Laurens updated (http://laurens.typepad.com/sunrise/2005/01/sunrise_041a_re.html) Sunrise again, and this time the upgrade includes:

removed: file change notification (the method used for monitoring external changes made to SDL files turned out not to work reliably in quite a few cases. The problem would result in settings not being saved properly to the SDL or "NoSuchElementException" errors when attempting to delete a document.)
fixed: local file with links as document source (using a local file with links to websites and/or newsfeeds would produce intermittent NullPointerExceptions. This was due to a cache synchronization issue.)

You can download Sunrise V0.41 from PalmGear (http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&prodid=70927).

If you are new to MobileRead and still don't know what Sunrise is about, you should visit this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2815) for more information.

I read somewhere today (can't remember where) someone's view that Laurens will soon charge for Sunrise (which he will rename) and that at that point Sunrise (or whatever it is called) will no longer support Plucker but rather a viewer that Laurens is developing. Is this correct? Have I missed something somewhere? I certainly would not mind paying for Sunrise, since it is better than a lot of expensive programs, but I do not want nor need still another viewer. Philippe Radley

I think that's true, but you can still use old sunrise versions that will work with Plucker.

See the FAQ (http://laurens.typepad.com/sunrise/resources/docs/faq.html).

Laurens is going to release his own Pocket PC-based Sunrise viewer. Eventually Sunrise desktop might not be compatible anymore with the Plucker format.

But you would always be able to use one of the still current Sunrise desktop releases to convert your documents to Plucker. And those will remain free.

I'm a "switcher" from Jpluck to Sunrise and the most amazing feature that I like about sunrise is its ability to only update the channels that have been updated. It saves me so much time.

Laurens,

Keep up the good work!

I'm a "switcher" from Jpluck to Sunrise and the most amazing feature that I like about sunrise is its ability to only update the channels that have been updated. It saves me so much time.

Glad to hear you like the conditional update feature. It can indeed save quite some time(not to mention bandwidth).

There's a slight flaw in the current implementation when dealing with RSS or Atom feeds, though. Conditional updates work by comparing CRC32 checksums of the source URL. The problem is that some sites generate their newsfeeds periodically and place a date stamp in the RSS feed. (BBC News does this, for instance.)

Even though the feed's contents (i.e. the titles, descriptions and links) have not changed, the new date stamp still yields a different CRC32 checksum, which, in turn, triggers an unnecessary update.

This will be addressed (hopefully) in the next revision. There will be a secondary checksum computed off the newsfeed's actual contents.

Laurens:

I have a question, I installed sunrise yesterday and when I woke up today, my palm's datebookdb was corrupted. Nothing would show and it wouldn't sync with my PC. However, when I tried another palm, then syncing was ok on that other unit. I did a hard reset on my unit and tried but still to no avail.

Ultimately, I was able to fix it by copying the datebkdb file from my wife's unit to mine and now it works fine. I'm reluctant to re-install sunrise because it might be the culprit as it installed a file for it to be able to run with plucker.

Have you encountered this before? Sunrise was the only thing that I installed before the issue popped up.

Laurens:

I have a question, I installed sunrise yesterday and when I woke up today, my palm's datebookdb was corrupted. Nothing would show and it wouldn't sync with my PC. However, when I tried another palm, then syncing was ok on that other unit. I did a hard reset on my unit and tried but still to no avail.

Ultimately, I was able to fix it by copying the datebkdb file from my wife's unit to mine and now it works fine. I'm reluctant to re-install sunrise because it might be the culprit as it installed a file for it to be able to run with plucker.

Have you encountered this before? Sunrise was the only thing that I installed before the issue popped up.

I'm sure this is due to something else. The Sunrise stub you install on the handheld is only there to make the conduit run. It does absolutely nothing. See this blog entry (http://laurens.typepad.com/sunrise/2004/10/card_install_co.html) for an explanation.

I'm sure this is due to something else. The Sunrise stub you install on the handheld is only there to make the conduit run. It does absolutely nothing. See this blog entry (http://laurens.typepad.com/sunrise/2004/10/card_install_co.html) for an explanation.

Laurens:

Thanks for the information, it's probably not due to sunrise. I'll observe my unit for the next few days to see if the problem will re-occur or not. If not, then I'll probably install sunrise again. Its such an amazing application for me not to use.