On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 09:57:29PM +0200, Tom Hacohen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Robin O'Leary <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 01:47:51PM +0200, Tom Hacohen wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 12:25 PM, Gand' <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > new opimd does not (and will not) support working with SIM
> > > > why is that ?
> > > Because SIM card is very limited, slow and just a hassle to handle. I
> > > don't know anyone that uses the sim card willingly,
> > You do now:-)  I only ever store numbers on the SIM card.  I use lots
> > of phones and can't imagine any other way to keep names and numbers
> > synchronized across them otherwise.
> >
> > With your new scheme, how would I export numbers I added using opimd
> > to the SIM so they remain accessible when I use another phone?
> >
> > > and the time has come to just "let it go".
> > > You can easily import the sim contacts, and if there is a demand, we can
> > > probably write an SHR application that imports the SIM data on "first run
> > > with specific SIM" (like a couple of phones do).
> > > But to tell you thet truth, I don't think it worths the hassle.
> > You obviously have a very different concept of use to me.
> >
> > I would be very happy if the SIM were treated as as sort of dumbed-down
> > version of the full database stored on the phone, provided it could
> > sync both ways, so numbers I added on the openmoko were available
> > when I put the SIM in another phone (although possibly in somewhat munged
> > form to allow for the SIM's limitations), and numbers I added to the
> > SIM on other phones appeared next time I put it back in the openmoko.
> >
> > Robin.
> >
> Sorry for the late reply, I was in a vacation (laptop-free one) for a week,
> and then was busy with r/l.
> To tell you the truth, although you are a "living example" I don't think
> many people use the sim card, and to be honest, the sim card sucks and is
> very limited.
You have already declared your opinion; I and several others have pointed
out that it is not the opinion of us all.  Stating it again doesn't help.
If you won't acknowledge that there is a valid use case involving the
storage of numbers in the SIM for portability, it seems likely to me
that those of us depending on it are going to be ill-served by the
resulting development.

> Furthermore, saving your info on the sim is bad, because it's not backed-up,
> you should probably store it somewhere you can backup from and then sync to
> all your phones.
> Though that's only my pov. :)
I've had a GSM phone for more than 10 years and needed to restore
my SIM from a backup once, when the phone was stolen.  By contrast,
I've lost dozens of numbers and messages in the past months through
buggy software and upgrades on SHR, some of which have not been easily
recoverable from backups for one reason or another, so in my opinion
based on recent experience, saving my info in the SIM is entirely good.

Personally, until I'm convinced that the alternative is sufficiently
stable and portable, I want the SIM as my primary storage of numbers---I'm
prepared to live with the limitations of richness of data that entails.
I don't think I'm alone in this, but we don't need a majority vote to
agree that this use is valid.

> As for a solution, Heinervdm is working on a nice GUI sim manager to sync
> sim with opimd in a relatively easy manner, please wait for that and say if
> it's ok.
I'm not sure I want a GUI SIM manager - how would that work?  Unless you
mean that the new tool is going to replace the Dialer, Contacts and
Messages applications (which I don't think you do), are you're saying that
all day-to-day work with numbers is going to happen in a database separate
from the SIM, and then I'm going to have to periodically perform some
tedious manually process to bring the SIM back in to sync?  No thank you.

I'm happy if you want to think of the on-phone database as the primary
source of rich data and the SIM as some sort of primitive emergency
backup.  I'm even happy to help manage that view: if you give me a field
or a flag on the phone database that says "store a subset of this record
on the SIM" that's fine - all my records will have that set and all yours
won't (or will some of yours have it set too?  Didn't you mention keeping
some essential numbers on your SIM?).  If you don't want to deal with
name-munging (and that's fair enough - I can't imagine how it would work
well in both directions) give me a field for entering a SIM-compatible
name separate from the "rich" name field for use when the "rich" name
isn't acceptable.

Robin.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

_______________________________________________
Shr-User mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shr-project.org/mailman/listinfo/shr-user

Reply via email to