[NTLK] Hi there - How to synch your Newton best with Mac OSX

[Doug Denby]

Hi Woody,

My investigations show that the syncing problem lies more with the translation of information between applications than the OS. That together with the errors in format that occur in the soups. Let me explain:

Problem 1: Information Translation, eg. phone numbers
Names on the Newton has 7 predefined labels: home, work, phone, fax, car, cellular, and home fax.

AddressBook on the Mac has 8 predefined labels: work, home, iPhone, mobile, main, home fax, work fax, pager, and other.

AddressBook also has the ability to add custom labels defined by the user.

While some of these are obvious match ups, others are not. Example: cellular (N) and mobile (AB) are often interpreted as the same by syncing programs, but they are not in reality the same. 

What does the translation program do with pager (AB) on the Newton? Since the Newton does not allow custom labels, it could be put in as just plain PHONE, but then when synced back from Newton to AddressBook, it would end up MAIN, which it clearly is not.

As an example OBEX, using bluetooth translates pager, other, cell, satellite and car in AddressBook as straight phone in a vCard. But ignores phone on the Newton when translating to vCard.

NCX makes a vCard from the Newton Names soup translating PHONE to MAIN, great! NCX also translates FAX as WORK FAX, leaving HOME FAX to be translated properly. Great! And logically it translates CAR and CELLULAR as CELL. But Address Book only accepts a single CELL phone upon importation. One gets lost. 

Address Book creates a vCard with OTHER, CELL, SATELLITE and CAR correctly, but Names on the Newton, through either OBEX or NCX, puts them all into plain PHONE. Which when converted back become MAIN!

Problem 2: Soup Format
The second problem that seems to stump the translators is the expectation of specific fields in the Newton soup frame for a record, but these fields may not be there, or be there but empty. This is caused by a number of other Newton applications, or stationery, writing into the soup frame, which the NOS encourages. So, although in a NOTE frame, one expects the DATA field to contain an array of one or more frames describing the information in the record, this is not always true. Some Newton applications attempted to avoid messing up standard fields by inventing their own fields, which they then defined in their own way.

Some Newton applications determined that with their particular stationery handling the data, using their own fields was not a problem. They probably did this to avoid messing the stock fields. I found one Newton application that misspelled stationery as stationary. Boy did that muck up systems!. Some stationery changed an array of frames to a single frame only, so the translator is looking for an array but can not find it.

When a translator is looking for specific fields and can not find them, or finds fields with data that is unexpected, the translator is stumped.

There are no standards. Forget what various pundits write about standards. They do not exist. Even the definers of the standards break their own standards. It makes it very difficult to write a translator.

Add to these realities the fact that most Newton applications, other than the stock ones, were written by a single individual with his/her own perspective on how things needed to be done and with little regard for the job of translating their products from one platform to another. Add also the likelihood of minimal documentation and absence from Newton development for a period for these developers and  you have a very difficult translation/transfer problem.

Doug Denby


On 2010-01-07, at 12:08 AM, Woody Smith wrote:

> Simon Bell has given us Simple Mail, Mail V and NCX and has done a  
> pretty god job of offering support.  I have been satisfied enough to  
> make a donation.
> The import and export of .ics and .vcf does allow a clumsy sync work  
> around but sadly sync has not been implemented.
> I suspect the changes in Apples OS has been a problem.
> 
> Woody
> 
> 
> On Jan 6, 2010, at 12:11 PM, Tim Kaluza wrote:
> 
>> Hi there!
>> 
>> I'm not having any probling establishing a connection too the  
>> newton. But in Synchronizing it (new Versions of iCal seems not  
>> longer be supported by the synch tool I'm using) works just partly.
>> 
>> Any idea how to do it? (Or using another app as icall?)
>> 
>> I'm using NewtSynch for (if it works synchronising and NCX for  
>> installing things)
>> 
>> NewtSynch_Link		NCX_Link
>> 
>> Does somebody know if the programmer from NCX is still "alive"  
>> because if he is. I would spend some money for the program.
>> 
>> All the best!
>> 
>> Tim K
> 
> 
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