Jintek Mac Synchronization 1.0 For SunTM ONE

Jintek Mac Synchronization 1.0 is a Macintosh application that synchronizes Calendar events and tasks between your Sun ONE Calendar Server, and personal information managers (PIM). This is only for Palm devices. The tool tracks entries that are added, changed or deleted on either Sun ONE Calendar Server or the compatible PIMs devices.

Jintek Mac Synchronization 1.0 is supported only with Sun ONE Calendar Server version 5.1.1. Because Sun ONE Calendar and Palm devices each handle events and tasks differently, there are a few situations when events and tasks get duplicated or lost during a synchronization.

  • Installation:
    • Download the .sit file. Expand it. You'll end up with a directory containing a README and the conduit file.
    • Read the README.
    • Move the conduit file into the Palm conduit directory. Default locations appear to be OS X: /Library/Application Support/Palm Hotsync/Conduits or OS 9: Macintosh HD:System Folder:Application Support:Palm HotSync:Conduits. Make sure you use the Finder to move it. Normal Unix commands may lose the resource fork.
    • Start Hotsync manager. On OS X, if you haven't installed it elsewhere, this will probably be in /Applications/Palm.
    • Pull down the Hotsync menu, choose "Conduit Settings".
    • Disable the existing Datebook and Todo sync. One approach is to double-click on each one, and choose the action "do nothing".
    • You should see an entry iPlanet Conduit in the list of conduits. Double-click on it. This will bring up a conduit configuration menu.
    • Supply your username and password.
    • Depending upon where your most up to date info is, select the direction to sync. Once you've done the first sync, you can pick "synchronize", which will go both ways.
    • Now you're ready to hit the sync button on your Palm.
  • Features:
    • Synchronizes using Sun ONE Calendar's WCAP interface and XML.
    • Conduit synchronizes directly to Sun ONE Calendar - no separate application needed.
    • The sync file is stored on the handheld itself so synchronization from multiple locations is not an issue.
    • Automatically handles time zones and daylight savings time.
    • Transliterates between web and Palm character sets.
    • Carbonized conduit works on Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X using HotSync 3.0.
  • Limitations:
    • The maximum Palm date is 12/31/2031.
    • The maximum number of repeats is 12.
    • When downloading repeating events from Sun ONE Calendar the conduit must "guess" the repeat rules. If it can't guess it will add the events as individual non-repeating events.
    • No support for Sun ONE Calendar's exceptions.
    • No support for event categories yet.
    • Sun ONE Calendar strips or encodes XML entities in content text before it sends the text.
    • Apple's XML parser does not like even the encoded characters, therefore they are stripped out before the parser sees them.
    • Downloads from Sun One are UTF-8 encoded XML
    • Uploads to Sun ONE Calendar are quoted-printable ASCII
    • Palm's English character set is modified ANSI Codepage 1252 (Windows)
    • No way to express "yearly every Sunday in June,July" on Palm
  • Recurring Events. Individual events are events that occur only once. They can be synchronized and edited without any difficulty. However, recurring events such as a weekly meetings, may cause problems in a few situations. During synchronization, recurring events are synchronized as individual events on Sun ONE Calendar. Therefore, we recommend that you edit recurring events from where they were created. For example, if a recurring event is created on a Palm device, it is advisable to edit the event only on the Palm device.
  • How to Synchronize:
    • Attach your Palm device to your Macintosh using any mode that the HotSync program supports.
    • Launch HotSync.
    • In the Conduit Settings dialog-Turn off any other conduit that synchronizes Palm's Date Book.
    • In the Conduit Settings dialog-Select Sun ONE Conduit, fill in your Sun ONE account information, and select your synchronization method.
    • Close the Settings dialog and press the HotSync button on your handheld or cradle.

  • How Synchronization Works:
    If you have not used Sun One Conduit before, all of your Sun One events and Palm events will be downloaded and compared. Events that have the exact same name and time will be considered to be the same event. A small data file named "Sun OneSync.dat" will be created and stored in your user folder. This file enables the conduit to maintain the relationship between the online and handheld events even when certain information about them changes. The next time you synchronize only the events that have changed since the last synchronization will be downloaded and compared. If you wish to completely replace your handheld's events with events from your Sun One account, choose "Web overwrites handheld" from the configuration dialog. Before adding your online events, this will erase all of the events on your handheld! If you wish to completely replace your Sun One calendar with events from your handheld, choose "Handheld overwrites web" in the settings dialog. Before adding your handheld's events, this will erase all of the events in your online account!
  • Important Considerations
    Sun One Conduit does not enforce any rules about the names of the accounts you Synchronize. The account you enter in the conduit's settings dialog will be synchronized with whatever Palm device is attached. Sun One does not store any synchronization information online or in the handheld. Synchronizing from a different computer will require new settings to be entered and a complete new synchronization. Palms do not inherently support time zones. All Sun One events are synchronized as though they are set for the current timezone. Please keep the time settings for your Sun One account, handheld, and Macintosh the same.



    Please turn off other conduits that synchronize Palm's Date Book. If another conduit synchronizes before the Sun One conduit, the "modified record" information will be lost and synchronization will not be possible. Since Sun One supports some event information that Palms don't, and Palms support some information that Sun One doesn't, the conduit attempts to synchronize the information that both systems have in common, without deleting information that is different between systems. For example, attendee information for iPlant meetings will not be lost when synchronized unless you choose "Handheld overwrites web". You may use different alarm settings for your Palm and Sun One events, as Palm alarms involve dialogs and beeps and Sun One alarms use email notifications. Sun One Conduit does not copy alarm information between the two systems. Please do not use non-ASCII characters, like ü (umlaut) or ¤ (Euro), in your events. They cannot be translated between systems. Only the first 255 characters of notes (descriptions) are transfered between systems. Sun One repeating events become individual events on Palm. Palm events that "repeat forever" are only repeated until the end of the year when synced to Sun One. Both Sun One and Palm records marked "private" are included in the sync.
  • Troubleshooting:
    If you have problems synchronizing check the HotSync log file. iPlanet Conduit writes messages there rather than interrupting HotSync with dialog alerts. You can manually delete the "iPlanetSync.dat" file to force a complete resynchronization. If HotSync does not work at all try shutting down your Macintosh and restarting. Sometimes rebooting isn't enough to reset the USB ports.

Copyright 2002 Jintek, LLC. All rights reserved.