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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: porkchop_d_clown on Apr 15, '05 05:49:26PM

I don't think iCal was written with the idea that two copies might have the same calendar file open at the same time.

Why is this a problem? Because it means that if two users *do* open the same ics file at the same time, one of them is going to lose their changes.

Consider:

A opens cal.ics.
B opens cal.ics
A closes cal.ics
B closes cal.ics.

When A opens cal.ics again, they are going to find that all their changes are gone.

---
Everyone loves a clown, but no one will lend him money!



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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: meikokun on Apr 16, '05 09:30:22AM

are you sure that is the case? What happens when you write data to a file and it is saved on the fly, without needing to save on closing? As long as no two people write to the same point in the data file (or perhaps in this case, an appointment time perhaps) the data from both inputs will be saved simultaneously. I'm sure that even the same appointment-simultaneous modification hurdle shouldn't be too tricky to overcome for some wiley developer. In point of fact, ical seems to do on the fly saving right now - enter some data into it, immediately force quit then reopen the app, and your data is right there.
plenty of other apps do that, and that's my number one reason for using fishpad as a notepad replacement (ok, it number two - instant launching is number one)
Or am I missing something?
Cheers
dd



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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: Tom Robinson on Apr 16, '05 04:40:14PM

Just because iCal regularly writes changes to the ics files doesn't mean it re-reads them constantly too--it might be working on a copy in memory and just writing out changes--which means the point raised by porkchop_d_clown is still valid.



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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: meikokun on Apr 17, '05 05:44:06AM

fair point - but it cannot be out of the realms of possibility to have ical check a calendar more than the one-time-on-opening scenario. As I recall, it does this with subscribed-to calendars in any case (I haven't used one recently so working from foggy memory here) but if ical can manually be asked to check a remote calendar, and update the local contents as a result - through the 'refresh' option - then how tricky can it be to at least fudge the process and make it applescriptable to any refresh speed you choose (or cron-job the action)? Better still of course is to give a possible default refresh option that's quicker than the current fifteen minutes within the app itself.
In summary, it's clear if what you say is true, that ical doesn't read on-the-fly that it's possible to make it read more often than once on opening.
It's also clear that it currently saves as you type.
The only thing that seems to be stopping apple from implementing this must be financial - hey, it worked for me; several years after being disguted that apple made .mac a paid-for service (and me losing use of my nice .mac mail addy in the process), I've taken out a .mac subscription with the sole purpose of syncing my laptop and several office computers. The buggers at apple, with their evil capitalist ways! ;)

thinking about it, I believe there is a shareware app which does something like this, I'm off to have a peek.
Cheers
dd



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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: meikokun on Apr 17, '05 05:18:17PM

here's the app; http://ww2.unime.it/flr/isyncal/en/how_sync.html
that's the 'here comes the science' bit. It would appear you are correct as far as this app is concerned, so the quest continues....



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This hint is guaranteed to cause problems
Authored by: archimed on Apr 18, '05 12:25:15PM

Yes, you're absolutely right, and I should have noted this in the hint. iCal will *definitely* over-write changes if this hint is used for multi-user sharing. I never meant to suggest this would useful for multiple users, only simply multiple *machines*. Thanks for pointing out this error.



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