(wish list) the great gulf between Panorama and Mac OS X Address Book syncing

[Steve Kane]

I am a beginning level user of Panorama, and have been since I first  
registered Pan 1.5 in the early 90s.* ;-)  I can take small steps to  
make Pan do some or even most of what I want if I don't get too  
ambitious. In this way, for instance, I have built on the PowerTeam  
PhoneBook adding a variety of fields, forms, objects, and procedures  
to make it more specific to my needs.** But for me, it is completely  
isolated from Mac OS X syncing. Last year I needed to travel with a  
Palm for a few weeks, leaving my PowerBook at home. I massaged the  
PhoneBook data, exported it, imported it into Palm Desktop and  
finally downloaded it into the Palm address book. It was better than  
printing out the 2500 names in PowerTeam, but not by much. I had to  
use a lot of custom fields. It was messy and some data I never did  
find when I search the Palm for it while on the road.

I've got iPhone on the brain (haven't bought it yet). I want my data  
in my pocket. And I'd like to sync in two directions. But to do that  
I'd be exiled from Pan and left with Apple Address Book and Apple  
iCal. Apple Address Book sucks.

Apple has done the heavy lifting when it comes to data syncing. I  
don't have the programming skills to reinvent that wheel. My wish is  
for a way to use what Apple has provided with what Panorama can do.  
Maybe a Panorama conduit to Apple's syncing, Address Book, and iCal.  
Maybe an updated version of PowerTeam. Maybe Panorama iPhone Edition.  
Maybe a Panorama module that can open from and save to the Apple  
Address Book and iCal files. I don't know what would work or how it  
can be done. I hope something is coming sometime from ProVUE or a  
third party. (And preferably something not web based. I don't want to  
depend on a web connection to access my data.)

My 2 cents. Thanks for listening.

*Now using Pan 5.5.

**I've also modified ProVUE's SurfScout and created files from  
scratch, mostly flat files, but some linked files with lookups. I've  
worked sparingly with arrays, haven't touched the MatrixSO yet.  
That's the extent of my PanTalk programming.