Re: The Community

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
> The #1 reason that I wanted an iPaq running OPIE was because I wanted the
> power of Linux on my handheld and at the same time I wanted the PDA's PIM
> data to sync to my KDE desktop.

Indeed, this was my motivation for getting into it as well.

> The Sync project, if it can be called that, between KDE and OPIE
> (I'm not including phones and Palm Pilots or other sync software) feels
> like a ship without a captain.

Certainly in the days of the old KitchenSync framework (before KDE 3.5.7) it
was a bit like that. Now we have OpenSync I hope those days are (almost)
over. As of KDE 3.5.7, The frontend is still called KitchenSync but it is a
complete rewrite and now uses OpenSync as the syncing engine. I believe there
are OpenSync frontends for GNOME as well.

OpenSync does have support for Opie and it's about 95% done. There are still
bugs, but it is being actively worked on - in fact I am the one working on
the Opie plugin, and I definitely want to see it completed.

OpenSync's biggest advantage over previous efforts is that the engine itself
is not tied to any particular environment (KDE, GNOME) so it has attracted
interest from all sides. Having worked with it fairly closely from a
developer perspective I can tell you that it is also quite well designed, so
I think you can have confidence in its future from that perspective.

> It seems to me like no one can agree on standards for syncing, and the
> framework or preferred combination of software is always changing. Since
> it's a moving and vague target (how many sync frameworks have there been
> now? 4? 5?), no wonder it's hard for others to help work on.

Well, there are three open source ones that I know of (old KitchenSync,
Multisync, and now OpenSync). The first two are now defunct. It's worth
mentioning that the previous author of the Multisync framework designed
OpenSync; also the Opie plugin for OpenSync re-uses some code from the Opie
plugin for Multisync, so the effort put in and the lessons learnt there
weren't completely lost.

> I bring this up because I think the lack of stable, reliable, easy-to-use
> sync software is OPIE's #1 major drawback for the average PDA user. I may
> be wrong, but don't most people who use PDAs use them for PIM data? And
> don't they wish they didn't have to type the same data into their PDA and
> desktop separately?

Agreed. It's a serious shortcoming, one I hope we can address in the very near
future. In fact I acknowledge it's probably the #1 reason why we don't have
more users.

> As far as being a member of the community - I have not done anything worthy
> of being called a contributor, though I've helped people on the mailing
> lists and IRC. So I would not give myself the same status as most of you
> other volunteers. But if there is any room in "The Community" for users who
> really do care about OPIE, want to see it working well, have a keen
> interest in where the project is going, and are possibly willing to assist
> by donating hardware, time or $, please count me in.

Oh, there's definitely room :) Welcome (back?) aboard.

At the moment what we need the most I think is just interested people, and I
mean interested enough to test things and submit descriptive bug reports if
they aren't working. We're very close to a new release at the moment, one
which does fix a whole long list of bugs, so once that's out (and available
for some handheld distribution) feel free to give it a try and let us know
how you get on.

Once 1.2.3 has come out I think we'll be able to come up with a roadmap for
future Opie development, and I can assure you that solid, reliable syncing
will be on that list :)

Cheers,
Paul
Received on Fri Jul 20 2007 - 20:40:44 EDT