Very Computer

Hi there,

I have a Philips Nino WinCE machine. It can be connected to a PC, to sync
files. Unfortunately the software needed to do the syncing is Win{95,98,NT}
only. Philips can't help me, as this is MS code. I'd like to make a
"/dev/wince", and maybe (project blue sky) connect to the Linux incarnations
of stuff like "Inbox", "Contacts", "Tasks", "Notes" ( there some Gnome
candidates for this)... Back tor reality, where can I find specs for the
protocol used for syncing Win/WinCE? I'm not really into reverse engineering
this stuff... Is there anything in the MS CE dev kits on the syncing
protocol? (Can't get my hand on these right now -- I don't like a
multimegabyte download with my 28k8...)

Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
    Dirk-Jan.

Hi there,

Quote:

>> I have a Philips Nino WinCE machine. It can be connected to a PC, to sync
>> files. Unfortunately the software needed to do the syncing is
Win{95,98,NT}
>> only. Philips can't help me, as this is MS code. I'd like to make a
>> "/dev/wince", and maybe (project blue sky) connect to the Linux
incarnations

>Dirk,

>I have been thinking about such a thing as well.  Considering that it's
>presumably difficult to reverse-engineer the protocol, and even if you did
>that, you would need to initiate some process on the server each time which
>would have to know how to find the HPC on the network, I am thinking of a
>different approach.

>I am thinking that it might prove more useful to develop WinCE client
software
>which initiates a connection to a named host (your linux box) by URL and
>uses a home made protocol to synchronise the Contacts, Tasks etc. database
>files and does something like an incremental backup of the file system.
That
>way, you could use it to back up and sync while on the road through any ISP
>etc.

>You would need to use some type of encryption, I suppose, if you wanted to
>send that sort of stuff across the internet.  Mmmm.  Sounds like project
blue
>sky material already.

>Interesting thought material, anyway, though I fear the work involved might
be
>a bit too great.

>Tom Munro

Tom,

I have found some docs on the network support in WinCE from MS, but it's not
too specific... we could probably write code to communicate with Nino
somehow, but I haven't found anything (yet) specifically targeting the
syncing with Outlook (LookOut). I'm not going to start designing/coding
before I have more specific docs. According to people at Philips, the Nino
syncing stuff is all pure MS software :-(

Admittedly, I haven't had the time to investigate this deeply. I could send
you all the docs i found so far (< 100k non-compressed) (they're not very
technical...) Have you found anything else?

Cheers,
    Dirk-Jan.

Hi there,

Quote:>Correct me if I'm wrong (I know absolutely nothing about Windows
programming),
>but there is presumably some API for retrieving, adding, updating and
deleting
>database records from those magical database files which are used by Pocket
>LookOut.  The API for network stuff must surely be Unix-like (socket(),
>connect(), read(), write(), close() etc.).  Do you have a compiler which
can
>build WinCE executables?

Well, I know _some_ things about win programming, i could write CE software
using VC++ with the CE dev kit. However, the problem really is that i don't
know what this api would look like. it may be OLE-Automation stuff instead
of a "regular" dll... First I have to check out the dev kit.

Quote:>If we wrote a program for the WinCE platform which could do those things,
it
>could sync (using some protocol we could make up) across the IP network
with
>some software (a servlet?) running on the Linux machine.  It could use
>message digests, or just modified timestamps, to see which files have
changed
>since the last backup, and send them to the server.  You could have an
>archive file (jar, tar, zip etc.) on the server which contains a copy of
the
>entire WinCE filesystem at last backup, and then when you do a backup it
>would replace any modified files.  Those are the only things that HP
Explorer
>seems to do (I only have WinCE 1, I expect WinCE 2 has a million clever
>tricks).

Well, my 2.0 CE Machine (Philips Nino) comes with the possibility for making
an IP connection (PPP i guess, or at least SLIP) with COM1. So i guess the
following stuff must be done:

Wince             |  cua x|      Linux
+-----------------+-------+------------------------+
WinCE <---> WinLin| <---> | LinWin <---> Linux apps
apps        proxy |       |  proxy

Now, the WinLin-proxy on the WinCe side should interface with the WinCe apps
and, using PPP, communicate with the LinWin-proxy. The LinWin proxy does the
 interfacing with any Linux org software. Note there's nothing Linux
specific with the WinLin proxy, it is a pure wince program that interfaces
with the wince progs (tasklist etc.) on one end, and with PPP on the other
end.

Quote:>Reasonable?  The next step, of course, would be to make that LookOut

Sure it is reasonable!

Quote:>information sync with your favourite X11 organisational software, or
develop
>something which functions in a LookOut-like way (although I would leave out
>the bit which makes it lock up all the time).

so many ideas, so little time.... first i'd like to focus on the doing the
interfacing with e.g. the existing gnome calendar stuff.

Quote:>If you're interested in developing some committee-ware, I would certainly
be
>interested in contributing.

Committee-ware?! Sounds a bit like vaporware ;-)) When I have something to
contribute to, I'll gladly welcome any contributions! First, I'm doing some
more design. But feel free to do your own designing, I'm interested to have
a look!

Cheers,
    Dirk-Jan.