iSync and Mac support with maemo 5

[SmartMic]

Hey folks,

after searching this forum and others sites I'm still not sure whether maemo 5 on the N900 will fully support iSync.
Well, for me as a Mac user it would be a must. Wondering why nobody else is curious about it...

Thinking seriously about buying an iPhone or giving the N900 a chance.

What do you think?

[jsa]

Hey folks,

after searching this forum and others sites I'm still not sure whether maemo 5 on the N900 will fully support iSync.
Well, for me as a Mac user it would be a must. Wondering why nobody else is curious about it...

Thinking seriously about buying an iPhone or giving the N900 a chance.

What do you think?

Nokia has generally provided iSync plugins in the support site. However, there's no way of knowing yet whether/when they are going to provide a plugin for the N900. My guess would be that it's not among the top priorities.

However, N900 supports SyncML and there's a whole community of developers some of whom also might want the ability to sync the device with Macs.

This might be a good starting point:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Syncing/Conceptual/TramontanePluginBuilderUserGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

[ysss]

@smartmic: another option to consider is to sync your contacts, todo and calendars to google services. There's a higher chance that the n900 will be able to sync to google services.

[range]

@smartmic: another option to consider is to sync your contacts, todo and calendars to google services. There's a higher chance that the n900 will be able to sync to google services.

I really wonder where that want to give all your data to google comes from. No way I'd give them my calendar, much less my contacts.

[ysss]

@range: yeah. might want to check their EULA first. But it's not as if they get it for free if I'm also getting something out of it.

[sapporobaby]

I was just in the flagship store in Helsinki. I asked the same questions about iSync Plugins. I was told that Mac OS X is not a priority for Nokia. When I asked what would be a compelling reason for me or any Mac user to purchase the N900, the music was the only thing missing with the tap dancing. In all honesty, I cannot see a reason why any Mac user should pluck down their money on unsupported Nokia products. If the N900 had an iSync plugin, I would own one, but as it stands, chances are I will stay with the iPhone.

[in-effect]

If you can bear the notion of going via Google, I've compiled a guide here (http://www.macsthatwork.com/blog/2009/12/syncing-n900-with-mac-definitive-guide.html) on how to do it.

[scudderfish]

Have a look at https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2793#c17 . There is a bug in the current firmware which stops iSync from working, but it will work with the next firmware release.

[Thomas Pettersson]

I´ll support your question! Iphoneusers wont get n900 if isync fails!!!! Developers........do ya thing:-)

[Bingley Joe]

Have a look at https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2793#c17 . There is a bug in the current firmware which stops iSync from working, but it will work with the next firmware release.

I can't wait for this legendary new firmware if that's the case. Not having a way to sync my N900 with my Mac is killing me

[scudderfish]

I made a little more progress yesterday, but then work got in the way. I'll post here if I get anywhere with it tonight.

[scudderfish]

Nope, still stuck, I can't reliably create one against R44

[scudderfish]

OK, I've got something working with Snow Leopard and PR1.1. You can find it at http://www.smithfamily.org.uk/~dgs/N900iSync/

Please heed the warnings, back up EVERYTHING before you even think of installing this. As it says in the notes, events created on the N900 don't appear to get pushed back to the Mac. I've also included the iSync Plugin Maker source so if you want to, you can have a go at making it better.

[Thomas Pettersson]

Hey folks,

after searching this forum and others sites I'm still not sure whether maemo 5 on the N900 will fully support iSync.
Well, for me as a Mac user it would be a must. Wondering why nobody else is curious about it...

Thinking seriously about buying an iPhone or giving the N900 a chance.

What do you think?

I´m looking for the same answers!!!! Otherwise it will be a Iphone

[Bingley Joe]

OK, I've got something working with Snow Leopard and PR1.1. You can find it at http://www.smithfamily.org.uk/~dgs/N900iSync/

Please heed the warnings, back up EVERYTHING before you even think of installing this. As it says in the notes, events created on the N900 don't appear to get pushed back to the Mac. I've also included the iSync Plugin Maker source so if you want to, you can have a go at making it better.

Thanks SO much, scudderfish!!

I was able to get my N900 to sync last night with no problem using your plugin (well.. the broom thing did surprise my cat at first, but I think she understands now that it was for the greater good, so not an issue. For me, anyway :p)

I did notice that it didn't pull in custom field titles from Address Book (ie: if I have someone's phone number set to a "custom" title rather than "home" or "cell"), but I suspect that's more of an N900 deficiency than anything else. I changed a few on the the N900 to something it was happy with and they synced back to Address Book just fine.

Frankly, the fact that you've got it working at all has really made my day, and I'm sure plenty of other folks' as well. Amazing work! :D

[scudderfish]

It's not an N900 deficiency as such, it's more that iSync only expects certain field names in the vCard format it receives, and then maps those to fields within Address Book/iCal etc. You can change the mapping, but not the field names it is expecting to see. I just went with the default mappings as I had a lot of trouble getting my N900 even recognised so any data was a bonus!

[scudderfish]

Calendar events are still behaving oddly. Events created on the Mac sync fine, and any modifications on either side are reflected correctly. However I still can't get events created on the N900 to appear on the Mac. The N900 thinks they have synced, but they don't appear on the Mac and there are no error messages anywhere.

[Bingley Joe]

It's not an N900 deficiency as such, it's more that iSync only expects certain field names in the vCard format it receives, and then maps those to fields within Address Book/iCal etc. You can change the mapping, but not the field names it is expecting to see. I just went with the default mappings as I had a lot of trouble getting my N900 even recognised so any data was a bonus!

Ahh I see. That makes some sense actually -- as does the decision to go with the default mappings! Data = massive triumph :)

[3quid]

Calendar events are still behaving oddly. Events created on the Mac sync fine, and any modifications on either side are reflected correctly. However I still can't get events created on the N900 to appear on the Mac. The N900 thinks they have synced, but they don't appear on the Mac and there are no error messages anywhere.

Hi Guys,

I have also written a plugin to do this (before realising there was one in progress here!)

I have everything working as far as I can see minus two things. Events with alarms. If they are created in iCal the event is transferred to the N900 just fine but minus their alarms. If they are created (with alarms) on the N900 they do not transfer to iCal at all.

I see you are having trouble transferring events made on the N900 to the mac. My plugin does that correctly (apart from the alarm issue). Do the events transferred by your plugin (from iCal to N900) have alarms set? If so do they still have alarms once in the N900?

You can grab my plugin in here (http://n900.2hands.co.uk) if anyone wants it :)

Anyone who does try mine out. Let me know how you get on.

Cheers :)

[scudderfish]

This is wonderfully curious. My plugin will sync Events created on the N900 if they don't have an alarm. It will also sync events created on the Mac with an alarm, and the alarm survives. Can you send me your Plugin Maker project so I can diff it with mine (or you can do the diff yourself :) )

[3quid]

This is wonderfully curious. My plugin will sync Events created on the N900 if they don't have an alarm. It will also sync events created on the Mac with an alarm, and the alarm survives. Can you send me your Plugin Maker project so I can diff it with mine (or you can do the diff yourself :) )

I will send you the project file when I get home. if you send me yours as well between us we should be able to work out what the difference is.

do you have to set the alarm, in ical, in a particular way ( ie. message, message with sound etc) or does it accept any? do you have DALARM / AALARM selected under the general tab?

[scudderfish]

My project file is linked on the site given above. http://www.smithfamily.org.uk/~dgs/N900iSync/

You do have a nicer icon than me :)

I just created an iCal event with an alarm 15 mins before hand with all defaults. I haven't tried any variation yet. I'm doing this all on my account and doing export plugin, install, shutdown maker, run isync, test, shutdown isync, load maker cycle is getting a little tedious so I think I'll go for fast user switching tomorrow and have one account for dev and one for test.

[3quid]

that sounds like a plan with the user switching. ok cool will have a look in an hour or so and will post my project file on to the same page as my plugin as well.

[Bingley Joe]

I'm certainly looking forward to testing the fruits of your combined genius! :)


The big problem I'm having with Calendars is that I have 8 on my Mac, including the automatically generated 'Birthdays' calendar (which is tied to the Birthday field in Address Book), but they all sync to the N900 as one calendar. Except for the Birthdays one, which it seems to understand.

I've even gone so far as to create calendars on the N900 with identical names and colours, but no luck..

Any ideas?

[Butterfly]

Hey folks,

after searching this forum and others sites I'm still not sure whether maemo 5 on the N900 will fully support iSync.
Well, for me as a Mac user it would be a must. Wondering why nobody else is curious about it...

Thinking seriously about buying an iPhone or giving the N900 a chance.

What do you think?

Right now, I'd get an iPhone. I'm coming from an iPhone, that, at least when firmware was updated you could still play music and video.

[3quid]

useful comment butterfly. thanks for your input :)

[GaryHT627]

Right now, I'd get an iPhone. I'm coming from an iPhone, that, at least when firmware was updated you could still play music and video.

I truly hope this is not the case. I debated between the Iphone (being a MAC user) and the N900 and have bought the N900 on the assumption it would sync. I just checked and after the latest upgrade my music and video still work, but what I really want more than that is the ability to sync my contacts with my Mac.

[3quid]

the plugins that myselfand scudderfish have posted will do that for you. the only thing it wont do is correctly work with all calendar events with alarms (it will do soon when we work it out). download either and you can use isync just fine

[jaysire]

useful comment butterfly. thanks for your input :)

It's like the guy who started crying in every thread when his mic broke :)

[3quid]

i just think butterfly should go to an iphone forum or at least a thread discussing iphone vs n900. there's plenty of them!

[GaryHT627]

the plugins that myselfand scudderfish have posted will do that for you. the only thing it wont do is correctly work with all calendar events with alarms (it will do soon when we work it out). download either and you can use isync just fine

Thanks. As much as I am itching to try it, I figured I would give you both a bit longer to work through this. I downloaded all the mac dev tools today and realize how much I don't know. Personally I don't really care about the calendar as that is synced with google so my wife's mac is also updated but with contacts I have my own.

[3quid]

Well you can always load the plugin and just choose to synchronise a single group of contacts from the address book (maybe make a test group) to try it out. I have synchronised all of my contacts using my plugin and it works perfect :)

If not, stay tuned to this thread and hopefully we will have it all sorted soon.

[3quid]

Syncing events with alarms from iCal to N900 now definitely works as expected but when they are created in iCal they must have the alarm type set to "Message with Sound". From what I can tell any other alarm type doesn't work.

Basically all that is missing now is, events created on the N900 with alarms, being imported from N900 to iCal.

[Bingley Joe]

Syncing events with alarms from iCal to N900 now definitely works as expected but when they are created in iCal they must have the alarm type set to "Message with Sound". From what I can tell any other alarm type doesn't work.

Basically all that is missing now is, events created on the N900 with alarms, being imported from N900 to iCal.

Interesting. And that's actually in keeping with what I've seen on my phone. I have an alarm that occurs bi-weekly that's just a pop-up message in iCal with no sound, and the N900 lists it as a "complex alarm - cannot be edited".

It also didn't display any kind of notification today, which it should have.

[Butterfly]

i just think butterfly should go to an iphone forum or at least a thread discussing iphone vs n900. there's plenty of them!

I don't really want to go back to using my iPhone. The N900 is way better - that's why I got it! I'm just really mad that right now I can't listen to music or watch videos anymore coz of some stupid firmware.

I have been reading this thread with interest, as I never thought it would be possible to sync my iCal

[scudderfish]

The only real difference I can see between our plugins is that you explicitly name the device SyncML Databases, but I use "No target database names in Server Alert" (whatever that means!) It doesn't seem to make any operation difference though.

I switched on debug in iSync (launch it whilst holding down Shift and Option). It generates reams of data in a log file (2Mb per sync), but searching it for any details of the N900 created event turned up nothing. It may be a problem on the N900 where it isn't exposing the event over SyncML for whatever reason, rather than a fault of the plugin or iSync.

[3quid]

I switched on debug in iSync (launch it whilst holding down Shift and Option).

Great tip Scud, I had been trying to find out how to view the actual transmission!

I set up an event on the N900 without an alarm then synced, then repeated it with an event that had an alarm. There is as you say a lot of info in that log file but the following snippets I think is where the issue is.

Event without alarm log

vCal to parse:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
TZ:+00
DAYLIGHT:TRUE;+01;20100328T020000;20101024T010000; GMT;BST
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
Test=20event
UID:511
DTSTART:20100129T125000Z
DTEND:20100129T135000Z
ATTACH:
SEQUENCE:0
LAST-MODIFIED:20100117T123018Z
DCREATED:20100117T123006Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

and then a few lines below that we get a success message and the event has been parsed successfully :)

vCal parsed:
{
RawProperties = (
{
Name = UID;
Value = <353131>;
},
{
Name = SEQUENCE;
Value = <30>;
},
{
Name = "LAST-MODIFIED";
Value = <32303130 30313137 54313233 3031385a>;
},
{
Name = DCREATED;
Value = <32303130 30313137 54313233 3030365a>;
}
);
"all day" = 0;
"com.apple.syncservices.RecordEntityName" = "com.apple.calendars.Event";
"end date" = "2010-01-29 13:50:00 +0000";
"start date" = "2010-01-29 12:50:00 +0000";
summary = "Test event";
}


whereas with the event that does have an alarm we have the following

vCal to parse:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
TZ:+00
DAYLIGHT:TRUE;+01;20100328T020000;20101024T010000; GMT;BST
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
Testing=20alarms=20w/log
UID:513
DTSTART:20100129T132000Z
DTEND:20100129T142000Z
ATTACH:
SEQUENCE:0
LAST-MODIFIED:20100117T130040Z
DCREATED:20100117T130040Z
AALARM:20100129T130500
;PT3M
;
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

and just below we get an error instead of a "vcal parsed" result

Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 97: BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
Testing=20alarms=20w/log
UID:513
DTSTART:20100129T132000Z
DTEND:20100129T142000Z
ATTACH:
SEQUENCE:0
LAST-MODIFIED:20100117T130040Z
DCREATED:20100117T130040Z
AALARM:20100129T130500
;PT3M
;
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR


So... I guess we have to work out exactly what "Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 97" means? Well.. I know what it means, it failed! but where that problem is coming from.. iCal or N900? The formatting of the AALARM property? on different lines like that? Any ideas?

[3quid]

So... I guess we have to work out exactly what "Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 97" means? Well.. I know what it means, it failed! but where that problem is coming from.. iCal or N900? The formatting of the AALARM property? on different lines like that? Any ideas?

Just did another test. I created an event in iCal with an alarm "Message with sound" which we know syncs correctly with the N900. This is a snippet from that log file.

vCal generated:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20100130T140000Z
DTEND:20100130T150000Z
CLASS:PUBLIC
AALARM:20100129T140000Z
SUMMARY:Testing from iCal
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

[3quid]

[QUOTE=3quid;478038]

The way I see it is that we dont need the ;PT3M; part of the AALARM that is coming from the N900.

iCal, when sending, formats the AALARMS like this:

AALARM:20100129T140000Z

Broken down into

AALARM - Alarm with message and sound
Year - 2010
Month - 01
Day - 29
T - is to say the following is a time entry
Time of alarm - 1400 00 (2pm and zero seconds)
Z - I dont know what this Z means yet


In the alarm event coming from the N900 it states

AALARM:20100129T130500
;PT3M
;

So again it is broken into

AALARM - Alarm with message and sound
Year - 2010
Month - 01
Day - 29
T - is to say the following is a time entry
Time of alarm - 1305 00 (1.50pm and zero seconds) [The alarm was set for 15 mins before the event which was at 13:20 so thats correct]
;PT3M - This according to here (http://www.shuchow.com/vCalAddendum.html#alarms) should mean that the alarm has a P (Snooze value) but that is blank. Then a T (Time) which is 3M (3 Minutes... why!?)

So it is possible that if we could somehow swap the ;PT3M; for a Z it would work? :eek:

[scudderfish]

Z is the timezone indicator.

I need to read the vCard spec I think.

[scudderfish]

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt

Yikes!

[3quid]

Are you sure thats the right spec sheet?

I found a different spec sheet on vcal here (http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcal-10.txt) which contains this ...

Audio Reminder
This property is identified by the property name AALARM. The property defines an audio reminder for the vCalendar entity. An audio reminder is an alarm that is sounded for the event.
The value for the audio reminder consists of the Run Time, or the date and time that the reminder is to be executed; Snooze Time, or the duration of time after the Run Time that the reminder is to be dormant prior to being repeated; Repeat Count, or the number of times that the reminder is to be repeated; and the Audio Content, or the digital sound to be played when the reminder is executed.
The following are some examples of this property:
AALARM;TYPE=WAVE;VALUE=URL:19960415T235959; ; ; file:///mmedia/taps.wav
AALARM;TYPE=WAVE;VALUE=CONTENT-ID:19960903T060000;PT15M;4;<jsmith.part2.=
960901T083000.xyzMail@host1.com>

So the PT3M is the snooze time of the alarm and for whatever reason the parser doesn't like it. iCal doesn't have snooze times really I guess because you set them from the alarm reminder when it pops up. Then I assume it just alters the date of the reminder? (lot of assumptions and guessing going on in that sentence!)

[GaryHT627]

I have been trying to sort through the standards stuff and found http://www.imc.org/pdi/ There are several documents in here and it would appear they are in charge of the standards and there appears to be separate efforts for Contacts and Calendars.

[scudderfish]

I've found some python code for parsing ICS files. It successfully parses one generated by BusyCal/iCal, put chokes on the one from the N900. I'm going to dig some more into it to find out what exactly it is objecting to. It looks like PR1.1 is producing invalid VEVENT files....

[3quid]

So... I guess we have to work out exactly what "Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 97" means? Well.. I know what it means, it failed! but where that problem is coming from.. iCal or N900? The formatting of the AALARM property? on different lines like that? Any ideas?

I created an .ics using the sync output that failed... there are few things.

1. version needs to be 2.0 to import as a .ics but I think that's just for direct import of .ics because the sync from ical>n900 showed version 1.0 as well.

2. the line "SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
ManualEntry" shows up in iCal as an event called "=" so it doesn't seem to like new lines

3. if you don't place the AALARM info (including the snooze value) onto one line like this "AALARM:20100129T130500;PT3M;" it won't import at all

Not sure if any of these have any bearing with the auto-syncing but I am sure the formatting must have very similar requirements?

[GaryHT627]

I know you are both focussing on the Calendar syncing but i have been poking around the contact side to test it out more thoroughly. I have about 3500 contacts from all over the world and there are issues with different languages, formats, and more. Working with 3Quid I was able to do sync and on the surface it mostly worked but there were some details that did not. I am new to the Isync plug in world but am currently running a test, details below. It has been running for over an hour and still has a long way to go and there are many errors that have been flagged. Have either of you run this scenario test? At this point in the testing, all my contacts on the N900 have been deleted and it is still running.

Screenshot attached.

[3quid]

The plugin will not currently pass the tests that pluginmaker sets and it's likely that it never will when made by mere mortals like me! passing all those tests is a massive task. forget them for now if I were you.

Evidence to ignore tests for now ... and I quote "Ignore the test-suite; I could not get a single test running" (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2793#c25)

[GaryHT627]

3Quid - If you are a mere mortal I hate think where that would put me :). The last time I did serious programming it was Z80 assembly and that was when the Z80 was the hottest processor out there!

I really appreciate all the effort on this and I am thrilled that I can do at least a basic sync on my contacts :D

[scudderfish]

If I change the line wrapping in the broken example, I can get it to parse. I don't know if the incorrect wrap is due to :-

This forum software
The iCal log file
The N900


The 'fixed' example is this :-
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:1.0
TZ:+00
DAYLIGHT:TRUE;+01;20100328T020000;20101024T010000; GMT;BST
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=Testing=20alarms=20w/log
UID:513
DTSTART:20100129T132000Z
DTEND:20100129T142000Z
ATTACH:
SEQUENCE:0
LAST-MODIFIED:20100117T130040Z
DCREATED:20100117T130040Z
AALARM:20100129T130500;PT3M;
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Where every line should start

WORDINCAPS:

[scudderfish]

It looks like this forum software is responsible for some wrapping (the line SUMMARY; is wrapped when it shouldn't), but the layout of the AALARM entry is significantly different compared to the original

AALARM:20100129T130500
;PT3M
;

[3quid]

the aalarm entry was all on seperate lines in the log

and the summary line also had a line break after the = sign

its not all down to forum software. i will email you the log when i get back in an hour or so (or recreate it)

i am pretty sure that the formatting of the aalarm line is the main issue for working syncs. i just dont know if its the ical parser or what is sent by the n900

[scudderfish]

OK, next plan of attack is to use the Bluetooth Packet Logger in the XCode utilities to see if the N900 is spitting it out like that, or if it is getting munged within the Mac. If the N900 is doing that and the spec says no LF or CR in those places then we have a bona fide bug in Maemo.

[Bingley Joe]

I really appreciate all the effort on this and I am thrilled that I can do at least a basic sync on my contacts :D

Hear Hear! Many thanks to both of you for sorting through this so diligently :)

It's fascinating reading -- I only wish I had even a tiny bit of programming skill with which to help, but sadly I don't.

So guinea pig it is!

I noticed a couple of small quirks with Contacts myself:

• AIM user names didn't sync from Address Book to the N900

• The 'Me' card in Address Book didn't sync to the N900's 'My information' data, and I can't seem to find any way of linking the two after the fact

[3quid]

OK, next plan of attack is to use the Bluetooth Packet Logger in the XCode utilities to see if the N900 is spitting it out like that, or if it is getting munged within the Mac. If the N900 is doing that and the spec says no LF or CR in those places then we have a bona fide bug in Maemo.

Well I don't know about you Scud but the packet logger doesn't seem to offer any useful information (that I can understand!).

It's frustrating that it just seems to come down to those CR's.

Any luck with the packet logger?

[Bingley Joe]

Ok, this is weird

Up to now I haven't really had any issues outside of those I've already mentioned (all minor to say the least).

Just now, however, after doing some editing of a couple of contacts on the N900, I tried to do a sync to see how the changes would be reflected in Address Book..

The answer -- it wanted to create duplicate entries for EVERYONE :confused:

[scudderfish]

Well I don't know about you Scud but the packet logger doesn't seem to offer any useful information (that I can understand!).

It's frustrating that it just seems to come down to those CR's.

Any luck with the packet logger?

OK, it is definitely the N900 that is spitting out the extra CRs. In the attachment is a bluetooth packet capture of a sync where I had created an alarmed event. If you examine the packet at 19:32:18.762, there is definitely 0D/0A sequences in the string 17T194000..;PT3M..;..END before the semi-colons. Now we need to read the specs to ensure this is definitely disallowed and then take a trip to bugzilla.

[scudderfish]

OK if I can read my BNF correctly (haven't done that since Uni many moons ago)

CR = <ASCII CR, carriage return> ; ( 15, 13.)
LF = <ASCII LF, linefeed> ; ( 12, 10.)
CRLF = CR LF
SPACE = <ASCII SP, space> ; ( 40, 32.)
HTAB = <ASCII HT, horizontal-tab> ; ( 11, 9.)

All literal property names are valid as upper, lower, or mixed case.

ws = 1*(SPACE / HTAB)
; "whitespace," one or more spaces or tabs


entprop = [ws] simprop
[params] ":" value CRLF
/ [ws] "AALARM"
[params] ":" aalarmparts CRLF


aalarmparts = 0*3(strnosemi ";") strnosemi
; runTime, snoozeTime, repeatCount, audioContent

strnosemi = *(*nonsemi ("\;" / "\" CRLF)) *nonsemi
; To include a semicolon in this string, it must be escaped
; with a "\" character.

nonsemi = <any non-control ASCII except ";">

it looks like the extra CRLF we've been worried about are actually allowed by the spec and it is Apple that is incorrectly parsing it.

[3quid]

Hmm ok. I guess I will have to look up some more info on the iCal/vCal parser! Hopefully it will be something that we can remedy :)

[3quid]

There is also a possible issue with the CRLF just in front of the SUMMARY value

SUMMARY ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
TestEntry

[fuzzbang]

it looks like the extra CRLF we've been worried about are actually allowed by the spec and it is Apple that is incorrectly parsing it.

I haven't done BNF in a while myself either, but I think you have misread the grammar.


strnosemi = *(*nonsemi ("\;" / "\" CRLF)) *nonsemi


The BNF shows that the only way to embed a CRLF before the terminal semicolon is to escape it with a backslash first "\"... which is not happening with the N900 code (based on the dumps shown in this thread).

It looks like someone needs to open a bug with Maemo on this.

[Mandibela]

Lotsa thanks to you everyone!

I just synced my MacBook (10.4.11) with the N900 somewhat succesfully. iSync version is 2.4. It's very nice that the plugin worked with 10.4.

This is from my mac:
10:40:10.841 [iSync:1412] ERROR (.sync.Parser.VCal): Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 30: BEGIN:VEVENT
: SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
: Arvaa=20mik=C3=A4=20p=C3=A4iv=C3=A4?
: UID:70
: DTSTART:19830721T000000
: DTEND:19830721T000000
: ATTACH:
: PRIORITY:0
: SEQUENCE:0
: CLASS:PUBLIC
: X-EPOCAGENDAENTRYTYPE:APPOINTMENT
: X-METHOD:NONE
: X-SYMBIAN-LUID:76
: LAST-MODIFIED:20091204T151140Z
: DCREATED:20091204T151140Z
: RRULE:YM1 7 21000721T000000
: AALARM:20100720T000000
: ;PT7M
: ;
: END:VEVENT
: END:VCALENDAR
:

I got plenty more... But you guys already know about those, so I'm just waiting for now.

[3quid]

Could there be a way of enforcing it to escape the CRLF using the Advanced Options > vCard/vCal common settings >

a. Escape semicolon in non-compound property values
c. Characters to escape in property values

... options inside the iSync Plugin-Maker?

[scudderfish]

Could there be a way of enforcing it to escape the CRLF using the Advanced Options > vCard/vCal common settings >

a. Escape semicolon in non-compound property values
c. Characters to escape in property values

... options inside the iSync Plugin-Maker?

Give it a go :) I'm away from my Mac right now* (work insists I use a Dell box) so I can't do anything until this evening.


* Not quite true, I've got a hackintosh netbook with me, but the the plugin maker doesn't fit on the 1024x600 res screen.

[3quid]

Will do :) I can't give it a go till later either. I have deadlines due today ;)

I am determined to get this problem resolved though. Annoying not to be able to set event alarms on the move. Especially as the event is then completely ignored by iCal.

[joergen]

Can confirm that my problem has the same problem, i.e. events created with an alarm on the N900 dont get synced to the Mac :-(

Trying to fiddle with the options now, let's hope one of them solves this.

[3quid]

OK thanks joergen, glad its not just us!

I have tried using the settings relating to escapes, CRLF and whitespace but no joy. In fact I don't see any of the settings inside the Advanced Options > vCard/vCal common settings taking any effect at all. I tried, for example, to put AALARM in the 'properties to ignore' list but it still continues to try and parse AALARM. I wanted to see if the event would work if AALARM was stripe out on import.

Should that work? or is it only for custom "X-xxx-xxxxx" properties?

[scudderfish]

OK thanks joergen, glad its not just us!

I have tried using the settings relating to escapes, CRLF and whitespace but no joy. In fact I don't see any of the settings inside the Advanced Options > vCard/vCal common settings taking any effect at all. I tried, for example, to put AALARM in the 'properties to ignore' list but it still continues to try and parse AALARM. I wanted to see if the event would work if AALARM was stripe out on import.

Should that work? or is it only for custom "X-xxx-xxxxx" properties?

I think it is objecting to the general format of the VCALENDAR so it doesn't get as far as recognising the AALARM to strip out. That would explain why we see no event at all instead of an event with the alarm missing.

[scudderfish]

I think we're really not going to get this to work with the software we have. Digging through the detailed iSync log :-

TIME: 20:51:26.893
THREAD: 0x116af5bd0
TYPE: .sync.Parser.VCal
LEVEL: ERROR
LINE: 548
FUNCTION: -[VCalParser parseData:]
DEPTH: 11
LENGTH: 315

Failed to parse vCal (1) near index 97: BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE;CHARSET=UTF-8:=
Fffffff
UID:490
DTSTART:20100118T211500Z
DTEND:20100118T221500Z
ATTACH:
SEQUENCE:0
LAST-MODIFIED:20100118T205403Z
DCREATED:20100118T205403Z
AALARM:20100118T210000
;PT3M
;
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR


That is a piece of Objective-C code buried who knows where in the code stack that is spitting the dummy at the extra CRLF characters. We could raise a bug with Apple that they are not correctly parsing VCALENDAR entries (good luck with that), or we petition Nokia to suppress the extra CRLF in an update. If I knew where the N900 was generating it and I had the source I'd go and fix it. That is far more likely to happen than changing Apple code. Unfortunately, this isn't really a bug in the N900 as far as I can see so I doubt it would get much traction. :(

[scudderfish]

I haven't done BNF in a while myself either, but I think you have misread the grammar.


strnosemi = *(*nonsemi ("\;" / "\" CRLF)) *nonsemi


The BNF shows that the only way to embed a CRLF before the terminal semicolon is to escape it with a backslash first "\"... which is not happening with the N900 code (based on the dumps shown in this thread).

It looks like someone needs to open a bug with Maemo on this.

I read that as
strnosemi is made up of a sequence of zero or more instances of any of the following :- nonsemicolons \; / \ CRLF followed by zero or more instances of nonsemicolons.

Or put it another way strnosemi can contain any character, including CRLF provided that all semicolons are preceded by \

[joergen]

Haven't been lucky with the options either :-(

I am pretty sure that this is a bug in the N900; i'm pretty sure a newline is supposed to be escaped in a vcal property, unless one is specifying quoted-printable as the encoding. (So the newine in the summary is probably ok in a formal sense, but it seems to be bogus to start the string with a newline anyways).

[joergen]

Btw, the ;PT3M seems to be the "snooze" time, which in this case would be 3 minutes.

I am really puzzled why nothing else than ISync is stumbling over this bogosity. Maybe other vcal-parsers are simply ignoring those bogus lines.

[jsbigs]

Hi Guys,

I have also written a plugin to do this (before realising there was one in progress here!)

I have everything working as far as I can see minus two things. Events with alarms. If they are created in iCal the event is transferred to the N900 just fine but minus their alarms. If they are created (with alarms) on the N900 they do not transfer to iCal at all.

I see you are having trouble transferring events made on the N900 to the mac. My plugin does that correctly (apart from the alarm issue). Do the events transferred by your plugin (from iCal to N900) have alarms set? If so do they still have alarms once in the N900?

You can grab my plugin in here (http://n900.2hands.co.uk) if anyone wants it :)

Anyone who does try mine out. Let me know how you get on.

Cheers :)

After struggling with the instructions here, the only way I could get my Mac to recognize the plug in was if it was in ~/Library/PhonePlugIns v. /Library/PhonePlugIns. In other words, in my user folder. You have to create the PhonePlugIns folder if it doesn't already exist.

Now to see if it works...fingers crossed.

[phgerin]

Anyone who does try mine out. Let me know how you get on.

Cheers :)

Thanks !
It works great for me.
But... the birthday field is erased when transfered to the N900 (and then erased in the contacts on my Mac).

[scudderfish]

One last plan of attack :-
1) Create alarmed event on Mac
2) Sync
3) Modify on N900 keeping alarm details
4) Sync, and monitor bluetooth packets and detailed iSync log
I want to see if the AALARM details are formatted any differently in this scenario.

[3quid]

One last plan of attack :-
1) Create alarmed event on Mac
2) Sync
3) Modify on N900 keeping alarm details
4) Sync, and monitor bluetooth packets and detailed iSync log
I want to see if the AALARM details are formatted any differently in this scenario.

I just tried that sequence.

Having changed the name of the event in the version sync'd to my N900 it then failed to parse when I tried to resync. In the console log it shows it has removed the Z from the original sync and added the "; PT7M ;" to the end.

[jsbigs]

So after many hours (w/3quid's plug-in), I'm finally all in sync, at least for my contacts. I haven't had time to evaluate the calendar part yet. In due time.

I have 2400 contacts in my phone and syncing didn't love that so much so I created a dummy group in my address book and added 300 or so contacts at a time, syncing after each. Hope this helps someone else.

[scudderfish]

I just tried that sequence.

Having changed the name of the event in the version sync'd to my N900 it then failed to parse when I tried to resync. In the console log it shows it has removed the Z from the original sync and added the "; PT7M ;" to the end.
(sending this from my N900 whilst I wait for my train home :) ) Does it also put in the dodgy CRLF ?

[3quid]

(sending this from my N900 whilst I wait for my train home :) ) Does it also put in the dodgy CRLF ?

Yes, unfortunately it does. The format of the failing event looks exactly like one originally created on the N900.

There MUST be a way of stopping it doing this!

[scudderfish]

it's like we need some sort of filter program that sits between the bt interface and the n900 syncml stack

[3quid]

it's like we need some sort of filter program that sits between the bt interface and the n900 syncml stack

Yup exactly. It's a pretty simple change that's required. Will persevere with it but I am running out of ideas. If we could find out what file/app that creates that code it would be pretty handy.

[scudderfish]

Probably somewhere in here http://maemo.gitorious.org/maemo-bluetooth

[scudderfish]

I ran dbus-monitor on the N900 and then initialised a sync when I had one new entry on the N900 with no alarm. Can we find anything in this which would give us a way in?


method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=com.nokia.maesync_controller serial=336 path=/com/nokia/maesync_controller; interface=com.nokia.maesync_controller; member=sync_req
string "syncd"
int32 1
string "contacts, calendar"
method return sender=:1.50 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=336
int32 2
error sender=:1.50 -> dest=:1.57 error_name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMetho d reply_serial=336
string "Method "sync_req" with signature "sis" on interface "com.nokia.maesync_controller" doesn't exist
"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=:1.30 serial=338 path=/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/BookFactory; interface=org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.addressbo ok.BookFactory; member=getBook
string "file:///home/user/.osso-abook/db"
method call sender=:1.30 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=5140 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=AddMatch
string "type='signal',sender='org.freedesktop.DBus',interf ace='org.freedesktop.DBus',path='/org/freedesktop/DBus',member='NameOwnerChanged',arg0=':1.57'"
method call sender=:1.30 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=5141 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=NameHasOwner
string ":1.57"
method return sender=:1.30 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=338
object path "/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=339 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=GetNameOwner
string "org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.AddressBook"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=340 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=AddMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='writable'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=341 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=AddMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='connection'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=342 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=AddMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='auth_required'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=:1.30 serial=343 path=/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db; interface=org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.addressbo ok.Book; member=open
boolean false
method return sender=:1.30 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=343
boolean true
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync serial=347 path=/com/nokia/hildon_sb_sync; interface=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync; member=sync_started
string "iSync"
method return sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=347
error sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 error_name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMetho d reply_serial=347
string "Method "sync_started" with signature "s" on interface "com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync" doesn't exist
"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync serial=350 path=/com/nokia/hildon_sb_sync; interface=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync; member=sync_started
string "iSync"
method return sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=350
error sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 error_name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMetho d reply_serial=350
string "Method "sync_started" with signature "s" on interface "com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync" doesn't exist
"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=:1.30 serial=352 path=/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db; interface=org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.addressbo ok.Book; member=getChanges
string "iSync"
method return sender=:1.30 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=352
array [
]
signal sender=:1.57 -> dest=(null destination) serial=353 path=/com/nokia/calendar; interface=com.nokia.calendar; member=dbChange
string ":1:EVENT:MODIFIED:1"
string ""
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=:1.30 serial=356 path=/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db; interface=org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.addressbo ok.Book; member=getChanges
string "iSync"
method return sender=:1.30 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=356
array [
]
signal sender=:1.57 -> dest=(null destination) serial=357 path=/com/nokia/calendar; interface=com.nokia.calendar; member=dbChange
string ":1:CALENDAR:MODIFIED:1"
string ""
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync serial=359 path=/com/nokia/hildon_sb_sync; interface=com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync; member=sync_ended
method return sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=359
error sender=:1.27 -> dest=:1.57 error_name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMetho d reply_serial=359
string "Method "sync_ended" with signature "" on interface "com.nokia.hildon_sb_sync" doesn't exist
"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=:1.30 serial=361 path=/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db; interface=org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.addressbo ok.Book; member=close
method return sender=:1.30 -> dest=:1.57 reply_serial=361
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=362 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=RemoveMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='writable'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=363 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=RemoveMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='auth_required'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=org.freedesktop.DBus serial=364 path=/org/freedesktop/DBus; interface=org.freedesktop.DBus; member=RemoveMatch
string "type='signal',sender=':1.30',path='/org/gnome/evolution/dataserver/addressbook/file_3a__2f__2f__2f_home_2f_user_2f__2e_osso_2d_ab ook_2f_db',interface='org.gnome.evolution.dataserv er.addressbook.Book',member='connection'"
method call sender=:1.57 -> dest=com.nokia.maesync_controller serial=365 path=/com/nokia/maesync_controller; interface=com.nokia.maesync_controller; member=sync_req
string "syncd"
int32 6
error sender=:1.50 -> dest=:1.57 error_name=org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMetho d reply_serial=365
string "Method "sync_req" with signature "si" on interface "com.nokia.maesync_controller" doesn't exist
"

[3quid]

hmmm not sure. Will have to look through it in detail a bit later. You getting any hints?

[scudderfish]

Right now I'm running strings(!) on a number of the binaries involved, notably /usr/bin/syncd and the libraries under /usr/lib/syncd. I have found reference to "Funambol/SyncclientPIM", so I've just downloaded the source for that and having a bit of a root around. Funambol appear to be the SyncML generators

[3quid]

yeh i was looking through some of funambol but didnt really get anywhere with it. hopefully you'll have more luck.

i was thinking about the fact that there are lots of other value types for the aalarm property for adding things like paths to alarm tones etc... its not a case of because they arent being useed its adding " " or something daft like that? (clutching at straws now!)

[3quid]

Thanks !
It works great for me.
But... the birthday field is erased when transfered to the N900 (and then erased in the contacts on my Mac).

@Phgerin

I have contacts on my mac's Address Book that have birthday entries. I have sync'd my mac with my phone and the N900 reproduces the birthdays in the contact's information faithfully. These in turn show up on the Birthdays calendar on the N900.

I can also edit the birthday (or add it in the first place) on the N900 contact edit screen. Save the contact and sync it and the entry in Address Book reflects the change correctly.

Are you still experiencing that issue?

[joergen]

@Phgerin

... Save the contact and sync it and the entry in Address Book reflects the change correctly.

Are you still experiencing that issue?

Same here, works fine for me.

[jsbigs]

Possible bug with 3quid's plug-in: Every time I make a change to a contact on the N900 (delete or add a field), any address the contact has gets duplicated in the Mac Address Book upon syncing, only the new (duplicate) address is now entirely on the "street" line. Anybody else experiencing this?

[jsbigs]

Bug #2: Only the first two lines in the Notes field will sync to the N900.

[joergen]

Possible bug with 3quid's plug-in: Every time I make a change to a contact on the N900 (delete or add a field), any address the contact has gets duplicated in the Mac Address Book upon syncing, only the new (duplicate) address is now entirely on the "street" line. Anybody else experiencing this?

Not 3quid's fault, it's a difference in the address-handling between osx and N900 [1]. Check out my plugin in this (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40581&highlight=isync) thread, it should have a workaround.

[1] OSX/ISync doesn't seem to like it if vcards have both LABEL (unstructured address) and ADR (structured address) fields, but the N900 puts them both, which afaict is what the vcard standard recommends (mandates?).
Anyhow I should have fixed/worked around this in my plugin, by creating a field mapping from LABEL to some unexisting field.

[joergen]

Bug #2: Only the first two lines in the Notes field will sync to the N900.

I think this is actually a bug in the N900. AFAI, there is a bug in sales and 1.1, that the contact-starter view will only show the first two lines of a note. But they should be there, and you should be able to see them in the contact-editor.

[3quid]

Bug #2: Only the first two lines in the Notes field will sync to the N900.

OK I will have a look at them. I can recreate them here too. I have a pretty good idea whats making that happen. :cool:

[phgerin]

@Phgerin

I have contacts on my mac's Address Book that have birthday entries. I have sync'd my mac with my phone and the N900 reproduces the birthdays in the contact's information faithfully. These in turn show up on the Birthdays calendar on the N900.

I can also edit the birthday (or add it in the first place) on the N900 contact edit screen. Save the contact and sync it and the entry in Address Book reflects the change correctly.

Are you still experiencing that issue?

Works fine now !

[Bingley Joe]

I think this is actually a bug in the N900. AFAI, there is a bug in sales and 1.1, that the contact-starter view will only show the first two lines of a note. But they should be there, and you should be able to see them in the contact-editor.

I can confirm this to be the case (at least,it is when using scudderfish's plugin) -- if you edit a contact, you'll be able to see all their notes.

I have some very extensive notes for some of my contacts, and was quite impressed to see that they had all moved over to the N900 intact.. a first for any phone I've ever owned.

[jsbigs]

I think this is actually a bug in the N900. AFAI, there is a bug in sales and 1.1, that the contact-starter view will only show the first two lines of a note. But they should be there, and you should be able to see them in the contact-editor.

I can confirm that this is the case (the "see them in contact-editor part").

[jsbigs]

Not 3quid's fault, it's a difference in the address-handling between osx and N900 [1]. Check out my plugin in this (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40581&highlight=isync) thread, it should have a workaround.

[1] OSX/ISync doesn't seem to like it if vcards have both LABEL (unstructured address) and ADR (structured address) fields, but the N900 puts them both, which afaict is what the vcard standard recommends (mandates?).
Anyhow I should have fixed/worked around this in my plugin, by creating a field mapping from LABEL to some unexisting field.

Except, according to your post, using your plug-in, syncing Notes is not currently possible.

[jsbigs]

Any chance that the iSync log could indicate which contacts/events were added/modified?

[scudderfish]

Any chance that the iSync log could indicate which contacts/events were added/modified?

Unfortunately not. We have no control over the logging in iSync.

[joergen]

Except, according to your post, using your plug-in, syncing Notes is not currently possible.

Sorry, with "Notes" I mean the "standalone" notes, not a contact's notes.

Using PC-Suite, you can synch. those to Outlook. On the N900, they are weirdly enough hidden away in the Calendar app (next to tasks and events - i.e. the notes of the notes app do not sync).

I think that is a ISync limitation though, it does not work with my E71 either.

[scudderfish]

OK, I have a solution for syncing events with alarms created on the N900 back to the Mac, and I need a couple of volunteers to test it for me.

WARING! WARNING!
This solution involves changing one of the system libraries on your N900 (specifically /usr//lib/libcalendar-backend) as such I will not be providing instructions on how to do this, if you are not completely comfortable with .deb files, this isn't for you. This may brick your device, it may prevent you from installing PR1.2, it may damage all your data on both your N900 and your Mac. In fact, assume it will so any loss is your fault, not mine.

That said, if you want to help, send me an e-mail at dave at smithfamily.org.uk absolving me of all responsibility for the well being of your data and hardware, and I'll send the update out.

Just to reinforce the point, this is nothing to do with Nokia, it is not sanctioned by them, and it may well break things. This is purely a request for help in testing something and will not be final version. If any of this makes you feel uneasy, don't volunteer and hope my fix makes it into a future official update.

[3quid]

I have installed the update and it works perfectly so far. No issues at all and alarmed events from the N900 now get inputted into iCal :D

[scudderfish]

The first 'proper' version of the iSync plugin is now available from https://garage.maemo.org/projects/n900isyncplugin/. This is an amalgam of the work by Jorgen, Graham and myself. Please note the following :-


It doesn't sync events if you have an alarm on them. This is because of an issue with a library on the N900 (see earlier posts)
You need to install Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900. Without this, iSync will not recognise your N900 as a phone it can sync with, even if you already have the plugin installed and the phone paired.

[Thats it!]

Nice one! Took me a while to convince my mac to see the N900 but now it's fine. First sync started off fine but failed just before finishing.

Now on my second attempt...it looks good...very good...hang on..steady..steady........YES!!

Ok, I have a warning.

1. The phone could not store some of your calendar events (76 events)

. 2. Changing all day events on phone is not allowed. (2 events)

Interesting. Anyhow, altogether it looks like a promising first solution.

Well done!

[WebSamE]

Folks, absolutely cracking effort. Worked first time for me - and just what I needed. I think Nokia (and all the community) owe you guys a huge thanks for this one!

[scudderfish]

Incidentally, I raised a bug about the events with alarms thing. If you are interested in or use the iSync plugin, you should vote for the bug as it does directly affect you

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8463

[Bingley Joe]

This is fantastic! Thanks to the three of you for all the work that went into this.

Syncing seems to be working very smoothly for me using the new plugin with the exception of one minor detail:

- Individual calendars don't seem to sync between iCal and the N900. By this I mean the colour-coded calendars you can set up on each side.. is there any way to get them to match up?


Not a big thing, but it would be really nice to get that ironed out if possible.

[3quid]

At the moment that isn't possible but it is on my wishlist too. Once I have my college assignment out of the way I will look at how this is done. Don't think it's simple though!

[Bingley Joe]

At the moment that isn't possible but it is on my wishlist too. Once I have my college assignment out of the way I will look at how this is done. Don't think it's simple though!

Good to know! Just having them on the device under one calendar is perfectly fine for the moment, but having them sync would be brilliant :)

[lokizilla]

Another report of the plugin working first time!

Admittedly I removed all my contacts and calendar data before starting sync, but they've all re-appeared on there without a problem - even my tasks have made it over, which I didn't expect!

Thanks for the effort, guys!

[scudderfish]

Good to know! Just having them on the device under one calendar is perfectly fine for the moment, but having them sync would be brilliant :)

I must say that right now I'm stumped as to how we might do it. :confused:

[Bingley Joe]

I must say that right now I'm stumped as to how we might do it. :confused:

#%$@^& and I've just now realized it has caused a duplicate entry to appear in my iCal for literally every single event I have.. for some reason that wasn't the case when I was using the first version of the plugin you posted.

No more calendar syncing for me, I guess :(

[Sheepdog987]

I found a iSync here and it is working just fine, do a search and you will find it, follow the directions and you will be good to go.

[Sheepdog987]

I had a similar problem, but only with holidays, and birthdays, anything that was entered as an event was fine, so I just changed it all to events under my Cal and no more dupes. A small price to pay since neither nokia nor apple seem to be doing anything.

[scudderfish]

One thing to be careful of is not to sync the Birthdays calendar in iCal. It caused me all sorts of problems with collisions with the in build Birthdays calendar on the N900.
I think Bingley Joe is pushing the envelope for the amount of info he's syncing :) I'm going to do a detailed analysis of differences between the first plugin and the current one to check that there isn't some change that has messed things up for him.

[scudderfish]

OK, the only difference of note is how the plugin represents all day events. My original one used "OMA Formatting", the current one uses Midnight to Midnight. However, reading the Apple iSync SyncML Guide (http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iSyncSyncMLGuide/iSyncSyncMLGuide.pdf), they look to be the same so the data send over the (virtual) wire is identical.

I can't offer a true solution, but if I was in that position I'd
1) Take a back up
2) Run something like this http://www.nhoj.co.uk/icaldupedeleter/ (I haven't used it myself, but it is the sort of thing to use)
3) Delete the N900 from iSync and then re-add it so you get the option to wipe it's calendar and install the iCal one as the concept of truth.
4) Cross fingers and sync.

[scudderfish]

Just had a thought, I wonder if this is because of multiple calendars on iCal, getting stuffed into one on the N900, and then synced back into one calendar in iCal?

[Bingley Joe]

One thing to be careful of is not to sync the Birthdays calendar in iCal. It caused me all sorts of problems with collisions with the in build Birthdays calendar on the N900.

AHA! That's definitely one possibility, since I was syncing it. And you're right, it was funky now that I think about it. Birthdays was the only 'other' calendar my N900 would put into a separate category, which made some sense. But then it also made a 'normal' entry for birthdays as well (ie: a person's birthday would show up twice on that day -- once in 'Birthdays' green, once in 'Normal' blue)

I think Bingley Joe is pushing the envelope for the amount of info he's syncing :)

To put it mildly :o My girlfriend and I both use the same iCal 'account', just with different colours (6 plus the Birthdays calendar) to distinguish between our various activities, so there is a LOT of information in there.

Just had a thought, I wonder if this is because of multiple calendars on iCal, getting stuffed into one on the N900, and then synced back into one calendar in iCal?

I think that's exactly what happened.

I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone else, but my N900 has been using blue to represent all the events it's brought in via sync. This is also the colour of the calendar I have selected in the iSync preference "Sync all events created on the phone to.."

Somehow I guess iSync decided all the events in the N900's calendar had been created on the phone because suddenly I had a duplicate blue event for every event in iCal.. even the blue ones, which was odd.

Luckily I've got three Macs and a .Mac subscription, so I was able to revert to a 'clean' copy without too much fuss. Accordingly, I'm quite happy to do any testing you think might help you sort this out :)

In the meantime, I'm pretty content just moving my data one-way. The plug-in is still a massive lifesaver even with the odd quirk.

[spooksman]

#%$@^& and I've just now realized it has caused a duplicate entry to appear in my iCal for literally every single event I have.. for some reason that wasn't the case when I was using the first version of the plugin you posted.

No more calendar syncing for me, I guess :(

Same problem here, only syncs my events & makes copies in ical of some posts :/ anyone found a fix to this?

[scaramanga89]

The main problem for me is having multiple calendars in Google reflected on my Mac with no problems, but as soon as you sync over they all get lumped into one calendar with a single colour. We need the different calendars to remain separate so we can assign colours and tell what kind of entries they are at a glance.

[scudderfish]

Is anyone aware of any mobile device that syncs with iCal using iSync and supports multiple calendars on both sides? I can't see how to do it, so I need to pull another plugin apart.

[Martin Holz]

The Nokia N95 8GB has only one calendar. However syncing with multiple calendars on the Mac side works fine. If I create a event on the Mac, sync it to the phone, change it on the phone and sync again, it will stay in the original calendar on the Mac side.
If I do the same with the N900, the second sync will create a new event in the default calendar (not the original calendar) on the Mac.

There is a other problem with syncing contacts. If I use custom labels (e.g. "Mobile Switzerland") on the Mac, it will use the default label on phone. Now if change the contact on the phone, Sync wants to change the labels on the Mac to default.

[Bingley Joe]

There is a other problem with syncing contacts. If I use custom labels (e.g. "Mobile Switzerland") on the Mac, it will use the default label on phone. Now if change the contact on the phone, Sync wants to change the labels on the Mac to default.

Yeah, I've noticed that as well. It's a bit disappointing that the N900 won't display custom labels, as I find them immensely useful for some of my contacts who have a wide variety of phone numbers where I can reach them.

It's inconsistent too -- for instance, it's smart enough to know what a FAX number is and label it "Unsupported" (which is a bit odd - it could just show "FAX" but refuse to dial - but still somewhat logical).. why won't it recognize a fully custom label?

The fact that it then tries to override them on the Mac side though is quite maddening.

[3quid]

The Nokia N95 8GB has only one calendar. However syncing with multiple calendars on the Mac side works fine. If I create a event on the Mac, sync it to the phone, change it on the phone and sync again, it will stay in the original calendar on the Mac side.
If I do the same with the N900, the second sync will create a new event in the default calendar (not the original calendar) on the Mac.


Do you still have your N95? Any chance you have/can create a log of a sync made between your mac and the N95?

[scudderfish]

Digging through the source code of calendar-backend, it looks like a single synchronised calendar on the N900 is a hardwired constraint :(

[Martin Holz]

Do you still have your N95? Any chance you have/can create a log of a sync made between your mac and the N95?Yes. How do I create a bluetooth log on the Mac?

[3quid]

Yes. How do I create a bluetooth log on the Mac?

Hold down Alt+Shift when launching iSync. Once you have sync'd the phone click "Show log" in the extra window that opened when you launched isync. Open the .log file in console.app :)

If you could attach a log of syncs of events made on the phone and visa versa that would be helpful.

[rubberduck]

I tried every solution posted in this thread, the only thing missing is the sync of the IM-Accounts (Icq, Aim, etc.).
These fields are not linked.
So when I link a contact with an im-contact on the N900, this information does not appear in the apple addressbook.
Anyone tried this also?

rubberduck

[Martin Holz]

If you could attach a log of syncs of events made on the phone and visa versa that would be helpful.
Okay, here are the logs. And that's what if have done:

* Create new user synctest on the Mac
* Create one address book entry and two calendar events in two different calendars (Private and Büro)
* Add N95 in isync, sync data to N95 8GB, deleting the data on the phone. Tell isync to sync both calendars and add new events from the phone to Private.
* Add place to to calendar entry in Büro on the phone
* Sync
* Add town to address book entry on the phone
* Sync


I am using version 2.1 of the plugin from Nokia.
Both the Mac and the phone use german locale. Is this a problem for you?

Unlike the N900 plugin, the N95 plugin will not create a duplicate entry of the Büro events in Privat, but sync the event correctly. Also it will touch the custom label in the address book.

[joergen]

Yeah, I've noticed that as well. It's a bit disappointing that the N900 won't display custom labels, as I find them immensely useful for some of my contacts who have a wide variety of phone numbers where I can reach them.

It's inconsistent too -- for instance, it's smart enough to know what a FAX number is and label it "Unsupported" (which is a bit odd - it could just show "FAX" but refuse to dial - but still somewhat logical).. why won't it recognize a fully custom label?

The fact that it then tries to override them on the Mac side though is quite maddening.

ISync does not seem to expose those custom labels via SyncML anyways, so even if the N900 would support them, they would not synchronize.

So since the N900 does not know about them, if you change such an entry on the N900, how is ISync supposed to know whether you just changed the number or the number and the custom label?

The (sad) truth is: Synchronization will only work properly if both sides talk the same language. In order to achieve this, there are standard formats like vcard (for contacts) and vcal/ics (for calendar). Custom labels and multiple calendars are unfortunately not part of those standard formats :(

[joergen]

I tried every solution posted in this thread, the only thing missing is the sync of the IM-Accounts (Icq, Aim, etc.).
These fields are not linked.
So when I link a contact with an im-contact on the N900, this information does not appear in the apple addressbook.
Anyone tried this also?

rubberduck

Yes, they are not supported by ISync according to chapter 8.1.1 in this http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iSyncSyncMLGuide/iSyncSyncMLGuide.pdf

[joergen]

The Nokia N95 8GB has only one calendar. However syncing with multiple calendars on the Mac side works fine. If I create a event on the Mac, sync it to the phone, change it on the phone and sync again, it will stay in the original calendar on the Mac side.
If I do the same with the N900, the second sync will create a new event in the default calendar (not the original calendar) on the Mac.


Hmm, this works fine for me?
Did you synchronize the N900 with another phone or other service in the meanwhile maybe?


There is a other problem with syncing contacts. If I use custom labels (e.g. "Mobile Switzerland") on the Mac, it will use the default label on phone. Now if change the contact on the phone, Sync wants to change the labels on the Mac to default.

Check out chapter 8.1.2.3 in this document: http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iSyncSyncMLGuide/iSyncSyncMLGuide.pdf

I.e. ISync does not expose those fields to the N900... Well independently of that it would obviously be nice if the N900 contacts app would have this feature as well. But the synchronization part would still not work...

[rm53]

The first 'proper' version of the iSync plugin is now available from https://garage.maemo.org/projects/n900isyncplugin/. This is an amalgam of the work by Jorgen, Graham and myself. Please note the following :-


It doesn't sync events if you have an alarm on them. This is because of an issue with a library on the N900 (see earlier posts)
You need to install Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900. Without this, iSync will not recognise your N900 as a phone it can sync with, even if you already have the plugin installed and the phone paired.


hello. I am new here and have a thumb question: HOW do I "install Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900" ? I can't figure this out, please give me a (link to a) detailed instructions. Thx so much.

[3quid]

HOW do I "install Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900" ? I can't figure this out, please give me a (link to a) detailed instructions. Thx so much.

Download it via "App Manager" on your N900. Once installed restart the phone. Job done :)

[Martin Holz]

Hmm, this works fine for me?
Did you synchronize the N900 with another phone or other service in the meanwhile maybe?
Not sure about this. I tested it again and now it worked fine.



Check out chapter 8.1.2.3 in this document: http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iSyncSyncMLGuide/iSyncSyncMLGuide.pdf

I.e. ISync does not expose those fields to the N900... Well independently of that it would obviously be nice if the N900 contacts app would have this feature as well. But the synchronization part would still not work...
I understand, that the N900 will not show the custom label. That is a limitation, that applies to the N95 too.
Both phones will map a custom label phone number from the Mac to Mobile (actually Handy on a German phone). But they behave different, when I sync the data back to the Mac. The N95 will change the data (not the label) in the custom field on the Mac , while the N900 will create a new Mobile number entry and delete the custom entry on the Mac.

If it works for the N95, it should be doable for the N900 to.

[Martin Holz]

The installer for the dmg file creates the plugin directory /Library/PhonePlugins/N900iSyncPlugin.phoneplugin with wrong owner. I started the installer as normal user and the installer asked me to identify myself as admin. But it plugin directory is owned by my normal user account now. It should be owned by root.admin

[Bingley Joe]

I understand, that the N900 will not show the custom label. That is a limitation, that applies to the N95 too.
Both phones will map a custom label phone number from the Mac to Mobile (actually Handy on a German phone). But they behave different, when I sync the data back to the Mac. The N95 will change the data (not the label) in the custom field on the Mac , while the N900 will create a new Mobile number entry and delete the custom entry on the Mac.

If it works for the N95, it should be doable for the N900 to.

Yup, this is basically exactly what my old Sony Ericsson W810i would do as well -- any custom fields it didn't recognize would be assigned "Mobile" for phone numbers, or "Work" for addresses.

Then when the phone was sync'd up with my Mac again, only the actual phone number or address data would change; it would completely ignore the label information for custom fields in Address Book during a sync (although it somehow knew to sync the data in, for example, Phone --> Mobile field 2 with Address Book --> Custom field 3).

[anidel]

Just wanted to say thank you guys.
This worked with no hitch at all on my SL 10.6.2 freshly installed on my Dell Mini 9.
That's so cool, Nokia Multimedia Transfer and iSync plugin.. ahh if only all of this was available on Linux!!

[joergen]

But they behave different, when I sync the data back to the Mac. The N95 will change the data (not the label) in the custom field on the Mac , while the N900 will create a new Mobile number entry and delete the custom entry on the Mac.

If it works for the N95, it should be doable for the N900 to.

Right... With my E71 it manages to keep it as well. If I set the "show changes" mode in Isync settings to always, then it seems to point out the reason: With the E71 it correctly detects that the number was changed, with the N900 it does not (it thinks the number was removed and a different one added).

I guess there is some difference between the maemo and symbian SyncML implementations then :-(

[joergen]

I guess there is some difference between the maemo and symbian SyncML implementations then :-(

Ha! I was totally wrong.

There seems to be a bug in the N900, that it changes TEL:foo to TEL;CELL:bar when you change foo to bar. (You can notice that in the contact "starter" view, the number is shown as "phone", but in the editor suddenly as "mobile phone".

That's what was confusing ISync. But that's possible to workaround in the plugin. Simply change the mapping of "other" from nothing to CELL.

Tried it out, works fine. Fix is already commited to the plugin's svn trunk.

[Bingley Joe]

Ha! I was totally wrong.

There seems to be a bug in the N900, that it changes TEL:foo to TEL;CELL:bar when you change foo to bar.

...

Tried it out, works fine. Fix is already commited to the plugin's svn trunk.

That's fantastic, joergen! At first I thought you were trying to tell us it was FUBAR, but it looks like you managed to implement a very useful fix instead -- great work :)

[Martin Holz]

Works great here. Thank you very much.

[MaSTeR_MaMay]

Can the multiple (N900 -> multiple (iCal) calendar sync be supported somehow?

[rm53]

a big THANK YOU all you great hackers.
The iSync Plugin 1.0 took me some time to get it working (it seems to me that N900 Bluetooth is generally a bit brittle) but now it works as advertised.
I have no problem with multiple Mac calenders synced into one single N900 calender, just fine for me.
Also the other limitations (alarm settings) are rather minor.
When I think what problems I had with Mac syncing of other phones in the past (SonyEricsson T610, Motorola RAZR and Motokrazr, Nokia N81) than this all was business as usual... never expect iSync things to work out of the box...

[joergen]

Can the multiple (N900 -> multiple (iCal) calendar sync be supported somehow?

I pretty sure that it can't, but if someone proves me wrong, the better :)

[scudderfish]

I've just uploaded version 1.1. This contains joergens work for the sync over USB capability and the label fix.

Get it from the project page

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/n900isyncplugin/

[akpoff]

I can no longer sync. I installed version 1.0 before the recent system updates. Everything worked fine. Some time between then and now it quit working and I can no longer sync. I get the following errors:

From iSync:
[Nokia N900] Connection to the phone failed.
Please make sure that your phone is turned on. If this error occurs again, please restart your phone.
Device “Nokia N900” synchronization failed.

In OS X Log:
2/7/10 10:51:54 PM [0x0-0x352352].com.apple.isync[11897] 22:51:54.739 [iSync:11897] ERROR (.obex.operation): connection failed with error: -21880

N900:
No errors reported.

As suggested by iSync I've rebooted the phone. I've also upgraded to 1.1 of the sync plugin. I've also tried deleting the device from iSync and re-adding it. I've also deleted the BT pairing on my Mac and re-paired it along with deleting/re-adding the device in iSync. No joy.

BTW: I can still browse the device via BT, get and send files as well as use BT DUN to connect to the internet.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

--Aaron

OS X Version: 10.6.2
iSync Version: 3.1.0 (585.0)
iSync Plugin Version: 1.1
Maemo Version: 2.2009.51-1.002

[gimp-N900]

THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH!! (The developers of the plug in of course)

Installed version 1.1 and is syncing fine with my Mac, I can now go ahead an delete my VM of Windows 7 running on VMware Fuse.

If I encounter problems I'll be sure to post them here so that we all can have feedback on the use of this amazing plug in.

Thanks Again.

[Martin Holz]

@akpoff It is important, that you start BT pairing from the Mac. If you start pairing from the .phone, you may get errors like this.

[juhas]

First of all, thanks for the plugin - it's a shame Nokia doesn't provide this on their own.

Plugin seems to work well, except for the problem with calendar events with alarms - but hopefully that'll also get resolved some day.

However, I'd like to request a minor change to the plugin. For some reason the ability to set/unset "don't synchronize events prior to" is disabled by this plugin (guess it's some sort of an Apple default - quite a few vendor plugins seem to have it disabled). To fix this, I've personally applied the attached diff and it seems to work just fine - I'd hope you'd apply this to the original version aswell.

[ddwalker]

Hi, after download and install the plugin on my Mac, and when I run iSync, under Add Device, I got "iSync cannot connect to this device". My Mac and N900 are paired through bluetooth, and I can browse the N900 directories on my Mac. Is there anything else I need to do to get this work? Do I need to install anything on N900?

Thanks!

[semerandum]

Hmm... any chance to get my contacts synchronized as well? Calendar and Tasks work fine, but contacts do not. I can accept that additional information, such as Facebook- or ICQ-Links won't play with Apples iCal very well. But right now, iSync just synchronizes about 11 of 98 contacts (yes, I do sync contacts without a number as well) in the first run.

When starting iSync for a second time, I will get duplicate entries in my N900's address book.

Summarize:

won't sync all contacts, but just a selection
won't sync all details/will alter some information (like Facebook/ICQ-Numbers), resulting in duplicate entries when syncing again.


Great work anyway:-)

[scudderfish]

Hi, after download and install the plugin on my Mac, and when I run iSync, under Add Device, I got "iSync cannot connect to this device". My Mac and N900 are paired through bluetooth, and I can browse the N900 directories on my Mac. Is there anything else I need to do to get this work? Do I need to install anything on N900?

Thanks!

Have you installed Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900? The mac needs that to recognise the N900 as something it can sync with

[scudderfish]

First of all, thanks for the plugin - it's a shame Nokia doesn't provide this on their own.

Plugin seems to work well, except for the problem with calendar events with alarms - but hopefully that'll also get resolved some day.

However, I'd like to request a minor change to the plugin. For some reason the ability to set/unset "don't synchronize events prior to" is disabled by this plugin (guess it's some sort of an Apple default - quite a few vendor plugins seem to have it disabled). To fix this, I've personally applied the attached diff and it seems to work just fine - I'd hope you'd apply this to the original version aswell.

Thanks for that. I'm not sure why the plugin has that option disabled :)

Good news on the alarm front, the bug that I raised about it has now been closed and the next firmware release will contain the fix.

[scudderfish]

Hmm... any chance to get my contacts synchronized as well? Calendar and Tasks work fine, but contacts do not. I can accept that additional information, such as Facebook- or ICQ-Links won't play with Apples iCal very well. But right now, iSync just synchronizes about 11 of 98 contacts (yes, I do sync contacts without a number as well) in the first run.

When starting iSync for a second time, I will get duplicate entries in my N900's address book.

Summarize:

won't sync all contacts, but just a selection
won't sync all details/will alter some information (like Facebook/ICQ-Numbers), resulting in duplicate entries when syncing again.


Great work anyway:-)

Contacts should sync fine. Is there anything to differentiate the 11 it does sync from the others? Do they have (or are missing) a particular field?
Do address book entries created on the Mac get across to the N900?

[semerandum]

Contacts should sync fine. Is there anything to differentiate the 11 it does sync from the others? Do they have (or are missing) a particular field?


Nope. Some are complete profiles (numbers, mail addresses, picture), some are just contacts from Skype (so Skype name only). I can't spot any similarities that would make a difference to the other contacts. (Btw., all contacts is selected within iSync)

It's not a huge problem (I can export all contacts as vCard anyway), but of course, thats not real synchronisation.

Do address book entries created on the Mac get across to the N900?

They do:-) Although I will get duplicate entries, when there is a "special" field, like ICQ number etc.

Will try to get a closer look at this the next days and report back.

[ddwalker]

Have you installed Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the N900? The mac needs that to recognise the N900 as something it can sync with

Great, thanks! That works.

[ddwalker]

I still have one problem with iSync. Seems like I can only sync calendar events and to-do list from iCal to N900, but not from N900 to iCal. These events are created on N900 without "alarm" settings. Anyone else see this problem too?

[magicplums]

thanks guys! i've not synced back from my N900 to mac yet so can't comment on that but i've got my contacts on the new phone now which is the important thing for me. cheers.

[Ryuokii]

Hi Guys. First Congrats on developing a good working way to sync the N900 and Mac. Since there are some newbies around, is there a way someone could post a Step By Step way of doing this? Thx,

[Ryuokii]

Hi Guys. First Congrats on developing a good working way to sync the N900 and Mac. Since there are some newbies around, is there a way someone could post a Step By Step way of doing this? Thx,

Found it!!! (http://n900isyncplugin.garage.maemo.org/) Once again thank you very much!!!

[huima]

I am another user who can confirm that sync works only from iCal to N900. However that is better than nothing, having fingers crossed that this plugin would mature and/or official plugin would get finished -- whether or not it would be based on this.

This thread also lists possible problems one might have nicely:

- Need Bluetooth DUN installed
- Need to pair devices, but start pairing from Mac

[scudderfish]

The problem with N900->iCal is you've got an alarm on the event and there is a bug in the current N900 firmware where it produces invalid data in this scenario. This bug is fixed in the next release of the FW (PR1.2). Your options are one of :-
1. Don't attach alarms to your events
2. Wait for PR 1.2
3. Install the patched version of the calendar-backend library I have (here be dragons)

[Ryuokii]

Hi Guys I am having some trouble here. Installed the isync plugin and cannot make isync recognize n900. Could you give me some help please? I have Bluetooth DUN set up and configured and try to sync with isync via bluetooth abd cable and isync says it does not support n900. Thank you

[huima]

Hi Guys I am having some trouble here. Installed the isync plugin and cannot make isync recognize n900. Could you give me some help please? I have Bluetooth DUN set up and configured and try to sync with isync via bluetooth abd cable and isync says it does not support n900. Thank you

Did you start pairing devices from Mac?

Worked for me.

[Ryuokii]

Did you start pairing devices from Mac?

Worked for me.

Hi Huima thanks for the reply. Yes I have started from the MAC and it worked. I have the latest Isync plugin available and managed to sync, though I can only sync through BT and not through USB. Any ideas why?

Also, I saw that if I choose to sync "all day events" they actually get duplicated on the N900, funny, especially BDay Cal. Am I still doing something wrong?

Thanks all

[sapporobaby]

Did you start pairing devices from Mac?

Worked for me.

Hi huima,

If you do not mind, can you go over the process of installing DUN on my Mac. This is what I did.

1. I went to System Preferences.
2. Opened Network, clicked on the + sign
3. Selected Bluetooth DUN as the interface. Clicked the create button.
4. Clicked advance, selected Nokia as the vender, APN: internet
5. Clicked apply

Does this sound correct?

I did make one mistake possibly by installing the plugin first. Does that matter?

Thanks in advance.

[huima]

Hi huima,

If you do not mind, can you go over the process of installing DUN on my Mac. This is what I did.


You do not need to set up Bluetooth Dun in anyways, it is sufficient that you have installed it from the repository.

I just had strange problems with synching too, plugin complaining that it can't connect to the phone - even though Mac's bluetooth explorer could connect without any problems.

I removed the device from iSync, paired it again and added again - and works again.

[assetburned]

hmm looks like huima and i have the same problem.
my first sync worked like a charm but now it doesn't work anymore :-/

[assetburned]

i removed the "bluetooth dial-up networking" and "BlueMaemo" packets from the phone. but i still get this error.
I haven't installed anything new on my mac, but a lot on my N900.

[assetburned]

Ok i flashed my N900 with the PR 1.1.1 global binary. then i installed the Bluetooth DUN again and not it is working.

but i DID NOT used the backup of my N900.

edit: i will update this posting with the apps i installed. just to figure out which app could be responsible for the problem. I installed the apps in this order:

After i installed one or more apps i rebooted the N900. apps i installed in one step have the same number:

1) Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking 1.1-1 (had to be installed otherwise iSync won't work)
2) BlueMaemo 0.3-10
3) diffutils-gnu 2.8.18maemo2
3) aptly 2010-1-1.2-1
3) OpenSSH Client and Server 5.1p1-6maemo5
3) less 429-2maemo2
3) vim 7.2-0maemo7

Actually to perform a proper test I would have to run each of the apps before telling you "this or that is the problem", but maybe I stumble across the problem even with this approach.

4) 3G/2G/Dual Mode Selection Applet 0.4-2
4) BatteryGraph 0.3.1-1
4) Call forwarding applet 1.0
4) callnotify 0.0.8-1
4) Cellular Modem Control Buttons 0.5.1-1
4) corutils-gnu 8.4-2maemo1
5) cpumem-applet 0.0.3
5) CuteExplorer 1.0-2
5) Desktop Photo Slideshow Widget 0.2-9
5) DiskUsage 0.5.20100104-3
5) Erweitere A/V Formatunterstützung 0.3.4-1(take ages to install! didn't stop the time, but must be several minutes)
5) eSpeak CLI Speech synthesizer 1.43.03
5) Extended Call Log 0.3
5) findutils-gnu 4.4.2-1maemo7
6) ForecaWeather widget 0.9.5
6) GLtron 0.70final-9maemo9
6) grep-gnu 2.5.4-4maemo4
6) healthcheck 0.9.0-0
6) hermes 0.2.3
6) homeip 1.0.0-4
6) htop 0.8.3-1maemo3
6) IPTraf Network Monitor
6) nmap 5.21-4
7) OSM2go 0.8.3-maemo2
7) Personal Dataplan Monitor 0.5-5
7) Personal IP Address 0.3-6
7) Personal Photo Frame 0.3-2
7) Pidgin Internet Messenger 2.6.6-1nix0
7) Pidgin status menu plugin for maemo 5 0.0.1-4
7) proftpd 1.3.2e-1
7) recaller 0.4.0-1
7) rootsh 1.8
7) sed-gnu 4.2.1-6maemo5
7) Sharing plugin for Twitterpic 0.1-maemo1
8) tweego 0.2.1-1
8) ukw-radio 2010.03.20
8) unzip add-on for the filemanager 0.1.3-4
8) wifi switch 0.0.9
8) wifieye 0.5.0-1
8) gweled 0.4.2
8) eggtimer 0.2.1-maemo4
8) storage usage 1.1.0

still working :-/

hmmm ok that's it for now. i need a break.

[samourai]

Hi Guys ! I am very happy to find this very interesting thread because i mis isync from the beginning of use my N900.
I try to install this plug-in and in the application folder i can't find "isync.app" !!
After having a look on the log files i saw the following infos :

Apr 8 19:17:40 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: ----- Begin install -----
Apr 8 19:17:40 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: request=PKInstallRequest <1 packages, destination=/>
Apr 8 19:17:40 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: packages=(\n "PKJaguarPackage <file://localhost/Volumes/N900iSyncPlugin/N900iSyncPlugin.pkg>"\n)
Apr 8 19:17:40 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: Extracting /Volumes/N900iSyncPlugin/N900iSyncPlugin.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz (destination=/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee+++++++++++/-Tmp-/PKInstallSandbox-tmp/Root, uid=0)
Apr 8 19:17:41 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: Shoving /var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee+++++++++++/-Tmp-/PKInstallSandbox-tmp/Root (1 items) to /
Apr 8 19:17:41 samourai installd[564]: Error -43 getting LS info for file://localhost/Applications/iSync.app
Apr 8 19:17:41 samourai installd[564]: Installed "the phone plug-in" ()
Apr 8 19:17:41 samourai installd[564]: PackageKit: ----- End install -----
Apr 8 19:17:42 samourai Installer[553]: Removing temporary directory "/var/folders/He/HerRJNAWGgKD-LFE0yd8aE+++TI/-Tmp-//Install.553440d9s"
Apr 8 19:17:42 samourai Installer[553]: Finalize disk "Macintosh HD"
Apr 8 19:17:42 samourai Installer[553]: Notifying system of updated components
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]:
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: **** Summary Information ****
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: Operation Elapsed time
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: -----------------------------
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: zero 0.01 seconds
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: disk 0.01 seconds
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: install 2.11 seconds
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: -total- 2.13 seconds
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]:
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: IFDInstallController 321830 state = 5
Apr 8 19:17:43 samourai Installer[553]: Displaying 'Install Succeeded' UI.

The install process never give any error ! this error (Error -43) only appear in the install.log file.

if somebody can help me that would be very appreciated.
Thanks in advance and sorry for my bad english ! :o

[assetburned]

Which OS X do you use?

[samourai]

Mac OSX 10.6.3 (snow leopard)

Thanks for your reply.

[assetburned]

hmpf?! I have the same OS here and it works fine (even on my 10.5 system).

did you checked manually if there is an iSync icon in your application directory?

[samourai]

There is'nd any iSync, not in the application folder and not else !!

[assetburned]

looks like you have to reinstall it from your OSX discs.

[samourai]

I reinstall it 3 or 4 times and always i have the same error message and always i never can find any trace of the iSync application on my complete disc and system !!

[assetburned]

hmm that sounds strange... maybe you should go to an apple related forum and ask there why iSync always disappears.

[samourai]

I will try this, yes !
Thanks you for help

[samourai]

I'm stupid !!
I uninstall isync on my Mac and i want to start the application !!! yes ! it's possible to be so stupid :-) (i need to stop smoking !)
After correct re-installing, the plug in works great ...
Thank you assetburned and other for help and develop this very useful plug-in :-)

[inte]

I wonder if it was possible to sync multiple ical calendars to multiple maemo calendars. I understood that the plugin is currently merging all ical calendars into to the N900's synchronized calendar.
Why not keeping the calendars seperated on the N900 as well?

[scudderfish]

Unfortunately it isn't possible due to constraints in both OSX and the N900. The plugin can only work with what resources it has available to it.

[assetburned]

so i guess that a support of IM protocols is also out of discussion?

i mean the N900 address book can have such fields, but is isync able to forward them?

[Lorre]

Hi
I'm a newbie so please be gentle :-) i'm using a Mac running 10.4.11 i've tried to set up isnyc with no luck i cant see Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the my mac any ideas?

thanks

[scudderfish]

Hi
I'm a newbie so please be gentle :-) i'm using a Mac running 10.4.11 i've tried to set up isnyc with no luck i cant see Bluetooth Dial Up Networking on the my mac any ideas?

thanks
It's probably down to you still running Tiger. The plugin was developed using iSync on Snow Leopard. I've got no idea if it runs on versions earlier than Leopard.

[scudderfish]

Incidentally, it looks like an 'official' plugin may be out and about

http://friendfeed.com/nokia-n900/cd9cec49/i-found-official-nokia-n900-isync-plug-in-by

I've downloaded it, I've not installed it or tested it. Use at your own peril.

[Bingley Joe]

Incidentally, it looks like an 'official' plugin may be out and about

http://friendfeed.com/nokia-n900/cd9cec49/i-found-official-nokia-n900-isync-plug-in-by

I've downloaded it, I've not installed it or tested it. Use at your own peril.

Interesting. Good find -- I'm very curious to learn what - if any - differences there are between the community plugin and Nokia's.

[Behemoth]

Incidentally, it looks like an 'official' plugin may be out and about

http://friendfeed.com/nokia-n900/cd9cec49/i-found-official-nokia-n900-isync-plug-in-by

I've downloaded it, I've not installed it or tested it. Use at your own peril.

I'tried it. But isync just sais "an unknown error occured. Sync failed"
:confused:

[Bingley Joe]

I'tried it. But isync just sais "an unknown error occured. Sync failed"
:confused:

Same error here. Doesn't seem to work at all :confused:

[derfred]

Hi,

I installed the official Nokia Plugin (v.2.0) on OSX 6.2 and it works although only via USB. Syncing works, including Notes, but strangely calender events get multiplied in Ical after syncing.

I will now switch back to the "unofficial" Plugin, as it works way better for me.

[scudderfish]

Does Notes not work in our plugin? I can't remember :)

[Bingley Joe]

Does Notes not work in our plugin? I can't remember :)

They work**

I use Notes extensively, so that was an important concern for me :)

You have to edit a contact in order to read the complete note if it's more than a few lines, but all the data is retained.


**They work for a one-way transfer from Mac to N900 -- I'm not sure what happens with two-way syncing of notes.. I've totally abandoned hopes of having that work properly and simply 'reset' my N900 with the most current data from my Macs when I use iSync now..

Hopefully the hallowed 1.2 will change that ;)

[Cascais]

Hi everyone. I was really happy to finally being able to use my n900 with my mac but... it doesn't work.
I have snow leopard, I installed dun, the devices connect with bluetooth, I star from my mac and I've restarted all devices. Yet, I get this:

04:02:18 Connecting to Hb euppy

04:02:18 Device “Hb euppy” connected

04:02:18 Receiving changes from “Hb euppy”.

04:03:20 “Hb euppy” Receiving changes complete

04:03:20 “Hb euppy” Processing changes…

04:03:20 “Hb euppy” Engine processing complete

04:03:20 Applying changes to “Hb euppy”

04:03:20 Error [Hb euppy] There was an error getting data from the phone. The synchronization may have been canceled on the phone.

04:03:20 Error Device “Hb euppy” synchronization failed.

Hb euppy is my N900. I did not touch it during sync. Any help. please?

[Thats it!]

Oh blimey....mine worked reasonably well until...I've updated to PR1.2 this evening....now isync crashes when I try to synchronise and spits out a crash report including this information:

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87c98fb4 -[ISDGlobalId initWithBytes:] + 63
1 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87d6ec8a -[ISDGlobalId initWithCoder:] + 49
2 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8858eb0b _decodeObjectBinary + 2548
3 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8858f811 -[NSKeyedUnarchiver _decodeArrayOfObjectsForKey:] + 1229
4 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff885abbbb -[NSDictionary(NSDictionary) initWithCoder:] + 638
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8858eb0b _decodeObjectBinary + 2548
6 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8858df85 _decodeObject + 208
7 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff885c9b14 +[NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithFile:] + 157
8 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87d1becc -[ISDRecordStore _initClientData] + 206
9 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87d1cc13 -[ISDRecordStore initWithDatabaseInDirectory:delegate:] + 253
10 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87d38b3c -[ISDClientState recordStore] + 98
11 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87cf269a -[ISyncConcreteSession _enterPushing] + 2542
12 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87cfbc8c -[ISyncConcreteSession _transitionStateMachine:] + 3825
13 com.apple.syncservices 0x00007fff87cf1095 -[ISyncConcreteSession clientChangedRecordIdentifiers:] + 80
14 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x000000011461ce26 -[ISyncSession(GGExtension) forcePushingPhase] + 75
15 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x0000000114707b93 -[SyncConduitManager processChangesFromDeviceWithError:] + 465
16 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x0000000114706a2f -[SyncConduitManager runWithError:] + 893
17 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x0000000114706f49 -[SyncConduitManager synchronizeDevice] + 238
18 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff87b990dc __invoking___ + 140
19 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff87b98fad -[NSInvocation invoke] + 141
20 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x00000001146422c7 +[IPHAYOperation _dispatchNextOperationInQueue] + 796
21 com.apple.applephoneconduit 0x0000000114641ecb +[IPHAYOperation _workerThread:] + 342
22 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff88592e99 __NSThread__main__ + 1429
23 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff843eef8e _pthread_start + 331
24 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff843eee41 thread_start + 13


Since the initial set up was working only after multiple attempts I would like to avoid trying to set it up again. Has anyone noticed anything strange since PR1.2?

Why can't Olli and Steve just be friends???

[rm53]

some weeks ago Nokia published an official iSync plugin for the N900 on their usual iSync plugin page. Fine print said it would require PR1.2.

So maybe you should upgrade your Mac to the new plugin for iSync and try again. (I will get my PR1.2 tomorrow, so can't test it now.)

[Thats it!]

OMG I can't believe it!!! It works! A historical moment!

Be prepared though, the plugin shows here:

http://europe.nokia.com/support/product-support/isync/compatibility-and-download

but not here:

http://www.nokia.co.uk/support/download-software/isync

which I find rather odd - it's also the reason why my rss feed hasn't picked it up. The latest news showing on the feed is still isync support for N97!

[tgrim]

OMG I can't believe it!!! It works! A historical moment!


Does it actually work for you (or just installing it)? I installed the plugin and added the device in isync, but when trying to sync i get:

"Wednesday, May 26, 2010 1:50 PM
[tPhone] An unexpected error occurred.
Device “tPhone” synchronization failed."

This is my first try using isync though, but it doesn't seem to have any options that should make any difference?? Help to get it working would be highly appriciated ;)

[Thats it!]

Does it actually work for you (or just installing it)? I installed the plugin and added the device in isync, but when trying to sync i get:

"Wednesday, May 26, 2010 1:50 PM
[tPhone] An unexpected error occurred.
Device “tPhone” synchronization failed."

This is my first try using isync though, but it doesn't seem to have any options that should make any difference?? Help to get it working would be highly appriciated ;)


Yea mine was behaving weird, too. First of all I struggled to remove the device from isync manager. This worked however once I've reset the the sync history in preferences.
After that I've installed the new plugin. Then, it needed a few attempts to add my n900 to the sync manager. Really strange, I tried 3 or 4 times to do this before it suddenly popped up as a new device on the isync manager. Haven't done anything different than before...it was as if there was just a lag or something, no idea. Anyway, the first syncs were spitting out various error messages. This forced me to clear my ical calender and start from scratch there. This was no problem since I had all data on my n900, which i synced from.
Altogether is works now. Not 100% perfect (still struggling with events with alarm, a little bit with all day events and the calendar structure of the n900: It can only sync to 1 calendar in ical.

[tgrim]

I can't get it to sync anything(!).. Is this supposed to work with bluetooth or do I have to connect with usb?

[Dirkjl]

I can't get it to sync anything(!).. Is this supposed to work with bluetooth or do I have to connect with usb?

I had it connect to USB and worked fine with iSync and N900 plugin from Nokia.

[nosa101]

I can't get it to sync anything(!).. Is this supposed to work with bluetooth or do I have to connect with usb?

I think USB only. Bluetooth failed for me

[Thats it!]

I did it on bluetooth - didn't even know it works over USB! :confused:

[ovjo12]

I think USB only. Bluetooth failed for me

HowTo use USB?

[Dirkjl]

connect cables to device and mac and put it in pc suite mode.

[nosa101]

HowTo use USB?

download the plug in from the nokia website
Plug in my n900
Open iSync
Devices > Add Device or "CMD+N"

The n900 should appear among the possible devices

[Martin Holz]

With PR 1.2 the notorious Alarm bug (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8463) is solved. My mobile did even sync some old events, where I forgot to disable the alarm. Great.
Is there any reason to switch to the official Nokia isync plugin or is the plugin from garage (http:/n900isyncplugin.garage.maemo.org/) fine?

[cmalmqui]

download the plug in from the nokia website
Plug in my n900
Open iSync
Devices > Add Device or "CMD+N"

The n900 should appear among the possible devices

Whohaaaaaa! Quite happy that iSync support has been sorted!!!

[Manul]

Hi,
I have just received my N900 this week and did have a bit of a hard time settings up iSync, but I've got it working now. I'll shortly give my experiences, firstly because it may help others, and secondly because it gives me a good excuse to ask a few questions. ;)
First of all, it took me quite a while and many increasingly frustrating attempts to add the N900 to iSync until I had figured out that for Bluetooth synching I first need to enable Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking on the N900 by installing bluetooth-dun (http://maemo.org/packages/view/bluetooth-dun/) from Extras.
After that, and after installing the community provided iSync plugin (http://n900isyncplugin.garage.maemo.org/), iSync recognised my N900 just fine and synching works nicely now. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank those who provided the plugin!
I also tried the official Nokia plugin, but couldn't get it to work. It recognised my phone alright, but gave me an unspecified error during synching.
A couple of questions remain, though:
In the advanced settings tab for the N900 in iSync, 'ignore events prior to' is enabled by default with no way to disable it. Since I like to also have my past events with me, I edited /Library/PhonePlugins/N900iSyncPlugin.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist with Property List Editor and changed Root->family.com.nokia.n900->Services->Item_1->ServiceProperties->DontSyncEventsPriorToDateIsEnabled.visible to true. This allowed me to deselect the option in iSync. Is there any particular reason this is disabled by default?
Secondly, as I understand it, all the selected iCal calendars get synchronized to only one calendar on the N900 and only events from this calendar get synchronized back to iCal. Is that right? Is there any way to enable more calendars on the N900 to be sync'd back? I don't mind if they all end up in the same calendar on the Mac.
Still, I think I can live fairly well with the present solution, and I want again to thank everyone involved in making iSync work with the N900.

[xman]

Finally got this to work on an old mac running 10.4! Happy Happy joy joy.

I had to edit and clean up my contact to get it to sync without an error, fyi. The calendar is less important since I don't need them so much on the desktop, but will probably become more useful over time (for me).

Thanks for all the hard work you guys put into this.

x

[bitflung]

Official N900 isync plugin for pr1.2 and above is now available!

doesn't work for me, but maybe i screwed something up with the DUN related isync workaround...

-bit

[storchive]

First of all, it took me quite a while and many increasingly frustrating attempts to add the N900 to iSync until I had figured out that for Bluetooth synching I first need to enable Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking on the N900 by installing bluetooth-dun (http://maemo.org/packages/view/bluetooth-dun/) from Extras.
After that, and after installing the community provided iSync plugin (http://n900isyncplugin.garage.maemo.org/), iSync recognised my N900 just fine and synching works nicely now. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank those who provided the plugin!
I also tried the official Nokia plugin, but couldn't get it to work. It recognised my phone alright, but gave me an unspecified error during synching.

Same thing here, running 10.5.8 on an old PowerBook G4.

HOWEVER: i first had to erase iSync's history. It would not work before that.

Pretty relieved now. :)

[magullo]

looks like i'm not the only G4 owner here...thanks guys,I'll try this evening and see if it works.

[lsolano]

After trying the "official" plugin which did not work, I tried this and worked perfectly, the first time I installed and tried.

Even better, this plugin supports syncing via BlueTooth.

I want to say thank you to all the developers of this plugin. I've just received a MacBook Pro at my work and this is of incredible help.

[tsa]

I just installed everything and it works, but I have the same problem with syncing as I had with the official plugin: some calendar events could not be received. For the first sync I reset the N900 and had all calendar events and all contacts copied from the Mac to the N900. Unfortunately 56 events were randomly left out; the same events that the official plugin also could not copy. I haven't seen anything that the left out events have in common. They come from all three calendars I copied to the N900, with and without alarm, full-day and non-full-day events, etc. Does anyone have any idea? :confused::confused:

[mimoviz]

My isync works without problems. It seems, though, that if I sync more that 50 or 60 events in the Calendar with the N900, the Calendar process in the phone never stops running active (it wont sleep) and eats between 50 and 80 percent of processor resources even when not used.
I guess its a bug with the Calendar app. So I stopped syncing with iCal at all.

[NuN900]

Guys I really need help.
Have tried all above options with no luck of getting my Isync to add n900 as an accepted device!!!!

Have downloaded the nokia isync plugin and tried both usb n bluetooth. With usb isync just wants bluetooth turned on n there is no recognition of the n900.

With bluetooth the MBP pairs with the phone and I can transfer files no problem but isync will not add the device as a supported device.

Then I downloaded the maemo isync pluin with the same story.

Bluetooth DUN is installed. Mac software is updated (10.6.4) N900 software is updated to 2010.19.1


pls help!!!!!!!!:(:confused:

[tsa]

I had that same problem with iSync and bluetooth for a while. I think iSync can only add to a device if it's not connected to the computer already. Keep fiddling with it a bit and read the help-file for iSync. You'll get there.

[CYPHERC]

as sonn as i get home i'll try this... ;)

[fadimck]

use this one my friend it worked with me ;)

[CYPHERC]

use this one my friend it worked with me ;)


OMG!!!! awesome thanks im trying to keep this on top as soon as i get out from hell (work) i'll try it :D

[CYPHERC]

I already downloaded to my phone... :D

[masq]

Hi,

Has anyone had problems with the N900 not recognizing phone numbers after syncing with iSync? I recently synced my phone for the first time (had too much data to erase & start fresh so had to sync) and it seems like it worked but now when certain people call or sms they're name doesn't show up even though the number is correctly registered with the contact. Any idea what could be causing this?

When I synced iSync asked me about conflicts involving the type of the number (one of them used a field "main" while the other did not) and I think this might be related but I don't recall exactly what choices I made. But if this is a difference between the way Addressbook and the N900 label numbers other users must have had this issue but a quick google search did was not particularly revealing.

Any ideas?

thanks

[masq]

Hi,

Has anyone had problems with the N900 not recognizing phone numbers after syncing with iSync? I recently synced my phone for the first time (had too much data to erase & start fresh so had to sync) and it seems like it worked but now when certain people call or sms they're name doesn't show up even though the number is correctly registered with the contact. Any idea what could be causing this?

When I synced iSync asked me about conflicts involving the type of the number (one of them used a field "main" while the other did not) and I think this might be related but I don't recall exactly what choices I made. But if this is a difference between the way Addressbook and the N900 label numbers other users must have had this issue but a quick google search did was not particularly revealing.

Any ideas?

thanks

[scudderfish]

There is a bug lodged against PR 1.2 for this. Nothing to do with iSync, it's if you have more than one contact sharing a number, or the number starts +44 type thing.

Regards,
Dave

[chargen]

I've used the Nokia Multimedia Sync for some time now - just to sync iTunes playlists. I've realized that when I do a sync the play count gets reset and that all files then show as never having been played; the auto play list for unplayed music shows all files.

Has anyone else found this as well or is there a hidden setting to change this behaviour?

[Sheepdog987]

I have had the same problem, but for me I found a way around this. I use an active sync mail provider, sync my phone with server, and sync my Mac with the server.. all set for automatically so I dont even need to remeber to sync.. it is just done.. everything is same so when I forget I have my phone in my pocket and jump in the ocean....

[Bingley Joe]

There is a bug lodged against PR 1.2 for this. Nothing to do with iSync, it's if you have more than one contact sharing a number, or the number starts +44 type thing.

Regards,
Dave

How bizarre. I just realized that this must be why a couple of my numbers don't get recognized.

Any idea if that bug was fixed in PR1.3?

[CYPHERC]

i dont have any problems with this area, except for the fact that the isync wont wokr trough bluetooth, but besides that it works flawless... :)

[dianamac]

Since the latest update, iSync has stopped working. :( It never connects to the phone. Anyone else experiencing this issue?

[Bingley Joe]

I'm on PR1.3 and it's working for me just as well as it always has (with the help of the community plugin, of course! :))

[dianamac]

How odd. I've tried with both apps and it works with neither. I connect using PC Suite Mode and tell iSync to do its thing and with the community app it can't find it over bluetooth and with the Nokia one it never connects....it says "connecting" then just gives up.

[dianamac]

Got it all working again. I removed the isync plugin for USB, deleted the isync preference file & the Bluetooth preference file, restarted my computer & N900 then installed the community supported Bluetooth plugin & did a sync. Ahhhhh.

[Markosib]

Somebody wrote a plugin for iSync for the N900 (google it). It works fine! But if you have the same No. twice with separate (or different) names in your N900 contacts, when you receive a call from that No. the phone won't report the callers name!

[NuN900]

It finally worked!!!!!
Cleared out all N900 plugins from Mac HD/Library/phoneplugins.
Updated software
Downloaded the community plugin and installed it

and Voila after many months of trying it just worked!!!!

Thanks to all on this forum who have developed the software. I can now keep the phone!!!!!!

[Sudden]

I think you talk about this...

http://n900isyncplugin.garage.maemo.org/

N900 iSync Plugin :)

[handshake]

Hello, fellow maemo fans. For a while I have got this marvelous computer with telephone abilities called N900.
Due to the fact I use for more than two decades Macs, one of the greatest demands to functionality is a smooth integration within the Mac environment. There are two iSync plugins so I thought and the Maemo/Linux is somewhat related to the deeper engine of the MAC OSX there should not be any trouble.
SO IT IS!!!
For a start: Forget iSync! Completely undocumented but PERFECT working is the following procedure:
Make your different kind of calendars (names according of the purpose with different colors etc. eg. privat, holidays, business, moon, etc) with iCal on you mac (OSX 6 in my case).
Then mark the kind of calendar you want to have eventually on the calendar provided with the N900 on the left side of the iCal window. Then export this calendar. Do so with all the different kinds of calendars you want to export. All these calendars will have the suffix .ics. You can add also other calendars provided eg. by http://www.sunbird-kalender.de/extension/kalender/
(German holidays etc).
Then send these files via USB or bluetooth to you most loved gadget, the N900.
Here open the Filemanager choose one of these .ics files and "open" it. You will be ask if the containing data should be integrated
inside an existing calendar or if you want to create a new one. If you do so ALL specialities as eg the color will be shown by the Nokia app as well. So eventually you have an exact copy of the same appearance you are used to have on the MAC.
iSync can NOT do this. It can only merge all different calendars from iCal into a single one on the N900.
Export of the OSX adressbook follows the same pattern.
Enjoy your N900 and be grateful for the wonderful Maemo community and DO donate for the good Apps you use!!
BTW: I think the decision by Nokias new CEO and former Mirosoft man to introduce Windows as the "new" platform is not only a waste of resources and promising, open ways, but more a stupidity: For a long time Microsoft has NEVER achieved even a half way proper working mobile system. (as they never had a really nice and clever system on desktop computers as well ...)
So I hope the community and some very good programers will keep our N900 fresh and "state of the art".
There is yet not better, more open and technical more sophisticated mobile tool, - not even in sight. The N900 is made for those who know and not just consume!

[dormant]

Is there still development on this. I've just got an N900 and am syncing it with OS/X 10.7 (Lion) using iSync. I've had to fiddle my OS/X contacts a bit, but it now works perfectly - almost.

The one feature I need added is the synchronisation of Skype fields in Contacts. Both OS/X and the N900 have Skype fields, but they don't synch.

The documentation says VOIP and IM fields aren't supported. Is this something that can be fixed, or is it impossible?

[scudderfish]

I'm certainly not working on it anymore, I have an HTC Desire S now. If you're feeling adventurous you can get the source code though and have a bash at it with the iSync Plugin Maker if you download the developer tools from Apple.