Re: Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

Re: Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

[David Neu]

Hi Carsten,

I'm new to orgmode, and must say that I've found it be an incredibly
intuitive and powerful emacs mode!

When I saw this thread it resonated with my search for a strategy for
doing GTD while using a list app that isn't "mobile".  That is, if you
don't have your list manager with you in different contexts (e.g.
@errands, @phone), it seems "challenging" to work from your lists.
The only context in which I seem to have my lists available is
@computer.  I guess I could print out my lists, check off completed
items or add new items, but this seems suboptimal.

I am a developer, but not an iPhone developer, and had the following
idea.  Suppose you restrict your goal to: have orgmode actions and
appointments available on your mobile device (i.e. iPhone),  and have
these items truly synchronized between orgmode and the iPhone; changes
in orgmode would be reflected on the iPhone and vice versa.

Now, if you use the Calendar Store as the mechanism for exchange (see
http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/calendarstore.html), then
in view of

> 1. We do now have a system to assign unique IDs to entries, so the
>   cross-identification could be made to work.

it seems that the goal can be accomplished.

The strategy is based on not trying to get an orgmode app going on a
mobile device, but getting your actions and appoinments synchronized
between orgmode and iCal, and if you have an iPhone, Apple handles the
synchronization between your Mac and your iPhone for  you.  Therefore,
if implemented, the functionality could even be used by orgmode Mac
users without an iPhone.

I hope this reply is on topic, and would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks for orgmode!

Cheers,
David

Re: Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

[David Neu]

Hi,

Just thought I'd see if there were any reactions, positive or
negative, to this idea.

Cheers,
David

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:45 AM, David Neu <david@davidneu.com> wrote:
> Hi Carsten,
>
> I'm new to orgmode, and must say that I've found it be an incredibly
> intuitive and powerful emacs mode!
>
> When I saw this thread it resonated with my search for a strategy for
> doing GTD while using a list app that isn't "mobile".  That is, if you
> don't have your list manager with you in different contexts (e.g.
> @errands, @phone), it seems "challenging" to work from your lists.
> The only context in which I seem to have my lists available is
> @computer.  I guess I could print out my lists, check off completed
> items or add new items, but this seems suboptimal.
>
> I am a developer, but not an iPhone developer, and had the following
> idea.  Suppose you restrict your goal to: have orgmode actions and
> appointments available on your mobile device (i.e. iPhone),  and have
> these items truly synchronized between orgmode and the iPhone; changes
> in orgmode would be reflected on the iPhone and vice versa.
>
> Now, if you use the Calendar Store as the mechanism for exchange (see
> http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/calendarstore.html), then
> in view of
>
>> 1. We do now have a system to assign unique IDs to entries, so the
>>   cross-identification could be made to work.
>
> it seems that the goal can be accomplished.
>
> The strategy is based on not trying to get an orgmode app going on a
> mobile device, but getting your actions and appoinments synchronized
> between orgmode and iCal, and if you have an iPhone, Apple handles the
> synchronization between your Mac and your iPhone for  you.  Therefore,
> if implemented, the functionality could even be used by orgmode Mac
> users without an iPhone.
>
> I hope this reply is on topic, and would be interested in your thoughts.
>
> Thanks for orgmode!
>
> Cheers,
> David
>

Any iPhone devellopers here

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi,

do we have any iPhone developer here on the list who would like to  
listen to my ideas about a (very simple) mobile arm (not version) of  
Org?

- Carsten

Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

[Peter Jones]

Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
> do we have any iPhone developer here on the list who would like to
> listen to my ideas about a (very simple) mobile arm (not version) of
> Org?

I've been thinking about ways to get OrgMode tasks onto my iPhone.  I
haven't written any code yet, but was thinking about writing an
Objective-C library that can parse org files.  The problem, of course,
is dealing with any Lisp, like recurring dates.

I'd be very interested in hearing your ideas Carsten.

-- 
Peter Jones, http://pmade.com
pmade inc.  Louisville, CO US

Re: Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

[Jeff Mickey]

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 18:19, Peter Jones <mlists@pmade.com> wrote:
> Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
>> do we have any iPhone developer here on the list who would like to
>> listen to my ideas about a (very simple) mobile arm (not version) of
>> Org?
>
> I've been thinking about ways to get OrgMode tasks onto my iPhone.  I
> haven't written any code yet, but was thinking about writing an
> Objective-C library that can parse org files.  The problem, of course,
> is dealing with any Lisp, like recurring dates.
>
> I'd be very interested in hearing your ideas Carsten.

So I had started to write a translator for OrgMode to OmniFocus on the
iPhone, but I never got the WebDAV updates to function properly, and
it didn't sync back (OF -> Org).  This made it basically unusable and
not so hot.

If you jailbreak your phone, you can probably get a lot further on
this project, as you can run any compiled executable that you bless
with `ldid -S filename`.  I'm not sure if anyone has tried compiling
emacs on the iPhone, but I imagine that would be quite a feat in it's
self.  Though it's probably the only way to leverage all your org-mode
elisp.  If you could settle for some subset, you could probably
rewrite what you needed in Obj-C.

Any ideas you have for this I'd appreciate hearing about as well.

  //  jeff

Re: Re: Any iPhone devellopers here

[Carsten Dominik]

Hi Peter, Jeff,

thanks for your reactions.

The idea I am having in mind actually goes back to an old idea by Tim  
O'Callaghan which he sent to emacs-orgmode on April 25, 2006 - oh my,  
is this really more than 2 year ago????

Here is the link to Tims message:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/139/focus=165

The basic idea is to *give up* on the idea of a mobile version
of Org and to do something different:

1. Get entire Org-files or sections of it onto a mobile device.
    This could be an Org file, or simply an exported agenda list.
    For example, you could automate creation of a number of useful
    on-the-road agenda views, and make sure that these are automatically
    updated on your phone.

2. On the mobile device, use whatever means available to mark entries
    that you have acted upon in some way.  Tim actually had involved
    involved plans to prepend certain letters to headlines, to trigger
    specific actions like switching to a specific TODO state etc.

3. Once synched back to your desktop computer, Emacs would read these
    files and do the required changes in the original Org files.

Tim and I had a few iterations about this, I even wrote
a prototype.  But in the end the project died, I believe mainly because
there was no good way to make sure that Emacs would be able to identify
and find the correct entries.

Tim's proposal has recently crept back into my mind, with two  
modifications:

1. We do now have a system to assign unique IDs to entries, so the
    cross-identification could be made to work.

2. I believe that Tim's idea to actually assign actions is too complex
    and will be hard to implement in a closed way that would not  
constantly
    beg for extension.  Anyway, what if all we do it to record the IDs  
of
    entries that we want to have affected.  To on the device you would  
only
    click/tab an entry and in this way mark it for further attention.
    And then later back at our
    Desktop/Laptop computer, Org will use the list of collected IDs to
    create an agenda view will all entries which were marked while on
    the go.  Then you could go through this list, remember and record
    the actions and enter corresponding notes with the better input
    devices you have available in that environment.

I am not sure if this is a good idea, maybe I am just rambling, or
maybe I should get myself and N810, bite the bullet and cough
up the 300 Eros or so.

But as a poor-men's solution tha could be made to work on
a large number of devices, maybe something like the setup
described above would do the trick?

As  said, I am not sure if this is going anywhere, but comments
are, as always, welcome.

- Carsten