Simple PIM in xml

Posted on by Philip Casey

The last couple of weeks at Castle Casey have been particularly busy and of course that’s the inevitable time that data one should have backed up but didn’t will be lost. My hitherto trusty Sidekick 99 PIM went AWOL and ditched my personal contacts since 2004 into some digital black hole. Fortunately a pre-2004 backup [...]

The last couple of weeks at Castle Casey have been particularly busy and of course that’s the inevitable time that data one should have backed up but didn’t will be lost. My hitherto trusty Sidekick 99 PIM went AWOL and ditched my personal contacts since 2004 into some digital black hole. Fortunately a pre-2004 backup survived, but if any friend or acquaintance whose contact details have changed since then is reading this, please send them on!

The experience, perhaps unreasonably, wiped out my faith in Sidekick, which I found on a coverdisc in 1999. I still have the disc, but of course it doesn’t work anymore.

To cut a long story short, it set me thinking about proprietary formats, and how they can go out of date so quickly, bringing our data with them. Sidekick uses the .SKCard format, for example. Who’s to say what formats will be around in seven years time, but my guess is that xml will be.

I have a fair grasp of xhtml and css, but quite how xml worked was still a mystery so I browsed some books and quite a few websites, but it was only when I came across Neil Williams’ Codehelp.co.uk that the penny dropped. It’s a highly recommended site for any beginner in code, whether it be html, xml or php, etc.

I should say that what I came up with is probably only useful for someone with a small bit of html under their belts – that is, someone who’s not terrified of putting information between tags such as
<name>Philip Casey</name>.
PLEASE DON’T BLAME ME IF YOU LOSE DATA. If you use Simple xmlPIM, it’s your responsibility.

All right, let’s cut to the chase.A sample Simple xmlPIM is here
If you like it leave a comment and I’ll explain a bit more. I’ll be delighted if you improve or extend it and do let me know if you do, and if you know about xul, I’m your friend for life. :?

Note: not all of the links on the Simple xmlPIM are live, but hopefully there’s enough to let you see if it might work for you. All of this happens in your browser. If your browser is Firefox, then you can add ReminderFox for your reminders and ToDos. If you’d like to download the files, copy them from here into a folder on your computer and launch contacts.html

Hopefully it should just work.
Advantages:

    Simple
    lightweight – just 13k
    flexible
    it’s very fast
    cross-browser and Operating System
    your data is in a universal format
    can link to other PIM components on web or in browser

Disadvantages of Simple xmlPIM

    data entry between tags, not in forms
    may be confusing for users not used to html
    You need special code for extended characters such as É.
    &Eacute; used in xhtml will not do – it must be &#xc9;.

    So it is strict in these matters.

However if you remember these (taken from Codehelp.co.uk ) you should be okay:

    For < use &lt;
    For > use &gt;
    For & use &amp;
    For ” use &quot;
    For ‘ use &apos;

I hope you like it and let me know if you do. Personally it’s just what I need.

Comments are closed.