Re: [coldsync-hackers] Another snapshot

[Andrew Arensburger <arensb@ooblick.com>]

On 11 Aug 2000, Chris Shenton wrote:
> Andrew Arensburger <arensb@ooblick.com> writes:
> > 	I realize that this is a bad situation, but what's the least bad
> > way of dealing with it?
> 
> You're not really limited on the desktop are you? If you have 14 cats
> on desktop and syncing would add 6 new ones from the palm, can't you
> create new fake ones on the desktop? That way you don't lose the
> palm's category names.

	The standard category struct has 16 slots for categories, and
number 0 is reserved for "Unfiled".
	In the .pdb file itself, each record has an entry in the record
index; this entry also specifies the category that the record belongs to,
as a 4-bit number.
	Thus, no single .pdb may meaningfully contain more than 16
categories.

	Now, it's possible for the conduit to maintain a separate database
of additional information.
	You could, for instance, keep a set of 32 categories: 16 from the
Palm and 16 from the desktop. But then categories are meaningless when
you're transfering the records back and forth: a record that's in category
D14 on the desktop might wind up either in some random category, or in
"Unfiled" when uploaded to the Palm.
	You could maintain a database that lists each record along with
its category (in some format allowing an infinite number of categories).
The drawback to this is that it overrides the standard category stuff, so
the categories inside the .pdb are essentially meaningless; any utility
that wanted to parse such a .pdb would have to consult an external file.

> Going the other way, I'd put the extras from the desktop that won't
> fit into the Unfiled cat.

	<nod>
	When you delete a category on the Palm, all records that used to
be in that category get refiled into "Unfiled". So there's precedent for
doing things this way.

	Hmm... I wonder whether it's possible to delete a category, but
keep a temporary external map of which records used to belong to that
category. Would that help at all?

-- 
Andrew Arensburger                      Actually, these _do_ represent the
arensb@ooblick.com                      opinions of ooblick.com!
                        Generic Tagline V 6.01



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