iSynCal 6.0.2 and
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"
Compatibility and upgrade information
iSynCal 6.0 and its future updates are fully and seamlessly compatible with all versions of Mac OS X ranging from 10.3 to 10.5 and later (hoping that the Apple engineers working on iCal have no other "brilliant" idea).
With "seamlessly" I mean that the calendar file's version in use on your Macs is totally transparent to the end user while using iSynCal because it will scan your local and network disks and Home folders to find the calendar files created by any version of iCal ranging from v1.5 (bundled with Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and available on OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" with Software Update) to v2.x (bundled with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger") or the newer iCal 3 (coming with Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"). iSynCal will then transparently perform all the necessary format conversions during the synchronization process, allowing you to synchronize your calendars even when you have a Mac running OS X 10.3 on one side and another Mac with OS X 10.5 on the other end.
The format conversion between different versions is in effect, when needed, for all synchronizations methods, thus including the Smart Sync, Full and One-Way methods plus the File Copy.
Upgrading from a previous version of iSynCal
iSynCal 6.0.2 requires Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" or 10.5 "Leopard" and iCal 1.5 or later. Anyway, iSynCal may sync the iCal calendars between a Mac running a 10.4 or 10.5 system and another running any system version ranging from 10.2 to 10.5.
The license upgrade process is quite simple. If you already own one or more regular iSynCal licenses just purchase the upgrade licenses you need and enter only the upgrade code and the number of upgrade licenses you have purchased in the registration panel; your original registration data (email address and registration code) will automatically show into the registration panel.
Registered iSynCal users who purchased their license before March 1, 2005 can upgrade to iSynCal 6 for 15 USD on the Kagi's iSynCal Upgrade page.
Since the upgrade code is generated starting from your email address, such a code will not properly work if your address has changed from the day you purchased your regular iSynCal license. In this case you may still purchase your Upgrade licenses using your new address, then send me an email specifying your old address and I will help you to register your Upgrade license.
All users which purchased a full license after 26 June 2007 (4 months before the Leopard release date) or an upgrade license after 26 December 2006 are eligible for a free upgrade to iSynCal 6 and will automatically receive their upgrade code by email prior the iSynCal 6 official release date.
The synchronization database, internally used by iSynCal to keep track of
the calendars' items deletions, previously saved into
~/Library/Application Support/iSynCal/SyncItemsDB.plist
is now saved into
~/Library/Application Support/iSynCal/ItemsHistory.plist
and the calendar files history into
~/Library/Application Support/iSynCal/CalsHistory.plist
You may trash the old database when you are sure that you will no longer
use a previous version of iSynCal.
A brief history of the Apple iCal file formats
(how to complicate something that's pretty simple)
iCal 1, downloadable for Jaguar and shipped as 1.5 with Panther, used to store its calendar files as plain .ics files into the user's ~/Library/Calendars folder, with one .ics file per calendar named as the calendar itself, so that your "Work" calendar would be stored into a file named (you guess it) Work.ics. Plain, simple and standard-based.
It was indeed too simple for us, the mere mortals, so with Tiger Apple decided to complicate our lifes (or at least mine) and in iCal 2 both the calendar files format and their location have changed: iCal 2 stores indeed its calendars into ~/Library/Application Support/iCal/Sources, where each calendar is in turn stored into a folder with a very long name (something like 704A0584-6A68-4EC7-8215-2A06FDF30F29.calendar): inside such a folder you always find a file named Info.plist, containing the calendar's attributes like its name, and another file named corestorage.ics, which is used to store the real calendar's data (events, todo, alarms). Of course, there are also some other calendar's attributes that are stored into a separate file, nice and clever!
We have now Leopard and iCal 3, so the calendars store got much worse: the ~/Library/Calendars folder is back, but the calendar files format actually used is a mess which has nothing to do with the old, dear iCal 1.x file format. Just to make it short, I'll tell you that we have now a separate .ics file for each event or todo that you create in iCal, stored into a folder which may look like an iCal 2 calendar folder until you enter into its “Events” subfolder ... and see some hundreds or thousands of .ics files inside it ... very, very efficient Apple!
But the first source checked by iCal 3 to fetch its calendars data is well represented by another file named Calendar Cache (see the Known Issues section at the end of this file) and we also have the Sync Services database, that always overwrites the data stored in that bunch of .ics files if you don't prevent it to do so ... very, very nice Apple!
BTW no Apple engineer is lying around here, so please notice that enabling the Backup calendar files option the backup copy of your calendars created by iSynCal is still saved using the iCalendar "flat" standard file format, allowing you to import the backup on any version of iCal or any other standard-based, ics-aware calendar app; moreover, we have all the data of a calendar in a single file, as any carbon-based life form would expect.
Upgrading Mac OS X
When upgrading Mac OS X, on the first launch of the new version of iCal the calendar files will be upgraded to the new file format and all the calendars' and items' UIDs will change. For these reasons, you may experience an improper synchronization behavior on the first iSynCal synchronization of such calendars, resulting in duplicate items. To avoid this I strongly suggest you to perform the following steps:
Doing so you can avoid duplicates in your calendars and iSynCal will rebuild its synchronization database to properly keep track of any future item's deletion.
Known issues with Leopard
Some users running Leopard reported that the new and synchronized items don't show up in iCal after a synchronization.
This usually happens because of one of the following reasons:
The solution to the first issue is simple and well explained in the online help, please read this for further info.
If you see instead that after a synchronization but before relaunching iCal you still have a file named Calendar Cache in your ~/Library/Calendars folder the problem is that some other application or background service is locking that file because it needs to access the iCal calendars data. Since that file is the first source checked by iCal to fetch the calendars data, it must be deleted to force iCal to refresh its own list of events and todo and properly show the updated calendars.
One of such apps was MenuCalendarClock iCal, indeed from version 6.0.2 of iSynCal, along with iCal, also MCC is automatically quitted and relaunched on the local and remote Mac (for the remote Mac you must follow the same instructions that allows iSynCal to remotely quit iCal).
If you still experience this problem please check if you have any other application trying to access the calendars data (maybe it is another calendar sync app/service that you may have previously tested), quit/uninstall it and check if the synchronization went fine. In case of positive results please report me the name of the app causing the problem so that I can include it in the list of the "must quit while synchronizing" apps for the next version of iSynCal.