Request Sync Facility with Ubuntu One Notes

[James Lewis]

I guess this is a wishlist item, but since the product is at an early stage it seems worth considering.

With the removal of Tomboy notes from the default Ubuntu install, and Gnote not supporting the Ubuntu One notes store.. there is no app in the default install which fills this role, moreover Tomboy lacks features, and polish which this app seems to have, is it on the roadmap to provide a facility to sync with Ubuntu One Notes?

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

If we want to do this, we could simply move from a SQL db to CouchDB.

On the other hand, I've heard CouchDB is far slower then SQL and Footnote already doesn't behave very nicely with a lot of notes, so I guess we can use the same db we're using right now and on exit update CouchDB.

[Tom Beckmann (tombeckmann)]

As far as I know it is recommended to only use the tomboy d-bus for note syncing (may have changed by now), so we would have to add tomboy as a dependency, but yes, I also think it would be important to have. (http://askubuntu.com/questions/25175/how-can-i-access-ubuntuone-contacts-and-notes-with-python)

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

Well, if we wanna propose Footnote as a replacement for Tomboy in Ubuntu 12.10 (that's a bit ambitious, but could be done) we definitely shouldn't have Tomboy as a dependency.

I don't know why only that one was recommended, but updating it in background on exit or while the user isn't using it should solve any speed problem.

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

On the other hand, we could check at startup if Tomboy is installed and only then ask the user if he wants to sync with it (and then use tomboy d-bus).

[Cris Dywan (kalikiana)]

An interesting question might be, can you use the same backend as Tomboy without depending on it being installed?

On a side note you don't want to have sync-on-exit. I recommend trying out contact sync on an Android phone as an example of what you want it to be like.

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

Well, Tomboy is written in Mono (and its backend as well, I guess) and that's the reason why it'll be excluded from Ubuntu.

If it's free I'll download it and give it a try. Why sync-on-exit should be avoided? What problems does it cause?

[Cris Dywan (kalikiana)]

I'll give an example. I frequently switch between my laptop and mobile phone. I don't really close the apps. I usually just leave my chair and go outside. So I want to have my data without having to remember if I closed a window or pressed a certain button.

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

This is a good point. Well, we could update CouchDB when footnote while you're not using it.

Or the other way around: we use for normal operations CouchDb and on exit we update the SQL. At startup (when speed is required) we use SQL, during the utilization we use CouchDB since I think adding a new note isn't such a big operation to require a super fast db

[Andrea Basso (voluntatefaber)]

Seems like syncing this won't be allowed any more from 12.04 http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-dropping-CouchDB-from-Ubuntu-One-1382809.html

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

It's not that syncing won't be allowed... it's that CouchDB is being replaced with an alternate API which Canonical can control... and which scales. Also, the notes sync is currently not using it, I believe it uses webdav, but don't quote me!