[Bitpim-devel] BitPim info in a file on the phone

[Roger Binns]

There would be some things that would make some bitpim code easier
if per phone preferences were available. There are two places that
information can be stored.

One is within the BitPim preferences on a host machine (ie registry
on Windows, ~/.bitpim on Linux and Mac).

The other is I could put a file onto the phone's filesystem with the
information.

The latter approach is nice and simple, and lets you use as many
computers with BitPim as you want. However it does mean a 3rd party
can tell if you use BitPim with a phone. There is also the small
potential to harm a phone. For example if someone has filled up
all but 10 bytes of the EFS and BitPim then writes in a 20 byte
file, that may shaft the phone in various interesting ways. It
wouldn't have happened if BitPim didn't save information on the
phone.

Note that I am not doing this yet, just fishing for thoughts and
exploring the issue.

Here are two examples of information I would like to store:

- Is the phonebook stored by Last Name First Name or First Name
Last Name
- A per category ringtone

Roger

[Stephen Wood]

Post by Roger Binns
The other is I could put a file onto the phone's filesystem with the
information.

We would need to test this for Sanyo phones. The Sanyo filesystem is
pretty pathetic, so who knows if it would work.

Another way to save information on the phone would be save the data in a
fake phone book entry. The preferences could be saved under the name
"Bitpim Data" as a phone number. While this would use up a phone
number, it would be transparent to the user, so he could simply delete
the entry if he didn't want it. (Actually on my phone, deleting a phone
book entry does not actually delete it, it just flips a bit)

[Roger Binns]

Post by Stephen Wood
Another way to save information on the phone would be save the data in a
fake phone book entry. The preferences could be saved under the name
"Bitpim Data" as a phone number.

The only problem with this is that we can only gaurantee one number per
entry and would have to store the config data in about 20 ascii digits.
That is doable for settings like is the order first name, last name
but is a problem for storing a ringtone associated with each
category.

Post by Stephen Wood
(Actually on my phone, deleting a phone
book entry does not actually delete it, it just flips a bit)

The LG phones are way more confused than that. They actually store the
phonebook information in two or three files, but present stuff as
though there was only one in the sync protocol. This is what makes
the speeddial stuff more difficult as they index into one of those
files instead of the index for sync protocol entries.

(Actually the coders seem to never use the same indexing scheme
twice. Almost every thing that has lists of entries such as
the phonebook, speeddials, camera images, wallpapers, do the
indexing in a different way).

Roger