239784 - Add Microsoft windows ActiveSync support to mozilla Address Book (PDA)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Phil Hannent]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316

Mozilla already has support for Palm sync.  

I would like another extension that allows Mozilla to talk to ActiveSync
therefore allowing any MS device to sync with Mozilla's address book.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Phil Hannent]

Just some thoughts:

There are several ways of going about this.  I first started looking at
SyncML, if Mozilla could create a conduit to sync data via SyncML then
it would be simple to write a script to sync with any other application
that supports SyncML and there are plenty of apps that do.  Smartphones
can be made to talk the same language if something was interested in
writing a small application for it.  (I got to SyncML by thinking about
http://multisync.sourceforge.net/ but I believe they are going to go
Linux only in future releases)

But that seemed a hell of a lot of work and an idea world situation.

I then looked at how the palm sync was happening.  All they have done is
create a hook into Mozilla and the provided a conduit to the palm
HotSync application via DLL calls.  The code while functional doesn't
provide a great deal of control over the process.  As you can see from
the source in the mozilla tree there isn't a lot of code.

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/extensions/palmsync/

The following provides a good plain explaination of what is happening
but it is a little out of date if I recall correctly:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/extensions/palmsync/palm.html

What I think needs to be done is taking the palmsync code and
customising it for ActiveSync.  I haven't looked deeply into the API of
ActiveSync to see what is required, but I dont expect it to be much.

Comment 2

[Phil Hannent]

Just a note that bug http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121948 is
adding SyncML support to Mozilla.

Comment 3

[Phil Hannent]

Some clever chap has started work on an add-on for palm, it would be nice to
copy that.

http://sync.mozdev.org/

Comment 4

[Jesse Houwing]

*** Bug 255573 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[david]

Although ActiveSync would be more useful in Sunbird than Thunderbird, imo...
bearing in mind that WindowsCE and Windows Mobile both have email applications,
so an inbox sync would be useful too

Comment 6

[Loren Kirkby]

I've written an ActiveSync conduit that will sync a Pocket PC with the
Thunderbird address book. I should be able to release a beta version (as a
Thunderbird extension) in the next week or two.

Comment 7

[Boy van der Werf]

If you need help with testing or anything, let me know.

Comment 8

[Loren Kirkby]

(In reply to comment #7)
> If you need help with testing or anything, let me know.

Will do.. thanks.

I'm setting up a site for the project on mozdev.org.  I'll let you know when
I've got it up and running.

Comment 9

[Joerg Bingemer]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I'm setting up a site for the project on mozdev.org.  I'll let you know when
> I've got it up and running.

Hi,

is there anything new on this issue ? I would also help you testing if you like ;)

Regards
Joerg

Comment 10

[Lucian Fratila]

Bump - Loren, could you please let us know if there's (or going to be) any
progress on this Activesync conduit?

You know how eagerly lots of people are waiting for this... ;-)

Thanks!
Lucian

Comment 11

[brian]

Whoever the reporter is, would it be possible to change the product to Thunderbird from Mozilla Application Suite as it now the core Email product of The Mozilla Foundation? Hopefully this would get more attention.

Comment 12

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Whoever the reporter is, would it be possible to change the product to
> Thunderbird from Mozilla Application Suite as it now the core Email product of
> The Mozilla Foundation? Hopefully this would get more attention.
> 
Moving to Core address book as the address book code is shared by Thunderbird and SeaMonkey and so any development on this should be done for both.

Comment 13

[brian]

(In reply to comment #12)

Then again, there may already be some code to work with that has come from Sunbird as it can sync calendar events with Pocket PC/ActiveSync.

Comment 14

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

As much as a note to myself as to the group, but MSDN for ActiveSync is here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms879772.aspx

I'll have to get a build environment on Windows before I can play with it, though. It looks like we can get support à la Outlook for Contacts, etc., without resorting to a Birdiesync approach.