Re: Status google calendar sync

[Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com>]

> There is yet another possibility. Use ConnectBot to connect to a PC
> running Emacs (daemon). I use MobileOrg for task planning, todo lists
> etc. But when I write a longer text, I use ConnectBot started with the
> option 'emacsclient -t --eval "(ibuffer)"'. It is like having a native
> Emacs on the phone. Press the icon, and Emacs is there after 3 seconds.
> If you use Swype as input-method, you can even write long texts very
> fast. Meta and Ctrl are available (press trackball once [CTRL] or twice
> [Meta], press trackball followed by i for TAB).

Hi Sven,

thanks for reminding me. Yes, this is indeed a nice option I used for 
some time. At the moment, I try to get a Bluetooth Keyboard working with 
my HTC Desire and put it together with the phone into a small leather 
case which allows me to use the phone as display and the keyboard in 
front of it. The total size will be approximately the size the phone 
only the thickness is doubled. It would be something like my 
computer-on-the-go-reduced-to-the-essential-part unit. Perfect for 
business trips, checking/writing mails, writing or doing extensive 
org-mode stuff on the go.

On the other hand, I would prefer to take only the phone for daily usage 
at places where a PC is easy available (e.g., in the office). In that 
case I would prefer to use a GUI like mobileorg which allows me to 
perform very quick org-mode tasks (adding a new appointment, check my 
schedule for the next 7 days, add a todo, etc.)
Basically, mobileorg tries to do that but all the parsing, sorting and 
data manipulation stuff is done on the android phone in native Java. 
Therefore, Matthew (the main developer) is busy (I guess) by 
reimplementing org-mode functions in Java which runs perfectly fine in 
elisp already.
Thus, I wonder if an approach "in the middle" might be the best.
Using a GUI like mobileorg. Every command (button-press) is actually 
translated in a org-mode elisp call send via ssh to an emacs daemon on a 
server machine. The emacs daemon processes the request and sends the 
result back. Result get catched by the GUI and displayed in a nice easy 
understandable way specifically customized to the small screen of mobile 
phones.

This approach would have several benefits:
* Changes in org-mode would directly work on the mobile version (at 
least in a kind of raw-mode which simply shows the answer of the daemon 
as text).
* Whenever we can make emacs run locally on the phone itself it would 
only require to replace the server address by "localhost" resulting in 
an offline version.
* People could work on different machines if they need.
* Depending on the power consumption of 3G/Wifi and the data 
transmission speed, it might be less power hungry to use a server 
approach compared to a standalone version (I'm totally unsure about 
that, but often wifi is on for other reasons, in that case sending and 
receiving data to an emacs dameon would not cost additional battery at all.)

The interface to org-mode for a mobileorg-client could be created in an 
additional layer in a similar form like org-babel. Simply providing 
commands to extract or inject certain data and send/receive them in a 
way both sides can understand easily. It would not disturb the main 
development of org-mode and might even result in a general org-mode API 
for many other possible integrations with org-mode (e.g., interfacing to 
Thunderbird, Firefox, Openoffice, shell, etc.).
In some way, since we had this already mentioned during this discussion 
it would be like the Google Calendar API.

All the best

Totti