Wednesday, January 23, 2008

iCal2Viewty 0.3

Just created this page to share the iCal export script for LG Viewty phone. Not sure if it is useful to anyone else, but it does what I want it to do :-)

Please understand this is a very basic program and I am not a "pro" programmer, so don't expect too much from the program :-)

************ READ ME 1st ***************

New Version 0.3 - Now 10.5 version.  (use 0.2 version for OSX 10.4)

THIS is NOT a 2-way sync you will lose your current phone calender.

Make sure you have taken a backup of your current events. You will need to clear the memory and it is always a good idea to have a copy:

Organiser > Settings > Backup calendar & to do > Calendar > Yes

*****************************************

It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial Share-Alike (v2) license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/deed.en_GB

Instructions

Main

1) First you need to make sure your LG Viewty is paired with your Mac with bluetooth. If you need help with this try the apple site:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=34744

2) Download the program

3) Clear the memory before running the program or you will end up with duplicate entries:

Organiser > Settings > Clear all > Yes

4) Run the program, which will end with the running of "Bluetooth File Exchange" to transfer to the phone.


Advanced Config.

By default the program only add events from the last 2 months and into the next 3, ie, 4 months in total, however if you create a file called /tmp/ical2viewty.config you can override these settings if you have more or less events that fill the 100 event limit of the phone.

The ical2viewty.config file should contain only the following 4 lines :

<?
$months_history = 1;
$months_future = 3;
?>

If you want to have peek to see what it is doing the code can be found here - please excuse the very poor code in my parts - bad I know....

Older versions of the code can be found here


Thanks
-------------------------------------------

Thanks to Ben Barnett (http://menial.co.uk/) for great "iCalender File Parser" php function used by my program.


Known Limitations/Problems
-------------------------------------------

Lots, but here are the main ones.
  • This is not a Sync - It is one way only!!!!
  • Yearly everts are added always as Birthdays - Don't find many other uses for Yearly events so the script does not bother to parse them as anything else
  • Monthly events recurring x number of times doen't work too well - This is a problem with phone.
  • Alarms not working - again the phone has issues with the "common" format - This is a problem with phone
  • 100 items limit - This is a problem with phone
  • Todos - Not supported.

-------------------------------------------
To Do
-------------------------------------------

  • - Config file location
  • - Alarms

-------------------------------------------
Version History
-------------------------------------------

0.3 This Version. Change in iCal file locations for OSX10.5.  Updated script to match

0.2 This version. Added Onscreen feedback with CocoaDialog

0.1 First Copy.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tool.

Why is it that if iCal has two calendars for work and home, why does it only copy over the home calendar?

Unknown said...

where do I save the /tmp/ical2viewty.config file?

G said...

I´m wondering about the location of the config file as well - can´t really figure out where to place it

G said...

Ok, I´ve figured out the location.
It´s in the tmp folder directly under the root (the harddrive icon) The problem is that the tmp folder already exists, but it´s hidden. Follow the instructions here: http://www.macworld.com/article/51830/2006/07/showallfinder.html to show the files. Copy your config file to the tmp folder. It´s done.

My problem is that I have several calenders (work, private, etc) and too many entries. I´ve put the history to 0 months - and future to 1, that creates only 49 entries.

Thank you very much for this program! For my next phone I´ll check to see if it is compatible with iSync :)