Re: [coldsync-hackers] Re: USB m50x under FreeBSD

[Andrew Arensburger <arensb+CShackers@ooblick.com>]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 05:01:32PM -0600, Mike Durian wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 02:47:18 EDT, Andrew Arensburger <arensb+CShackers@ooblick.com> wrote:
> >	This might be nice, but it seems like chrome. It seems that
> >this feature would be most useful in two situations: a) new users, and
> >b) situations where the protocol stack changes from moment to moment.
> 
> I don't think it's quite like chrome.  The application needs to
> know the protocol whether it is supplied by the user or automatically
> determined at run time.  I'd argue that if the application can
> determine the protocol itself automatically, and if it cannot
> run without that information, why burdeon the user with supplying it?

	It's a tradeoff, really. People don't generally change Palms
more than once every few months, but might sync several times a week,
or daily. Manual configuration only has to be done once for each Palm,
whereas autoconfiguration has to be done every time you sync. Manual
configuration takes, say, half an hour. Autoconfiguration, who knows?
Somewhere between a fraction of a second and several seconds, I'd
guess (because it might involve sending a test packet, and having to
time out waiting for a response).
	Whether or not autoconfiguration is a good idea for a given
user depends on whether a daily performance hit is worth not having to
fiddle with config files once a year.

	Other possibilities I can imagine include:
	- Write a configuration utility that asks the user some
questions, tries to guess what kind of Palm and cradle it's dealing
with, and writes an appropriate .coldsyncrc .
	Once libpconn and libpdb are separated out into standalone
packages, this should become a lot easier to write.

	- Caching: if ColdSync encounters a previously unseen Palm or
cradle, it tries to guess what they are, and saves the results to a
file.

	In any case, this is all far-future speculation, IMHO. It's
more important that it actually work. Plus -- and this may just be my
bastard techno-elitist side showing -- I think that anyone who doesn't
want to deal with a config file will choose JPilot or KPilot or
something, rather than ColdSync.
	Anyway, please don't let me discourage you. I'm obviously
biased by being so familiar with ColdSync. Plus, one of the
disadvantages of Open Source is that I get virtually no feedback as to
how many people are using ColdSync, what they're doing with it, or
what their impressions are.

-- 
Andrew Arensburger                      This message *does* represent the
arensb@ooblick.com                      views of ooblick.com
	   How come there's only one Monopolies Commission?
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