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Python Support for Jpilot, and Jpilot Support for Python

Please note, current information is at jppy.zanu.org.uk

The new features (GUI, GTK2, ContactsDB) are only in the unreleased code. It won't be out until pilot-link 0.12 is out, which will be in about 4-6 weeks hopefully. Sorry! Please let me know if you want to be sent the announcement.

2004-03-28

Done tear off pages, so you can view different section at once, and added Memo support.

New screenshots - Showing most features, Embedding Jppy Contacts into jpilot, Embedding full Jppy GUI.

2004-03-27

I should get a blog at this rate :-)

Much more refactoring. Listview can show labels properly now, including the label of the 'default phone number', which was a PITA because it's based not only on the default phone setting, but also the label of that phone number. I wanted to do it cleanly, and it's done now.

Birthday handling is working, so are dates for todos.

Split up the glade files, so each application (Contacts, Tasks, etc.) are now in their own glade files.

I'm now happy with Contacts and Tasks are useful. The only thing I'm still missing is being able to press Alt-1 and Alt-2 to switch between Contacts and Tasks. Any GTK2 gurus out there?

Setuid of pilot-link has setup a Mantis bug tracker for me. Select jpilot-python from the drop-down at the top right.

New (2004-03-26)! Tasks/Todos GUI

Got the todo GUI up, and lots of fixes in general. Today was mostly Refactor Mercilessly.

I'm a big fan of Getting Things Done with my palm, so my GUI is going to be particularly suited to that way of working.

Had to write a new CellRenderer too, to deal with mx.DateTime objects. It's easily expanded to deal with other types too.

I'm using the word "Tasks", even though the backend is currently the ToDo database. Once the GUI is done, I'll begin Tasks working, if I still have copious free time.

View today's screen shot - the Tasks.

New (2004-03-25)! Read/write, improved GUI

With a jpilot patch which'll be with Judd soon, I have full two-way ContactsDB access.

The GUI is coming along well, with most contact-related things wired up again. No todo support yet. Label printing, letter mail-merge, contact printing, new entries, deleting entries, logging etc. all done.

View today's screen shot.

New (2004-03-24)! Start of new-style Palm App support and the Jppy Example GUI

I've just blown a day building support for the Contacts database found on Palm T3's and TE's into jpilot-python. Note that syncing support isn't in jpilot itself yet, so this is currently one-way.

There is a screen shot showing off the GTK2/Glade GUI around jpilot-python. It's currently a read-only tool. Most of the buttons are place holders, while I port over functionality from my wxWindows version (that didn't support the new style Contacts database.)

I hope to build on top of jpilot's syncing logic, which builds on pilot-links knowledge of palm database formats and the hotsync protocol. Jpilot-python is the first layer on top of jpilot, providing a nicer programmatic interface to the databases (at that level, you don't need to worry about syncing, etc.).

jpilot-python provides things like vcard support, creating PDFs, creating LaTeX letter templates, etc.

Then on top of jpilot-python, is this MVC GTK2 GUI. I'm providing the GTK2 GUI just as an example (in fact, it's in gui/Example_GTK). I'd like to see other people write some GUIs too. Web based ones? The nice feature is all the GUIs will share exactly the same data.

Lets you run python code during the jpilot hotsync process

There is a screen shot of this.

Interactive hotsync prompt

Saturday, March 30 2002: Using pyrepl it's possible to get an INTERACTIVE hotsync prompt!
Eventually, this will let you do things like view memos and addresses interactively :-) Useful ? Probably not. Cool ? Hell ya :-) 

->> print pisock.dlp_ReadNetSyncInfo(sd)
{'hostSubnetMask': '', 'hostAddress': 'x.x.x.x', 'lanSync': 1,
                                           'hostName': 'somewhere.com'}
->> pisock.dlp_AddSyncLogEntry(sd,"User did some Interactive stuff!\n")
->> show_one_todo(sd,10)
{'due': <DateTime object for '2002-03-26 00:00:00.00' at 80d6340>, 'complete': 1, 
     'description': 'Skipping', 'note': '[00-99:99 s000.... ]', 'priority': 3}

Python code can create GUI components in Jpilot

Screenshot of prototype Phone Log support.

Command line data manipulation

I've currently jp_add_todo, jp_add_event, jp_add_mail_reply_todo, jp_add_doc and jp_add_memo. More to come! (list may be out of date)

Sync with Linux and Windows at the same time

A screenshot, if you like.

Just add a call to jpilot.proxy_sync() in your plugin_sync(). Probably requires that you be careful, don't sync the same databases in full RW mode :-) It should be fine to do Windows in a handheld to desktop direction only, for the same DBs that you wish jpilot to manage. I simply just have Windows sync things that I can't do elsewhere, such as QuickOffice and Bonsai. Note there is a mode which will let Windows write to databases in such a way as to (hopefully) not confuse jpilot.

Tested only with Network Hotsync on the Linux-Palm side. I always hotsync via ppp, so I don't know if this will work otherwise. I also don't know if it will work with USB at all, I don't have a USB palm. Can someone contact me to help test ?

Sync with Majordomo/Mailman

I manage a couple of mailing lists for some not very computer literate people. I found the easiest way to manage who is subscribed and who isn't was to keep that info in my palms address book, along with the rest of their details.

Mutt integration

You can configure mutt such that a single keypress will make a Todo in jpilot/palm to remind you to action the mail!

You can keep a mutt alias file up to date with your palm.

Create PDFs

Create a PDF file for each contact with their details.

Mail merge

Easily write LaTeX based letters to your contacts.

Mail yourself memos

Can't hotsync from your location, but want to add some text from a web page to your palm ? Just mail it yourself, and procmail/jp_add_memo can add it to your palm next time you sync when you get back home! Supports Memo32DB.

Downloads

If you're using this...

I used to recommend that you also snag python-libpisock to help you do something useful, but there is a newer version of that binding in the offical pilot-link distribution these days. Unless python-libpisock available from www.pyrite.org is updated, it will not work with current pilot-link (as of python-libpisock-0.9.5.1).

Last modified: Mon Mar 29 17:42:04 BST 2004

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