Plugin for syncing with Mozilla Calendar / Sunbird
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Document last changed: 28.04.2006
(C) 2005-2006 by Markus Meyer
Licensed under the GNU LGPL (see file COPYING for details)
1. Does it work?
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Yes, it does. You can sync one or more calendars, both local and on WebDAV
servers. I have used it for about a year to sync my S55 phone to Mozilla
Calendar and I didn't experience any problems. However, since it has not been
widely tested with other phones and plugins, consider it beta or even alpha
quality code. Therefore it is recommended to make frequent backups of your
data.
2. Will it also sync my contacts and todo items?
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No. It currently only syncs calendar appointments. But if you are a
programmer, you're of course welcome to extend it.
3. What are the known limitations?
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- In every Mozilla Calendar file that you want to use with the plugin,
you should always have at least one item. If the calendar is empty,
Mozilla Calendar will create a calendar file of zero size, which the
plugin cannot interpret correctly. This is a real bug and should be
fixed soon.
Update 21.04.2006: This bug is still not fixed, sorry...
- Both this plugin and Mozilla Calendar can lose data, if there is
a network transfer error when the calendars are downloaded / uploaded
over WebDAV. So always keep backups at hand. I actually had it
happen that Mozilla Calendar worked fine for me multiple weeks, then
all of a sudden it lost half of my appointments. So now I have a script
that makes backups of my Mozilla Calendars every day, but only if they
have increased in size.
Update 21.04.2006: It seems that the code of Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird has
been improved to eliminate a significant dataloss/truncation bug, so I
expect it to work more reliable now. Still, backups are always a good
idea ;)
- Mozilla Calendar doesn't yet recognize automatically if the calendar
files have changed. So after syncing, Mozilla Calendar will still
show your old data. If you use WebDAV, just press Ctrl+R to read
the new data from server after syncing. If you use local calendars,
it's probably easiest to hide (unselect) the calendar in the calendar
list, then select it again.
- (Only interesting for programmers) The code has been hacked in a
few nights during my exams, so there are many things that could
be solved in a better way.
- (Only interesting for programmers) The code has been ported over from
MultiSync, so it doesn't take advantage of many features that OpenSync
now provides (e.g. full support for reading/writing the VCALENDAR format,
support for XML, support for hash tables etc.)
4. Help! It complains about some "Neon" library!?
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You need to have Neon installed. Neon is a library which is used for
WebDAV support. It is planned to make the installation of Neon optional,
but currently, you need it, whether you're planning to use WebDAV or not.
The easiest thing is probably to download Neon's source code from
http://www.webdav.org/neon/
Last version tested was 0.24.7. You can install neon systemwide by
issuing these commands:
tar zxvf neon-0.24.7.tar.gz
cd neon-0.24.7
./configure
make
sudo make install
Update 21.04.2006: Neon might be available in your distribution as
"libneon25-dev" or similar. Try to install it from your packet manager
(e.g. Synaptic, apt-get, yum, ...)
5. Format of the XML settings file
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Example:
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<config>
<file path="/path/to/calendar1.ics" deletedaysold="30" />
<file default="1" path="/path/to/calendar2.ics" />
<webdav username="user" password="password"
url="http://server.com/path/to/webdav1.ics" />
<weddav username="user" password="password"
url="http://server.com/path/to/webdav2.ics" />
...
</config>
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Don't forget the '/>' at the end of the nodes!
Description of the fields:
* You can have both local files and WebDAV-served calendars in one file.
Specifiy a <file> node if you have a local file, and <webdav> if you have
a calendar served by WebDAV
* The "path" and "url" files give the local file path or the web url of the
calendar file which should be synchronized
* default="1" is used to specify the default calendar if you have multiple
calendars (also see below for an explanation)
* "username" and "password" are used to specify the login credentials to the
WebDAV server
* If "deletedaysold" is given, only events will be synchronized which are
younger than the given number of days. Older events will not appear in the
remote end. If they already are in the remote end, they are deleted. This
is useful if e.g. you have a phone which can only store a limited number
of events. Note that the events just don't appear in the phone then. The
Sunbird calendar file will not be changed and still contain all the old
entries, so this option should be safe to use.
6. What's the point of having multiple calendars? My mobile phone only
supports one single calendar!
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If you configure multiple calendars for use with this plugin, the
software will automagically merge these calendars into one single
calendar for use in your device (the "remote end"). However, if you
change or delete an item on the remote end, it will properly find
its way back into the exact calendar it came from. When you add
a new item at the remote end, this item is added to the default
calendar (which can be set by the user).
