OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Sharp Zaurus => Model Specific Forums => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Cxx0 General discussions => Topic started by: markbedish on April 27, 2004, 08:03:20 am
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Hi,
Anyone have good ideas for a decent database on the sharp rom?
I have tried tkccard but it is not very sophisticated., e.g. only sorts on 1 column, slow with import/export etc. I have mysql loaded but want something with a decent front end.
Is this the trigger I need to jump onto Cacko qt or pdaxrom? I would love to but as a newbie, dont want to brick the 750 and would also like to return to the sharp, just in case ... Any UK users willing to share their experiences?
Thanks for a great forum!
Mark
(Surrey,UK)
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decent frontend? how about phpmyadmin? has anyone tried that?
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i used both mysql and sqlite on my sl5500, you can get a nice qt frontend for sqlite, don\'t remember the name
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I have used Mysql 4.0.16 and phpMyAdmin
Both seem to work alright.
I have a full version of tkcRekall but this has some problems on the C760.
It would be ideal if it worked properly with the latest python on the c760
:twisted:
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Have you tried PortaBase (http://portabase.sourceforge.net/)? (Disclaimer: I wrote it.) It\'s still only a 1-table database, but it does support multiple-column sorting and there\'s a desktop version of it for both Windows and Linux, so you can do import/export operations there if the Zaurus version isn\'t fast enough for you. It isn\'t a substitute for a full SQL database, but it\'s fairly easy to use and full-featured enough to be useful for a pretty broad variety of tasks.
Jeremy
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I tried to install Portabase but it gave me a \'sorry something went wrong\' message. The application appeared in my app tab though but having tried it am not sure it is working, as it wont see any text files for import.
I might take a look at phpmyadmin though as I did get mysql working!
Thanks,
Mark
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Were you low on space when you installed PortaBase? Version 1.9 uses about 1.75 MB. Another possibility is that another application installer did something weird to /opt/QtPalmtop/etc/mime.types, which is updated by the post-installation script; after installation it should contain entries for application/portabase (pob) and text/x-csv (csv). Those are the only possible reasons that come to mind for the installer error message...
Note that PortaBase only considers files with a \".csv\" extension as valid CSV files, so files with \".txt\" or such won\'t be listed. Also, you need to create a new file and define its format before you can import data from a CSV file; hence it isn\'t an option when choosing \"Import\" from the file selector menu (XML and MobileDB files define their data types, so they can be imported directly as new PortaBase files). Instead you need to create or open a file and choose the \"Import\" menu item shown in the data viewer screen.
Unfortunately, CSV import in PortaBase is kind of like the Debian installer; it hasn\'t been improved much since the first version because I only had to deal with it when first migrating my data, but it scares some people off because it\'s the first part of the program they use. I plan to add a new CSV import dialog in version 2.0 that makes this a little more user-friendly, so you can define the format for the new file while looking at data from the CSV file to be imported, similar to the CSV import dialogs in common spreadsheet applications.
Hope this helps,
Jeremy
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Jeremy,
I love portabase. Thanks!
Quick question: Are there any plans in the works to enable both screen views possible on the 7XX units?
That\'s the only real thing lacking for me right now.
Cheers.
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I tried to install Portabase but it gave me a \'sorry something went wrong\' message. The application appeared in my app tab though but having tried it am not sure it is working, as it wont see any text files for import.
The same thing happens when I try to install PortaBase on my SL-C860 and I definitely had enough internal memory available. The application does seem to work though.
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Jeremy --
Portabase is great. I have used it for both my own DBs as well as some existing reference Palm DBs. The import enhancements sound great. Keep up the excellent work.
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Jeremy
A repository of templates & example databases would be GREATLY appreciated by us older, less creative types <G>!
THANKS!
Bob W
Miami FL
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I have no problems installing portabase on a tkcrom 760
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Murahachibu: If you mean landscape and portrait, you just need to tap and hold the application icon and uncheck \"Display with magnified screen\" in the resulting dialog; this is standard for all applications that also run on the SL-5x00 models. Otherwise, I\'m not sure what you mean...
kenroy (and others): Did you also get this message when installing version 1.8? If not, I suspect it\'s somehow related to a change I made in the post-installation script; I only did that in order to handle cases where a previous application installer didn\'t end the mime.types file correctly, so if it\'s causing this problem for enough people I should probably just change it back. I can put together a package using the old script if somebody wants to test it and see if that eliminates the error message.
Miami_Bob: I\'d like to see a repository of files and file templates also, but don\'t really have time to set one up and maintain it (at least without slowing down the pace of development on the application itself); this has been on the \"Ways to Contribute\" page (http://portabase.sourceforge.net/contribute.html) for quite a while, but no volunteers so far.
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jmbowman wrote:
I\'d like to see a repository of files and file templates also, but don\'t really have time to set one up and maintain it (at least without slowing down the pace of development on the application itself); this has been on the \"Ways to Contribute\" page for quite a while, but no volunteers so far.
Jeremy - Why not allow anyone to post the templates as some PocketPC databases do?
Also, as a suggestion (probably not the best place to post this, but...) what about a Windows Mobile 2003 port? There are a few (and very few) things available for that OS that force me into a dual OS mode and having data available with both PDAs would be awesome.
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Murahachibu: You should find that Portabase will automaticall move between landscape & portrait modes when you swivel the screen on the clam shell models, it works on my C760.
Mike
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Jeremy,
I love portabase. Thanks!
Quick question: Are there any plans in the works to enable both screen views possible on the 7XX units?
That\'s the only real thing lacking for me right now.
Cheers.
I tried to install the latest vesion of Portabase - version 1.9 ? - on my C860 but it won\'t install. Currently have Cacko Qtopia ROM on my machine, version 1.20. Any limitation with this OS. Which version of Portabase did you install?
Thanks in anticipation,
Ashu
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Regarding a file repository: Yes, ideally this would be a site where people could upload their own templates and data files. It still would take time to find a place to host it, write or find software to handle uploads and file listings, write usage instructions, resolve technical problems, etc. It\'s not necessarily a massive undertaking, but certainly complex enough to eat up a fair amount of time.
A WinCE/PocketPC/Windows Mobile 2003 port would actually require a pretty substantial amount of work. I think Metakit (the underlying database library) runs on that platform, but Qt doesn\'t. Thus any code dealing with the user interface, data structures, input/output, or text handling would have to be rewritten to use a different set of libraries; while this is potentially somewhat straightforward, it does mean rewriting pretty much the whole application. I don\'t have a WinCE-based PDA and as a general policy try to avoid buying (or receiving) anything that results in money going to Microsoft, so I won\'t be doing such a port. (I only did a regular Windows port because I have a couple of old Windows machines and friends with newer ones; I actually don\'t know anybody who owns a WinCE PDA.) If somebody else wants to take a stab at it, I can answer questions about the code, though.
I don\'t suppose the Cacko ROM gives a more useful installation error message than the standard ROM does? I will put together an ipk using the old postinst script in case it\'s the new sed lines causing the problems; I\'ll post a link to the package once it\'s ready (probably in the next day or so).
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Jeremy,
I think the last version that I was able to install without any problems was 1.7. I\'m willing to test installing using the old script if you want to put together a test package.
Thanks,
Kenroy
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Folks, I have been trying to install Portabase on my C860 driven by Cacko ROM v1.20. No luck so far. Which version did you guys manage to install. Has someone got it working on a C7xx machine?
Thanks,
Ashu
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Ashu -
I have 1.9 working on a C750.
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I tried to install Portabase but it gave me a \'sorry something went wrong\' message. The application appeared in my app tab though but having tried it am not sure it is working, as it wont see any text files for import.
I might take a look at phpmyadmin though as I did get mysql working!
Thanks,
Mark
I loved portabase, but I encrypted some DBs and eveytime I added to them, they were no longer open-able (corrupted). Submitted the bug to Portabase site, but got no reply...Happened on every single sl5500 I tried, but worked flawlessly on windos version.
Also, Portabse REALLY needs a basic record level syncing capability...even if it just add dups and leaves the user to sort it out. That (non-syncing) and the bug encrtypting-adding via SL5500 were the reasons I had to drop the Portabse from my Z (or rather just make it read-only and update just my pc version).
Otherwise terrific program.
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I uploaded a zip file containing an ipk of version 1.9 (the version for newer ROMs) using the postinst script from version 1.7, you can get it here (http://portabase.sourceforge.net/portabase_1.9_oldscript.zip). I confirmed that this installs correctly on my SL-C760 (original ROM, still in Japanese), but so did the package that other people are having trouble with. If people still have trouble with this, could they please tell me:
- Which Zaurus model
- Which ROM
- Has a previous PortaBase version been installed on it since the last ROM flash (I\'m wondering if it only works when it doesn\'t need to update the mime.types file or something like that)
Omicron, are you referring to bug 888022 (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=888022&group_id=64705&atid=508374)? I replied to it twice and then marked it closed for the stated reason (bug was fixed in version 1.8 to the best of my knowledge). If that was you, the reason you didn\'t get an email reply is because it was posted anonymously; neither the SourceForge system nor I knew who to email a reply to. My first response was posted one day after the bug report was opened, and I left the bug open for two months waiting to see if the poster would check up on it and reply...then closed it with a second comment, figuring I wasn\'t going to hear anything further about it.
And while I suppose syncing is a reasonable thing to want, I don\'t think anybody had actually requested it before...I know I don\'t see it on the SourceForge \"Feature Requests\" list or in the file I\'ve compiled from various requests via email and forums. I might be able to do something like this if I change how internal row references are handled; I\'ll think about it and see if I can come up with something that could be implemented in the next release or two.
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Jeremy,
I removed all the pieces of the 1.9 that I installed before and tried this installer on the C860. Installation failed once again when I tried installing to the SD card. It partially failed when I installed to internal memory...I got a dialog saying that there was a problem and that the application may or may not work (it was in Japanese so my interpretation of the message may be questionable). After quitting the installer the PortaBase icon was visible and the application seemed to run fine. It didn\'t show up in the package installer however and I had to manually remove the app before trying another install.
I thought I\'d try editing the mime.types file and found that the latest version available on SourceForge installs properly if I remove two lines from the /home/QtPalmtop/etc/mime.types file:
application/portabase pob
csv/csv csv
It looks like the post install script chokes on the C860 if those two lines exist. I also notice that the mime type for csv files gets written as follows after the install:
text/x-csv csv
I don\'t know which app wrote the csv/csv mime type (maybe Hancom Sheet?) but that would appear to be the cause of the problem.
-Kenroy
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Yup, this would be a problem. The code in the postinst script for registering MIME types came from the \"qtopia-addmimetype\" script which is part of the standard Qtopia distribution but doesn\'t come installed on the Zaurus. This script is designed to exit with an error if the extension of the MIME type being added is already claimed by another MIME type, which seems to be the case here.
The source of this problem is that there isn\'t an official MIME type for CSV files; I\'ve seen application/csv, csv/csv, text/comma-separated-value, text/csv, and text/x-csv used. None of these are present in the default mime.types file of any Zaurus ROM I\'ve seen (including my SL-C760, which has Hancom Sheet pre-installed), and I didn\'t see any applications before PortaBase register it, so I had to just pick one.
Now it looks like another application (or some new ROM) has probably picked a different MIME type for the .csv extension; could somebody who has anything besides \"text/x-csv\" associated with this extension try to figure out which of the applications they\'ve installed registered it? That check in the script is there because having an extension associated with multiple MIME types actually does cause problems. I could change the script to just override any previous association, but that would probably break things for the application that put that association there. So I\'d like to contact whoever did it and work things out...
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Hi Jeremy,
I would like to grab the opportunity to thank you for Portabase, it\'s a really neat and useful app ! Especially for a former Psion user like me, accustomed to having a light and fast database handy...
Also, I had no trouble installing 1.9 on a C760 recently reflashed with the Cacko Qtopia 1.21 ROM, the mime types were handled just fine.
Finally, a little question : in the 1.9 help file, its says that Views let you choose the columns to display, and also specify widths for these columns, but I can\'t figure out how to achieve the latter. Is this actually possible now, or is it a \"to-do\" feature ?
Thanks,
fred
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Setting column widths has been possible since version 1.0, but you don\'t do it by entering a pixel count; from the \"Data viewer\"-]\"Column labels\" subsection of the help file:
\"To change the widths of the columns in the current view, click on the border between two column labels (or the right edge of the last column) and drag it to the desired location.\"
I should probably add a reference to this in the \"View editor\" section of the help file as well; I\'ll add that in the next version.
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Ooooopssss... talk about a brown-bag, egg-on-face question :-)
Sorry for reading through the help file too fast !
The funny thing is that of course I\'d tried this first, as that is the way it\'s usually done (in Windows etc.). But doing this with a stylus on a small screen takes some getting used to... so as my first couple of attempts were unsuccessful (sorting or stats instead), I\'d sort of decided things were different on the Z :-)
Thanks for the correction - now that I know it works, I\'ve gotten less clumsy, and in Hancom Sheet too !
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Ashu -
I have 1.9 working on a C750.
I finally managed to install version 1.9 as well. The message displayed on the screen after the installation is misleading. It says \'something went wrong\', whereas the application had already been installed. I found it a couple of days later on my desktop accidentally.
Great piece of work jmbowman. However, I\'ve not been able to read rows of databases created in \'csv\' format into Portabase. It just doesn\'t find the csv-database on the Z. This is my only hurdle at the moment. The \'csv database\' itself is fine because I can read it into other applications.
Thanks in anticipation of any contributions,
Ashu
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Is is posable to write scripts to interface with portabase? something like perl\'s DBI, or the equivalent in python? this would be great for people trying to make there database apps as platform independent as posable.
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chroafjd: I suspect you\'re having the problem outlined above; another application registered the \".csv\" extension with some MIME type other than text/x-csv, so the post-installation script returned an error. I\'m not sure how the installer handles this (it may vary between ROMs), but at least in your case it seems to have left the files installed and just given you an error message. Since the PortaBase MIME type was registered first, you can open PortaBase files normally. But it failed to register \"text/x-csv\" (the very last part of the installation), so it can\'t find anything it recognizes as a CSV file. Could you let me know what if anything you have for csv in /opt/QtPalmtop/etc/mime.types, and if possible a list of applications you\'ve installed? It would be ideal if you could figure out which one did it, but even a list of likely candidates would help me track it down.
gester: There isn\'t a PortaBase-specific API for working with the data files yet, but you can manipulate them at a slightly lower level using the Metakit API; see the format documentation (http://portabase.sourceforge.net/format.html) on the website for details on how the files are structured. This works from C++, Python, and Tcl. You can also export the file to XML or CSV (even from the command line as part of a script), manipulate that using standard XML or text processing tools, and then import the results back in as a new file. Early on, I considered writing a Python library for working with PortaBase files in the same way the GUI does, but put that on the back burner after I finished XML import/export since I figured that was easier to work with for most people. If there is interest in such a library, I can add it back to the TODO list; I probably won\'t get around to it for a few months, though.
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chroafjd: I suspect you\'re having the problem outlined above; another application registered the \".csv\" extension with some MIME type other than text/x-csv, so the post-installation script returned an error. I\'m not sure how the installer handles this (it may vary between ROMs), but at least in your case it seems to have left the files installed and just given you an error message. Since the PortaBase MIME type was registered first, you can open PortaBase files normally. But it failed to register \"text/x-csv\" (the very last part of the installation), so it can\'t find anything it recognizes as a CSV file. Could you let me know what if anything you have for csv in /opt/QtPalmtop/etc/mime.types, and if possible a list of applications you\'ve installed? It would be ideal if you could figure out which one did it, but even a list of likely candidates would help me track it down.
gester: There isn\'t a PortaBase-specific API for working with the data files yet, but you can manipulate them at a slightly lower level using the Metakit API; see the format documentation (http://portabase.sourceforge.net/format.html) on the website for details on how the files are structured. This works from C++, Python, and Tcl. You can also export the file to XML or CSV (even from the command line as part of a script), manipulate that using standard XML or text processing tools, and then import the results back in as a new file. Early on, I considered writing a Python library for working with PortaBase files in the same way the GUI does, but put that on the back burner after I finished XML import/export since I figured that was easier to work with for most people. If there is interest in such a library, I can add it back to the TODO list; I probably won\'t get around to it for a few months, though.
Jmbowman, You were right. That was the issue. The original installation wasn\'t decent. I made the adjustments suggested in previous parts of this thread and had your program correctly installed.
Thanks once again.
Ashu
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I have used Mysql 4.0.16 and phpMyAdmin
Both seem to work alright.
I have a full version of tkcRekall but this has some problems on the C760.
It would be ideal if it worked properly with the latest python on the c760
:twisted:
Folks,
has anyone succeeded in using tkcRekall on the C7x0/C860 device? Will be grateful if you could share your experience.
Thanks in anticipation,
Ashu