RecoX - The Record Exchange Tool
Written by Joern Stein, 2001
Main Page -Introduction
-Latest Version/Download
-Installation
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Usage
-Quickstart
-Duplicates
-Tips
-FAQ
-Compatibility
UI Reference
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Screen
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-CatWizard
-BatchWizard
Quickstart
The quickstart section is for those who don't want to read through the whole manual before trying it out. You may do as described in the following outline, but be warned: Synchronizing two databases from different sources is not a trivial task. You should at least read about the duplicate handling before proceeding. But who am I to tell you what to do...So, here is the quick and dirty sync.
Start the RecoX program on one of the devices to be synchronized (it must be present on both Palms in the same version to run correctly), select a database and check if you want to include private records and a filter string.
If you would like to limit the synchronization to a few categories, select the Category Wizard from the Configs menu and configure your category settings.
When you are finished, tap the Sync!-button. Then wait. The first time might take a while, depending on the number of records that have to be synchronized (about an hour for 2000 appointments :), but subsequent syncs will be much faster, because less records will have to be sent.
If you have databases with similar data and you want to sync only records that change from now on, instead of tapping the Sync! -button select 'SimSync (see below) from the Adv. Menu. Then tap the Sync! button.
Do this for all databases you wish to synchronize.
Duplicate handling
Sometimes, especially during the first time you synchronize with another Palm, you will get duplicate records on one or both devices. This is because RecoX cannot decide that two records actually have the same data (in the fuzzy sense we humans see it), if they differ in any way, even if it's just that one has dashes in the phone number and the other does not. Therefore it will see two different records (or addresses, in this example) that it will faithfully copy from one Palm to the other and vice versa. There are two ways to avoid or limit the creation of duplicate and unwanted records.- SimSync
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SimSync does not really do any synchronization, that what the Sim stands for. It just pretends. If you SimSync your Palms, RecoX will go through the same cycle as it would during a normal sync, but without actually sending any of your data. It just updates it's internal data, where it holds information about your data, when it was last synced, what records were sent, and so on. The effect is, that RecoX believes, that the databases on both Palms are synchronized, although no data was exchanged. Therefore, on future syncs it will only transmit those data records that have been changed in the meantime.
This is very useful, if you have a lot of data in your database that should not be synced anyway, and you only want to share data you create from now on. The datebook is the perfect example, because it is basically a storage area for appointments and events that are long past: after you did a SimSync, your old appointments are never sent to the other device (unless you change them), only the ones you create new are exchanged.
The drawback however is, that you will not achieve a true synchronization immediately. - Comparing record data
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RecoX offers the option to compare the actual record data from a remote Palm with the data stored in the local database to find any matching data. This will prevent duplication of records that are exactly the same, but it will still fail if they differ in any way. Although this is a quite time consuming process, I reommend to leave it turned on to get the best possible synchronization.
Tips:
Use Configs:
Use different configurations for different databases to sync. This is much easier that reentering all the settings if you want to sync a different database. By the way, a configuration is not connected in any way to the receiver of the sync. That means, you can have one configuration called "Addresses", which defines how the AddressDB should be synced, and use it to synchronize your address book with Alice and Bob, RecoX will know the difference. Of course you can also use two different configs named "Address-Alice" and "Address-Bob" if you like.Use Categories:
Make use of categories. If you sync your address book with your colleagues, no one is interested in your private address book (I'm taking a wild guess here, hope you don't mind), so you can limit the synchronization to the work-related categories.Filterbased Sync:
If you are using the standard-datebook (instead of Datebk4 for example) and you want to use RecoX to keep track of common appointments from you and your partner for example, prefix each appointment with a special string (like "[C] " for common) and enter that string in the filter settings of dbSync. Only appointments that contain this string will then be exchanged between the devices.Group Sync:
If you want to synchronize databases for more than two people, do the following (using the Datebook as example):Select one 'Server' device. It does not matter which one, it should just be the same all the time.Choose the one with the most memory if possible. The other Palms are called clients. Each client sends then tis changed appointments to the server. When they are finished, the server sends all his changed appointments to each of the clients. That's all.
QTALTBA/FAQ
(pronounce: kiu-talt'ba)
Questions That Are Likely To Be Asked/Frequently Asked Questions:
I want to use your program, but don't want to beam my old appointments, but just those I enter from now on. Can I?
Yes. Just select SimSync from the Adv. menu once. The RecoX will regard all records in the database as synchronized and only send them if they are changed.Can I sync all entries in one category?
Yes. See the section about categories ..What databases can I sync with RecoX?
In theory, all that consist of independent records (meaning, if you sent just one record to another device it should be capable of knowing what to do with it). So far I've tried Datebook, Addressbook, Memopad, Todo and DiddleBug. There are probably a few more apps, that can be synchronized with RecoX.Check the Compatibility List to see which databases are supported
How do you manipulate the records?
Not at all. To keep RecoX as versatile as possible, I tried to make it independent of the database it is working with, so it just copies the records as they are from one database to the other. The exceptions are the datebook records if you use Datebk3 or Datebk4, because they have the category information in the note field which is changed during synchronization.I'm out of memory! But thats impossible! Isn't it?
Not at all. Since Palm failed to store 4 measly bytes with each record to indicate when it was last changed, I have to use a hash to find out if a record has been changed. This of course has to be stored somewhere, so for each record to be synchronized RecoX stores around 48 Bytes in it's database. Optimizing this amount of data is on my ToDo-List.Is there a German (French/Spanish/Greek/Russian/Chinese/Swaheli) version of RecoX?
No. I started to translate everything to German, but that's not finished yet. As for any other languages, I have not planned anything. If you want to volunteer to do any translations, I will think about how it can be done technically.I tried to sync but nothing happened! Why?
That usually happens, when the database to be synced does not exist on the target Palm. To avoid the problem, just enter the corresponding application and create a database with one entry.Compatibility list
Databases that have been synced with RecoX:
- Addressbook (built-in)
- DatebookDB (built-in)
- TodoDB (built-in)
- MemoDB (built-in)
- DiddleBug
- List
Databases that have been tested and cannot be recoxed:
- Progect
Databases that might be syncable with RecoX:
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Handyshopper
I have tried it and it worked fine, but the author of HandyShopper has informed me that synchronization can likely lead to broken HS databases and even program crashed, so you might want to be careful with that one.
Databases that are waiting to be tested:
- Mapopolis maplets