[missing-sync-palmos-talk] Re: Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0.2 beta 3 now available

[David Emme]

--- On 2004-10-20 11:22 PM (+0200), albie wrote
> I presume since we now have a very cool pretty much functional
> MemoPad on our Desktop

I wish I could agree. Please read on.

--- On Wednesday, October 20, 2004 3:23:50 PM
       albie <albie1 at mac.com> wrote:
> Now that Mark/Space MemoPad just needs to be able to sort itself 
> alphabetically :-).

I agree with this, and it was the least of my problems.

--- On Wednesday, October 20, 2004 3:45:20 PM
       Evan Evanson <eevanson at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Just a personal note: although I already knew about the multiple
> Memo apps out there, I still found the coverage of the "which Memo
> conduit do I use?" issue in the manual to be far too cursory to be
> of much use. And the dialog box that launched when I first started
> up Missing Sync a three weeks ago was even less enlightening. It
> seems to me  that a very clear and detailed discussion of this in
> the manual would be of great service to your customers, and perhaps
> a clearer wording of the dialog box would be very, very useful.

I certainly agree with this; and this was just a part of my problems.
I purchased Missing Sync yesterday, and spent all afternoon tearing my
hair out about memo syncing. The following is a summary, send to
Support, along with several detailed problem descriptions. I wasn't
going to bother the list, which I just joined, but since the topic has
come up, here's my little tale of woe. YMMV

=====

Experiences with Missing Sync & Friends

I decided to bite the bullet today and purchase Missing Sync (MS) for
Palm OS version 4.0.1 this afternoon. I now have two problems, one
serious and one wierd/bogus.

Serious:
 MS comes with an app called MemoPad, which is supposed to sync with
Palm memos, and thus allow the AddressBook/iCal/iSync user to get rid
of Palm Desktop. My first hotsync resulted in Palm Memo categories
being duplicated, and Palm memos being moved from specific categories
to Unfiled. Making the obvious attempts to correct this on either the
Palm or the Mac in the MemoPad app would not "stick" thru hotsyncs.

So on the Palm I deleted all categories, moving all 148 memos to
Unfiled. I did a sync with Handheld Overwrites Mac, hoping to
straighten MemoPad out. So far, so good. Then I created a new category
on Palm, moved 3 memos to it, and synced. Now MemoPad claims I have
151 memos, even though Palm still shows 148.

This MemoPad app has the feeling of the beta of a sharware product
called iMemoPad, which I tested and discarded in May of this year. My
notes say:

iPalmMemo very promising, but not yet ready for prime time. Spelling
correction results in a new, duplicated memo with the spelling fixed.
Pasting RTF into a memo appears to work, but results in a blank memo
after HotSync. The Categories Drawer gets lost and displays a memo
other than the one clicked on.

Now here's where it gets serious: I removed the MemoPad conduit to the
Trash and emptied the Trash, moved the Palm Memo conduit back in place
(verified with Get Info that it was indeed the conduit from PalmSource
Inc), and tried to resync with Palm Desktop, which still showed the
correct number of memos in their correct categories. Hotsync reported
no errors, but nothing happened. I have created a new memo on Palm,
and another new memo in Palm Desktop, and synced. Neither new memo
shows up on the other platform. So it appears that my memo syncing is
now totally hosed. Not a Good Thing. (Of course, MemoPad is blind to
all of this too, as expected).


Wierd/Bogus 
One of MS's advertized features is that it maintains your Backups
folder on the Mac to be a mirror image of what's on the Palm.
Specifically, when it notices a file has been removed from the Palm,
it moves it to folder Backups/Archive/. This is supposed to result in
allowing you to hard reset your Palm, then restore it exactly as it
was (with no extra files).

I happen to have TealScript installed, since I don't like Graffiti 2.
Syncing results in MS placing TealScript.prc in Backups/Archive/, even
though it's alive and well on the Palm. I tried moving TealScript.prc
out of Backup/Archives/ into Backup/ "where it belongs", and the next
sync moved it back into Archive/. So a Palm hard reset followed by a
complete restore from MS would not put the Palm back the way it wuz!

I've reported all of this to markspace/support via their Web site.

Interestingly, the automated response email I received from reporting
these problems pointed me to a markspace MS discussion list, wherein I
found that others had reported similar MemoPad syncing problems
several weeks ago, but no fix has been forthcoming. They still took my
$40, though, with no warnings of potential problems...

Caveat Emptor.

-Dave

[ Later:
As it turns out, there are two Palm memo conduit files, "Memo.conduit"
and "Memos.conduit". Clever naming, huh? My elementary programming
class taught me not to do things like that! Anyway, by the time I
attempted to re-sync my memos from Palm Desktop (see above),
Memo.conduit (singular) was the only obvious choice in my Disabled
Conduits folder, and it didn't work. Looking at my previous day's
backup, I discovered that there also used to be a Memos.conduit
(plural). So I tried syncing with that, and was able to restore my
memos and categories from Palm Desktop. I'm guessing that "singular"
is from the old 4K memo days, and "plural" is from the new 32K memo
(Palm OS 5?). Of course it doesn't help that Finder's Get Info on both
"singular" and "plural" show the same date, version, and copyright
info. 
]

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