Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

First of all I am very sorry for not pushing releases as I have promised. Things have been busy at work, doing 8-12 hour days coding I usually enjoy hanging with our dogs and my girlfriend in the evenings. On the weekend I have had gigs (I play the drums in two bands) and other business I've had to attend to. I have already done upload sync, today/tomorrow I will finish testing it and push a release for you guys. The camera pic upload functionality I have not done, but with this new sync capabilities you can setup to sync that too.

No for replies... then off to work to push the new update!

There was a update for PyQt4 some time ago. I downloaded it and tested dropn900. It does not start up, running the console says something when importing first thing from PyQt4 something in the lines of "sip was built with different version than this qt...". I think they noticed this quite quickly and made a fix for PyQt4. After getting it dropn900 starts up fine again. So if you have problems update your PyQt4 packages.

I have put a sync button to the main menu of the app now, I think this is fast enough access :) As you prolly wont do this every minute or so anyways. If not lets put a button to the main UI.

I dont unfortunately have a android device so I cant check it out. I have seen the iPhone one and got some UI ideas from it. How it shows a folder at a time is nice, with bigger widgets to click on a touch device. I will possibly look into this in the future, there is just some work to implement your own data/view models for this as Qt does not provide exactly what im looking for out of the box.

Address book integration might be possible in the future, I'd have to check out how to set up this kind of thing in maemo, but first I want better functionality to the main app. Folder download/upload is possible also, I will put it on my to-do-list.

As said above its now coming. So to answer your question it's a "feature" atm. Upload sync was just a bit harder to make so I needed more time to look at the problem.

I guess it's up to you if you want to answer to this: do you have characters outside the ASCII chars in you email or password? I tried to make the login and whole app unicode but I haven't tested the login with such chars, there still might be bugs outside of that. Other than that I dont have a glue, if your internet connection is ok then there must be problems with the dropbox servers.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thanks for taking the time to even see about our features request. And take your time you got a life outside of coding and we all understand that. ;)
Only reason I said android was because I have a few friends with it. So whenever I see an app we got that another OS got I usually ask if the features they have can be input into the maemo platform.
Cheers :cool:

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

dropn900-0.1.5-3 now available as a download/update!

• Synchronization now goes both ways as follows
• --- Upload sync updates existing files that have newer timestamp and is different size compared to server file.
• --- Upload sync sends new files in existing dropbox paths
• --- Upload sync sends new local folders and files that do not exist in corresponding dropbox paths
• --- Upload sync will skip local paths that have non-ascii chars: my code would support this but dropbox python client does not however. It fails to open file objects that non-ascii chars.
• --- Upload sync will skip temp files that end with ~
• Sync reporting/confirmation dialog got a facelift
• Transfers manager updated to support sync uploads
• Removed python2.5-qt4-network and python2.5-qt4-webkit dependencies
• Created a new about dialog with more information on the app and paypal donate link

Please provide feedback on the upload sync on how it works. I tried to test all possible scenarios but might have missed some. Code commit for this release.

Note: Again uploading files from your device that path includes non-ascii chars will not work. I have made a filtering system to the sync manager to get these out of the sync files. The report dialog will show you all the skipped files in the end. This is a bug in the dropbox python client that is provided from dropbox.com folks to developers. So it is out of my hands untill I go and modify those sources. The client doesent like file objects that have a path eg. /home/user/äöä.file and will return a error.

P.S. Had some problems with the paypal link under about dialog. Now the buttons should be working and going to correct url :) Hence the three builds, sorry for the constant updates for those who got -1/-2 builds.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Brilliant, thanks a lot! First quick test worked flawlessly, I like! :)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Will this ever come out for the N810?

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thanks, quick testers here!
I dont have a N810 and have no idea what it might require to make it work there. Can you tell me if python 2.5.x and python2.5-qt4 are available on that OS? I guess it might be as simple as just pushing the debs to diablo repos with the web uploader here on maemo.org. That just requires the OS to have those two packages for it to work. Also i guess it needs to have the same /opt/myapp possibility and home/<user>/MyDocs folder for the data.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Let me try installing and see what packages are missing.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Well there is not much point before I would push the following also there. The last two might be there if someone has put them there, but the first is unlikely to be there out of the box.

• python-dropbox-client - packaged by me
• python-oauth - packaged by me
• python-poster - packaged by me

I guess if you get .deb files for all of those then you might have a shot. Check the first post "dependencies" part, it has detailed list on what packages you need for dropn900.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

I'll try and look, but I doubt that they are avaliable for the N810

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Just installed and tried sync. Hmm. It works but some of grievances.

I synced 142 files at once and basically i could not scroll transfer window list because it was so badly stuttering and it would have taken too much of finger swiping because it started from bottom. Also device heated little a bit. I do not know how resource critical file uploading is?

I do not know if slow scrolling was because of neat animation besides currently uploading file or just low resources, but IMO even thought eye-candy is in some places nice, but if it slows down or fills too much pixels then it´s just in away. I hope that it´s suspended when you are not looking transfer window.

Also when syncing the main page doesn´t show any indication of on going progress like 1/23 files synced.

Feature requests:
Possibility to select multiple files and download them
Possibility to download whole directory
Double click functionality
Long press functionality

Great application :)

.edit
Also I didn´t try but what happens if syncing is running on "background" and you start renamind/removing/downloading files on main window?

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

There is only so much you can do with python + Qt. I think to get the best performance for the app I would need to rewrite it in C++. The only place where we do run out of cpu is when qt needs to paint a lot of items in the transfers window. Also the startup time is beginning to be quite long for dropn900. There are several thousand lines of code (haven't counted exactly) that it goes trough, numerous libs that it includes etc.

So yes, I have also tested with something like 192 small file downloads and the painting is too slow when DL/UL is going on and after that also, I just think its too heavy in general not while its loading other stuff. File upload/download is probably very heavy for the cpu, my "eye candy" animations should not be heavy at all compared to the real heavy lifting. If you really do this big syncs all the time (i suspect that you wont) just move slowly in the transfers window with your finger swipes and its better :)

All the networking and file I/O is threaded. This is why you can move in the app while something heavy is happening in the first place. So this is the best I can do with python, I could change the transfers UI a bit to make it perform better, but really i dont think its the eye candy (read: nice stylesheets, some images) that is making it slow, its the high number of items added there, cause with ~20 you are fine scrolling how you like.

Also it should be fine to do other stuff in the main ui when sync is going on. As said its threaded so the thread will just wait for its turn to be executed. I think I have own pollers in both sync and normal action threads, so basically you would be running main + 2 extra threads if you do other actions, but in theory should be fine.

Possibility to select multiple files and download them

• This could be done if I do the new main UI with my own view/model but not easily with current. I haven't subclassed the items so it might be tricky to get actions out of them. Usually in Qt the widgets wont emit "mouseClicked/keyPressed" but you have to subclass the widget and reimplement the handling functions. QTreeWidget is really not able to support this kind of thing before you subclass it (and the QTreeItem to make your custom items), its just for basic usage that most people want, but for me its getting a bit too basic. Getting the load bars into the tree view when you double click them was a kind of a hack already and pushing the boundaries. I will probably remake the main ui at some point.

Possibility to download whole directory

• This would be easy, just get the metadata if not there, download all the files. Could be coming.

Double click functionality

• You mean double click on normal items, as folders already open/close? Yeah this could be, maybe select from settings what this does, example DL the item to your default location.

Long press functionality

• What would you like behind this, a action menu? Sure the right side action buttons is quite stupid, but again necessary as I don't get clicks (see the first answer). Could be done also with my own view/model thingie.

And no I don't think the own view/model thingie would be easy to make :) So maybe I'll do a UI update when I have all the necessary functionality in that people want.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Every minute, no... but each and every time I run DropN900, certainly ! Actually it's the only command I ran up to now (but see next post), and it's the only one not on the screen...

So yes, I'd still like a button down there with the rest :-)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Me again... I realize this has been a much asked-for and eagerly awaited feature... and I don't want to come across as a grumpy, ungrateful badger... but this new version of DropN900 actually works less well for me than the previous. Let me explain:

My main use for DropN900 is to easily bring (and update) to my N900 various unpackaged Python projects (mine or other people's) so I can try them out, or just use them, under Maemo5. I put these in a special subfolder of my Dropbox root on the PC, matching a subfolder of my dropbox root on the N900.

Up to now, one-way sync worked real well for this, but real two-way sync is almost useless : now DropN900 insists on uploading .pyo files, changed data and settings files, all sorts of stuff which is at best useless, and at worst pollutes the online Dropbox contents.

I see two ways I could have my setup back and still please the "real-sync" users :

* the easy one : implement whole directory download as already mentioned by 'slender'. With a "silent update" option it would be just like the old one-way sync :-)

* the better one : add a one-way/two-way choice in the sync settings. Or even let users define *two* local sync folders there, one being full-sync, the other one-way (or each with its own option, etc.)

What do you think ? :-)


PS: I do believe the eye candy in the (very nice) transfer window is responsible for most of the slowdown. Maybe a simpler UI, like plain scrolling text, would be less taxing.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

I think for most this update brought what they wanted, you on the other hand have a slightly special use case. I could do in the setting to select both ul/dl or just one of them to happen when you sync. But better than that I think a filtering system defined by the user would be better. So you could filter extensions out of the upload/download sync, in your case you would add .pyo/.pyc files and you would be fine again? When you modify then .py files I guess you want to upload the working versions back? If not you can filter .py files also out of the upload.

Would this fit your needs? Also I think the eye candy is not the problem but python + Qt, as said I would need to test this out with C++ to see if it would still be a problem. I certainly am not going to downgrade my ui to text only, as I am a ui freak and want everything looking nice. On the other hand if the usability starts to hurt to much then its a problems. I haven't gotten slow downs in transfers ui when having ~20 items. If you do syncs bigger than this every time i guess it might be a problem.

One solution for this would be to make one big sync item in the transfers thing and update that when the thing progresses, then you just wont have so detailed info (from, to, timestamp, time spent, size) for every single item but a combined thing. Maybe I'll do this, what do you think?

1) Filter out extensions from upload and download (eg. .pyc, .dll)
2) Make Transfers UI use a single sync status item that updates the combined state of the sync.

Any takers?

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thank you so much for listening and accomodating pesky users like me... actually I had thought of this but didn't dare propose it, as it seemed to be more work than the previous two solutions :-)

But yes, of course it would be just fine. Actually this is exactly what I already do between my 3 PCs and my Dropbox account itself, so having this filter capability also between Dropbox and my N900 would be ideal !

Reading this gave me an idea that goes the same way.
I just realized something I found wrong with the previous way of synch'ing :

1) first you got a (static) screen that told you how many files would be changed, and in which folders, before continuing. But you didn't know exactly _which_ files, so it wasn't always easy to decide.

2) you only found out which ones on the second, graphic-heavy, dynamic screen, but then they were already being downloaded...

So your new approach would correct both problems at once : first, a very detailed (but static) report of all that's going to happen (like in the new version) ; then a dynamic, but much lighter animation to show the sync progress.

I think it's worth trying. Oh, and the big red sync button too :-)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Yep. Actually IMO quite many apps take tad too long to start. Still Operas startup speed amazes me :)

Should not be heavy? Have you tested with just simple list without animations :)

And it´s true that I do not often do this kind of syncing.

Thanks for explaining how things work :) It´s interesting to see that you have already thought about those things.

btw. one more request.
- Ability to run sync from cli (with errorlevels and maybe option for animation 1/23..2/23 etc.) so that i can add it to scheduled tasks.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Hi,
thanks for this great application, just a little request: If I delete some files from my pc the dropbox client delete them from the server, but if I try to sync the folder with DropN900 those files are not deleted from my N900 but they are uploaded to the Dropbox server, I think there is something wrong.
Many thanks.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

I am absolutely loving this app. Thank you for creating this! :)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Well this is exactly the kind of problem we get with the REST API. I don't get notification from the dropbox servers for deleted, new, renamed, update files so I could do the sync. The PC application gets them and is always connected to the dropbox server. When a file is not present on the server I can predict that two things has happened

1. The file is new, created by the user in the folder and he wants to upload it to server with sync.
2. This file is not present on server, so this file should be deleted?

I cannot predict what of these two scenarios has happened. I cannot ask the server for "history" or ask it if this was before there and I should delete it locally. I'm afraid this is a hard problem to figure out without getting some kind of notification from the server. Even the dropbox team has not done synchronization for the iPhone application (at least last time I checked) and these kind of things might be exactly the reason.

Hopefully the API will get better and I can go around this. Of course I could keep some kind of "last server history" of all the folders locally, this would be some work though. Other thing would be to ask "Do you want to upload or delete local files that are not present on the server?" or something, dunno. I think at this point you will have to go and delete the files manually, I didn't think of this when I made the upload sync but you are 100% correct that this is bad and should be fixed. I am currently abroad in Macedonia and cant dev maemo here easily so this will have to wait, sorry for this.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Hi,
thanks for your reply and efforts, I think to be able to select/unselect the files that are in the upload list can help (semi-automated sync).

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Loving this kind of apps, thnx again for all ur hard work u put into it, greetz from holland, Joel

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

All the app developers have been contacted by Dropbox and requested (optional of course) to fill in some details about their app. I have created my app to the website now, if someone feels up to it maybe go and add a review of my app :) You can login with your dropbox credentials as usual and drop the app a line or two and give it a few stars maybe.

https://www.dropbox.com/apps/850/dropn900

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thanks guys for the positive feedback to the Dropbox app page! Also thanks Thomas W. for the donation, appreciate it! Did you have any requests to go along with that donation what I can take into consideration? :)

Will get back to work on this app after I get back to Finland from Macedonia. I will address the sync upload/delete dilemma and simplify the file transfer widget so it wont be a performance issue. I could try now that the "big" stuff is done to do more smaller incremental fixes. Making release takes about 15 minutes in total when the source is done.

I could also code here at the hotel when I have nothing to do but then I'd need to test my code on the device so its a lot slower than developing with the scratchbox/emulator.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thx again for all your work jonnenau!

any idea on when the "big just press me to start syncing" widget/buttom would be ready?

thx

Zeltak

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

When I get back to working with dropn900 code :) Still another week abroad at least...

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

I just can't get this to work at all. I wonder if anyone could give me a hand?

When I click the dropbox icon my n900 hangs for a minute then goes back to the homescreen.

I have entered this code in xterm.

sudo gainroot
python2.5-qt4-network
python2.5-qt4-webkit

And it says its not found.

I have had a quick look through the thread but nothing has jumped out on me that I can try, although there are a lot of pages and I may have missed something.

I'd be really grateful for any help, thanks.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Not sure where you got that code from, as that'll never work to do anything. Try running dropbox from xterm and see what errors you get:

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

If that doesnt give you a trace, open dropn900.py and change the qapp subclass inparam debug = True, youll get more prints from the app. I have removed the need fro pyqt webkit and network so you dont need those to run it, so the problem should be somewhere else.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Hmmm. Maybe bit better suspend management or this might be just my mistake.

I was connected to Wlan and DropN900 was connected and did synchronization. I keylocked N900 and put it in my pocket. Checked that sync was over before left wifi connection area. Keylocked again and went shopping etc. 4 hours later I opened N900 and switched DropN900 which had been open all the time (I do not always close apps as I try to learn multitask with n900 :D) and looked that it just keep on trying to connect, but of course could not because I use only wlan connection and no 3g. Looked batterygraph and it showed that Cpu had been 50% of whole "suspend" time. So basically dropN900 tried to connect constantly even thought there was of course no connection.

Don´t know what is the appropriate fix/workaround for this.

.edit
One additional thing. It looked like when I did sync to my photo dir the main view of DropN900 kept also updating it constantly.I´m not sure that if it´s wise to run both "sync" at same time automatically thought. It probably keeps cpu pretty high. Maybe to refresh selected dir once if it´s selected but otherwise keep it "out of sync" until sync in background is over.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

It should not poll for a connection many times, I have to check that. I could somehow figure from dbus when device is put to sleep and do nothing, but most might want it to continue sync when screen saver hits in and sceen goes blank. So how should I predict when you want and don't want it to do stuff when you but the screen blank? Or was this just the issue what is should do nothing when wlan is lost?

Also it should not fetch metadata for the main view every time a sync file is completed, I should have different code paths for normal and synced transfers. DL does not fetch metadata even if you instantiate it from the main ui, UL will alter the folders content and then it will fetch. It should not however do it if the UL is done via sync. But I will have to check for that too then.

Thanks for the report, these things are especially important to tell me. As I don't use my own app for nearly anything, it's all for you :)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

rob1n this is what i get

/opt/dropn900/dropn900.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/dropn900/dropn900.py", line 6, in <module>
from PyQt4.QtCore import QObject, QEvent
RuntimeError: the sip module implements API v7.0 to v7.1 but the PyQt4.QtCore module requires API v8.0

Any ideas?

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Don't you see an PyQt update available in App Manager ? There was a buggy version available for a short while some time ago, that gave that symptom. If not, just uninstall/reinstall PyQt.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Sorted fpp. Thank you!

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Just posted a review about your app on the site.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

I am obviously not having much luck tonight! Anyway I can't actually get my n900 to sync with dropbox and take the pictures from my device to my dropbox account.

Do I have to do each photo individually?

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Did you define the specific Dropbox subfolder you want to sync in the Settings ?

You need to do that first, *then* select that folder in the main view, *then* use the Sync button.

DropN900 doesn't blindly sync your 2GB+ Dropbox account to the N900, which is wise enough for a mobile device IMHO :-)

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Thanks man! I think I'll soon have most reviews on the site and good ones :)

Yeah so the pyqt thing was already explained. What seems to be the problem with the syncing? Normal DL/UL and browsing work? What does the sync say then. Remember that the sync is using the MyDocs partition so you cant have it hooked up to a PC in mass storage mode or PC suite mode, or it might block access to the store path. Give me spesifics whats happening so we can help. Traces and error logs are always helful.

As said above and in the settings UI. Travel to the path in the main view where you would like to sync. Then open settings UI from the top menu. Go to sync settings at the bottom, select your path, save settings are open main menu and hit sync. Confirm dialog should come up in few seconds and then just accept it to start DL/ULs.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

In the mainview the only file path i have is dropbox - photos - sample album. I cant go any higher up the file tree at all.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

Well then you have quite an empty dropbox account. So if you don't have any content in there its hard to sync anything to your device. Maybe you should install the client to your PC, this should at least create you a Public folder when it inits first time. You can also create a new folder to the root and sync that.

If you have stuff in lets say "Photos", just go to settings and select photos as the sync path and start the sync. If you want to upload from your device youll have to move some stuff after the first sync into /home/user/MyDocs/DropN900/Photos. If you want stuff from your PC into your N900, install the PC client and drop stuff into the Photos and then sync on your device.

Re: [Announce] DropN900 - the maemo 5 DropBox client
 

right I think I get it now. Have moved everything from my camera folder on my n900 into the dropbox photo folder. Changed the settings. but it seems not to upload anything from my n900 apart from the files i manually uploaded when i first got it to work.

Its getting a bit late now so I will have a look tomorrow.

thanks for your help.