Re: Agenda in MobileOrg for Android

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

Dnia 2013-04-09, o godz. 14:24:24
Matthew Jones <bsdmatburt@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> Hey guys, I'm one of the maintainers of MobileOrg for Android.  We've
> worked really hard to try to implement as many of the features of
> org-mode as we can and make it comfortable to use for the majority of
> people.  A couple of points:

Hi, thanks for this answer!

> - Originally we were just storing the org files and parsing those on
> demand instead of using a database.   This proved extremely
> cumbersome when we wanted to add more features, and it really did not
> scale well when people had very large org files.  We made a decision
> a while ago to switch to a database almost exclusively for this
> reason, but there were a lot of other smaller reasons that also made
> it worthwhile.

I see.  OTOH, one argument *against* a database (as opposed to parsing
text files) might be exactly preserving the formatting etc. of files (of
course, with all the syncing stuff this is not important anyway).

> - The reason we do syncing the way that we do is to fit into
> org-mode's org-mobile-* concept.  Keeping multiple sets of plain text
> files in sync with emacs in the loop is no simple task.  The
> org-mobile-* functions were already defined and well used when I
> started writing the Android port of MobileOrg.  It may be suboptimal
> but currently it is the best and easiest (from the development side)
> way to keep a remote device and an instance of emacs in sync.  I'm
> actually not even sure if the org-mobile-* routines are even
> maintained anymore.  The synchronization problem is not as easy as
> just overwriting the files, however.

That's interesting.  I would be very glad to learn what might the
pitfalls of "just overwriting files" be; it may be the case that "just
overwriting" would work well with *my personal* use pattern of
Org-mode, and that would be why I don't understand MobileOrg's approach.

And I guess that the decision was in fact made by the devs of MobileOrg
for iOS (which I guess predates the Android app).

> - If you have issues and you don't tell us then we have no way of
> helping you and the problem might not go away.  We try to stay on top
> of showstopping issues for our users (we have an email address and a
> bug tracker linked to in the app store) unfortunately some folks just
> leave a 1 star review and uninstall and never contact us.

I know, I know, I'm sorry.

But:

* Yes, I did uninstall, but I've reinstalled MobileOrg again after
  reading this thread.  I'll try to set it up again.  I installed from
  the Google Play; is it better to use the github repo?  It says
  "0.9.7" in the release notes on the wiki, Google Play says it's
  0.9.8, and maybe it would be better to use master or even 0.9.10
  (looking at the branches on github)?  Where do I find the info about
  installing the bleeding edge version from github on my phone (I'm
  quite new to Android, as I mentioned.)

* I did not leave a one-star review; I guess I'm too lazy for that, but
  also it would be a bit unfair without further investigation of my
  problems.

* I am very busy these days, but I'll try hard to start using MobileOrg
  and (if the problems I had persist), I'll try to report them on
  MobileOrg's mailing list.  In fact, my problems were twofold:
  firstly, syncing didn't "Just Work™" (sometimes I got errors on
  MobileOrg, sometimes in Emacs), and some of the UI choices *did*
  suck.  As soon as I find some time, I'll try to describe exactly what
  I mean by this, so that either it could get improved or I could get
  convinced that it's my usage that sucks (which is obviously possible,
  especially given my lack of experience).

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University