Peter's Blog 27.1.2004

It transpired that a new version of bonsai has been..

It transpired that a new version of bonsai has been released, not a beta. I've installed it and it's gone well but I haven't tried my test on it yet. The new desktop app looks good.

Got a reply to my email:

Got a reply to my email:

Peter,

Sorry to hear you are having problems with Bonsai synchronization.

I had not heard of any problems with Bonsai deleting any items in

outlines. There were some reports of branches being mixed up when the

order was changed on both the handheld and the desktop.

The new release has an improved algorithm that should handle changes to

both sides better. I would encourage you to upgrade to the new version.

I'll have our system kick out a new registration code for you.

Regards,

George Wayland

Natara Software

Email to natara support::

Email to natara support:

Hello,

I have had a few problems where my Bonsai outlines have become corrupted. I think this is because I have been editing both the Desktop and the palm copies between hotsyncs.

I am using:
         Bonsai version 2.8.1
         Palm O/S 5.2.1 (Tungsten T2)
         Hotsync Manager 4.1.0
         Windows 2000 SP1

I have found a way to reproduce a problem:

1) Create an outline on the desktop::

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4

2) Save and Hotsync to copy to palm

3) On the desktop move line 4 and it's child up so that it
   becomes:

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3

4) On the Palm add line 5 so that it becomes:

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 5

5) Hotsync

The result is this:
   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
   - Line 5
           - Child 1 of Line 3

My main problem is that I have been losing entries on complex 
outlines, including irreplacable meeting notes. This has dented 
my faith in Bonsai yet I have paid money for it and I like it 
as a product and I wish to continue using it. Can you assure me 
that if I only edit on the desktop OR palm between hotsyncs then 
I will not lose any data ? Or is this problem caused by moving 
things around ? Any advice or workarounds that you can give
me would be appreciated.

I avoided trying the new beta in case it corrupted my data...

-- 
Regards,
Peter Wilkinson

I am so disillusioned with bonsai that I am..

I am so disillusioned with bonsai that I am investigating alternatives. First is palm-db, an open source flat file database. It supports memo fields up to 3k. However, the palm-db tools that are a seperate but bundled sourceforge project do not support anything beyond string, integer and boolean types. They come with a pdb2csv program to generate a csv file but this bombs out with a corrupted database error if the database contains a memo field. It also comes with an Excel spreadsheet that won't work, possibly because I am (still) using Excel 97 and it may be a later version.

Without Bonsai, I would like to concentrate on using DayNotez. However, I need a way of indexing the notez so that I can find stuff.

Could this be done with headers in the DayNotez entries ???

Bonsai is a loss to me but I just cannot trust it. Given that hotsync is screwed, I cannot just bypass the bonsai conduit unless I want to try to reverse engineer the bonsai pdb file to get at the data therein.