File sharing

[Janet McIver]

File sharing.

A few operating systems ago Apple had a file sharing program inherent to the machine that allowed one computer to talk to another and synchronize their files.

ie. one computer is connected to the web and gets Email and letter information that is added to the Reunion program and the other, older computer, goes on trips and gathers information from the relatives and is recorded in the Reunion file... returning home this files were united with file sharing.

This is no longer the case. Where did file sharing go? I am sure there are many business applications that would still love to have it in place. !Sync works for Address Book and !Cal... is that all?

Now what do I do? I searched the web and came up with “FoldersSynchronizer 3.6.1” has anyone used it with Reunion? I’m not extremely computer savvy and am a little afraid (read terrified) to try. Is there a way to merge files to let the latest info take precedence? Would Reunion 9 solve this problem?
Janet McIver

[theKiwi]

For several years now I've used ChronoSynch to keep copies of files synchronised between my PowerMac G4, my iBook and my wife's iMac, as well as to keep backups on other hard drives

It works very simply and reliably once setup.

http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html

it handles the more than 100,000 files in my Home folder with no problems.

Show it the two folders that you want to keep synchronised and it does the rest.

Roger

[Tom Robinson]

A few operating systems ago Apple had a file sharing program inherent to the machine that allowed one computer to talk to another and synchronize their files.
The Apple OS has had file sharing for a long time, and still does. I've been with Apple since '84 and don't remember any built-in facility for synchronising files.

I also use ChronoSync for this task, but it won't help if you've been editing two copies of your family file--you'll need to use the match & merge facility in Reunion for that (version 8 or 9). I recommended avoiding the situation by always having a single copy of the family file as the 'current/master' copy, and only editing that one.

[Bill Nash]

Janet,

Please understand that no third party program is going to take two Reunion files and merge them, keeping the latest data items from each file. The merge can only take place at the file level, picking the file most recently updated and discarding the other complete file. Leister would be able to write such a program if the data structure included a time-date stamp on every item in every record. Perhaps it does though I doubt it. iSync works with iCal and Address Book precisely because they are structured to work that way.

Even a time/date system is not going to be completely accurate in certain situations. Basically the best way to achive that is to have only one database even if it is being updated by multiple users. Systems that can do that have made lots of money for some of the gurus of data processing.

BN