out, people really care about their address data, not the program providing it, and would love an addressbook application with offers as much import/export solutions as possible, and LDAP is just too oversized for a home user.

Besides that, I really like Thunderbird and like to thank the team for providing it!

Regards,

emwi
DIGITALgimpus
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Post by DIGITALgimpus »

Anyone have ideas on this?
ktoosh
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Joined: June 27th, 2003, 7:39 am

PalmSync Worked!

Post by ktoosh »

Ok,
I have built a debug TB from the trunk including the conduit and palmsync extension. (thanks to some info and patch from swalker).
I used PalmSyncInstall that ended up in dist\bin to install the conduit (the registry entry that corresponds to the registered dll points to my debug build)

I then synced my palm. At the time of the hotsync, TB was not running. When the address portion of the sync began, TB started up and the sync continued.

I checked the log file that I had pointed to using the MOZ_CONDUIT_LOG variable, and it shows a successful transfer of the addresses. I have also verified that the addresses show up in the TB addressbook.

I think that taking the stuff from the mozilla builds may not work because of the .xpt file that is needed in the components directory.

Anyway, building from scratch seems to fix the problems.

I will be posting similar comments in the bug 214407

Kevin
elempoimen
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Post by elempoimen »

I tried jhirshon's build with no luck.

ktoosh, any chance of getting a copy of your build?

Thanks,
.:elem
<a href="http://thegateway.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Journey to the Gateway :: a postmodern journey of faith</a>
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