[BitPim-devel] New Phone Memo/Note feature

[d***@netzero.com]

I'm thinking of adding a new "Memo/Note" tab to BitPim to allow users to maintain, send, and get textual memos or notes to/from the phone. Based on my research, I'm proposing the following dict for each memo/note:

'subject': string
'body': string
'categories': [{ 'category': string }]
'secret': True/False

Only the 'body' field is mandatory.

The GUI would probably be similar to that of the Calendar Event Editor, with a list of items on the left, and the detailed info of the selected item on the right pane.

All suggestions and comments are welcome.

-Joe Pham


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[Roger Binns]

Post by d***@netzero.com
I'm thinking of adding a new "Memo/Note" tab to BitPim to allow users to
maintain, send, and get textual memos or notes to/from the phone. Based
'subject': string
'body': string
'categories': [{ 'category': string }]
'secret': True/False
Only the 'body' field is mandatory.

Don't forget to add a serials key (needed for synchronization). For the
phonebook, secret is done by having a flags key and then secret can be
one of the values.

There should also be a date field.

Also consider audio memos. The only difference with them is that the
body is an audio format instead of text.

Roger

[d***@netzero.com]

Post by Roger Binns
Don't forget to add a serials key

Did not forget: 'serials': [{}]
I consider this to be a default requirement for any future dict.

Post by Roger Binns
secret is done by having a flags key and then secret can be
one of the values

Good suggestion. How about 'flags': [ {'secret': True/False } ]

Post by Roger Binns
Also consider audio memos.

I was thinking about that: 'type': 'text'/'audio'. Initial support will be for text.

-Joe Pham



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[Roger Binns]

Post by d***@netzero.com
Good suggestion. How about 'flags': [ {'secret': True/False } ]

That works. Just specify in the comments that if a flag is not
explicitly mentioned then the value is assumed to be false.

Post by d***@netzero.com

Post by Roger Binns
Also consider audio memos.

I was thinking about that: 'type': 'text'/'audio'. Initial support will be for text.

In theory there can be phones that allow both text and audio at the
same time for the memo and no doubt there will be video one day.
One way is to do this:

'body': [ {'type': 'text', 'data': 'foo bar'},
{'type': 'audio', 'format': 'qcp', 'data': buffer(....)},
{'type': 'video', 'format': 'avi', 'data': buffer(....)}
]

Or

'body': 'foobar',
'bodyaudio': ....
'bodyvideo': ....

One thing I have been thinking is if these memos are just a subset of
SMS messages. SMS also have from and to, (un)read, replied, locked
and a folder. With MMS they can include audio and image gunk.

So the question is if this is overdesigning and abstracting too far,
or if there is merit in the code and schema behind memos and SMS
being shared, as well as some of the UI code.

Roger

[d***@netzero.com]

Post by Roger Binns
'body': [ {'type': 'text', 'data': 'foo bar'},
{'type': 'audio', 'format': 'qcp', 'data': buffer(....)},
{'type': 'video', 'format': 'avi', 'data': buffer(....)}
]

I vote for this format.

Post by Roger Binns
So the question is if this is overdesigning and abstracting too far,
or if there is merit in the code and schema behind memos and SMS
being shared, as well as some of the UI code.

I agree that a memo can be a type of SMS or MMS, and this design can be extended for SMS and MMS (including sharing storage and UI code). But at this point, I'd like to keep them separate. Furthermore, right now we already can download some MMS components such as images and videos (albeit soundless on certain phone models :-), so a different question might be what else do we need or can we provide with a SMS/MMS tab?

-Joe Pham



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[d***@netzero.com]

The new Memo feature is now available in the devel CVS. As always, all suggestions and comments are welcome.

-Joe Pham



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