From: Eckhart Köppen (eck1001_at_gmx.net)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 04:07:18 PDT
On Friday, May 23, 2003, at 03:11 pm, Nathan Turnage wrote:
> Hey guys and gals,
> I have a question about using Nitro/IrDA and such. I just bought a Sony
> Ericsson T68i and I would like to know how to get the two of them
> talking. Whether that means sending vCards back and forth, surfing the
> web, checking email, anything. I have all the software (IC/VC,
> nHTTPlib,
> Nitro, the updated NIE module) on my OMP2100. Can anyone help me? Is
> there any documentation at all, anywhere? Thanks in advance.
Well, documentation... seems like it would be time for a tutorial ;)
I'll post this also to 40hz.org/mottek later...
Anyway, Nitro and IC/VC try to follow the spirit of the original Newton
architecture by reusing the existing interfaces you already know
(hopefully): The Transports, the Inbox, the Action button and the
Routing Slips. Here's an overview:
- A transport is responsible to send and receive data. Transports are
for example Mail, Beam or IrOBEX. You chose a transport via the Action
button (the one with the Envelope)
- The Inbox is used by transports to store incoming data. You can tell
which transport put something in the Inbox by looking at the item's
icon. If there is an application on the Newton that knows what to do
with the item, it will add a "Put Away" choice to the menu behind the
Inbox button with the tag on it.
- The Action button is used to do something to the currently selected
item in an application. There are three groups of functions available:
Things like Duplicate and Delete, sending via a transport and
application defined actions. Sending via a transport works by selecting
the item you want to send, choosing the transport from the Action
button menu and specifying the sending options in the Routing Slip.
- The Routing slip is used by transports to get more information
necessary for sending an item. This might include the address where to
send to (for Mail) or the data format in which the item shall be sent.
Now how does all this apply to IrDA et al.? Quite simple:
- The transport which Nitro provides is called IrOBEX. IrOBEX is a
standard understood by most IrDA capable devices. It is quite similar
to HTTP.
- If you want to receive items via IrOBEX, you'd use the Inbox. There,
IrOBEX is offered as a choice in the Receive menu. If you're receiving
things from a Windows PC, you have to modify the IrOBEX preferences
(accessible in the Inbox [i] menu) to use OBEX:IrXfer. This is because
Microsoft sucks and doesn't like to conform to standards.
- The Action button is what you use to send items via IrOBEX. Just
select the item to be sent and chose IrOBEX from the Action button menu.
- The Routing slip comes into play if you have installed IC/VC. IC/VC
offers the iCalendar/vCalendar and vCard data formats. You should use
these if you want to import the data into the peer devices's
applications, e.g. an address book or calendar application.
- IC/VC also adds the capability to put away vCalendar, iCalendar,
vCard and Newton packages from the Inbox after they have been received
via IrOBEX. Please check the IC/VC preferences in the Inbox (under the
[i] menu) to specify what should happen if there are conflicts between
received items and items already on the Newton.
Some examples:
- You want to send a Names entry to your T68i. You open Names and
select the entry to be sent. Then you tap the Action button and select
IrOBEX. Because you want to use the entry in the address book on the
phone, you select vCard as the data format in the Routing slip. Then
you tap on Send, select Now and point your Newton to the T68i which has
IrDA reception enabled.
- You want to receive a calendar entry from your phone. First, you open
the Inbox. Then you select IrOBEX from the Receive menu. Point your
phone to the Newton and initiate sending from the phone. After the item
has been received, tap on the Tag button and chose Put Away. In the
following dialog, chose IC/VC as the target.
- You want to export all your Names entries to your desktop PC via
email. You select all Names entries in Names, tap on the Action button
and chose Mail as the transport. You fill out the necessary fields in
the following Routing slip, select vCard as the data format and tap on
Send. The email will be one vCard file which you can save as one file
on the desktop PC and import it into programs that know how to deal
with vCard files. Microsoft programs don't fall into this category
because they can't handle more than one vCard in one file (there are
however workarounds).
Surfing the web and email will be covered in the next lesson ;)
Eckhart
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun May 25 2003 - 03:00:01 PDT