Well, I've learned a lot today. I can now understand that the My Dropbox folder can be in different directories on different machines. It makes sense that one can update a file in the My Dropbox folder on one machine, and Dropbox can then find the My Dropbox folder on the other machine (even if it's in a different directory) and synchronise the files. I believe one can only have one 'My Dropbox' folder on each machine, but I'm not 100% sure of that.
If I understand Dennis correctly, with respect to links to multimedia (or more generally hyperlinks of any kind) this would seem to be harder to do. At this point, we are not talking about Windows file management, but we are talking about the Legacy program itself. On computer 1, I set up a link to Grandma's picture and that link has a very specific path to Grandma's picture on computer 1. That link is written as a piece of data to the .fdb file, and the .fdb file is written(updated) to computer 2 by Dropbox. When Legacy tries to open that link on computer 2 (which is verbatim the link to the path on computer 1), unless the multimedia is in exactly the same place on computer 2 the file won't be found. The only way around this is for Legacy to somehow use Dropbox to map file locations between the two computers. Maybe Legacy (or Legacy in conjunction Windows/Dropbox) does that, but I'd be surprised. Thinking about this, it really doesn't matter whether Dropbox is in play or not. Let's say I manually copied the .fdb files and multimedia files to computer 2. If I want the links to work on computer 2, I need the same file structure (full path) , don't I? Paul Gray -----Original Message----- From: Ron Ferguson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: November-03-10 6:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] multimedia/pictures storage Dennis, I missed the point you were making re multimedia, as I was concentrating on the .fdb files. I don't actually know for sure how they are affected, if at all. I have never looked at this aspect as I make all my changes on the Win7 machine and it's from this machine's DB that I make my web pages. I have copies on the other machines for unrelated purposes. However, I do have the current multimedia files in my DropBox and my impression is that they are connected in all machines. I wonder if it looks at the path relative to DropBox - this is the same on all machines? This applies to copies of censuses etc. With respect to family pictures, these have different paths on all machines and all are visible on both XP and Win7 machines (I do not bother with them on the laptop). This tends to make me think that DropBox may only copy the changes. You are right there are some unanswered questions, and like you I haven't read the documentation either. I have some time to spare tomorrow so....! Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ -----Original Message----- From: Dennis M. Kowallek Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 11:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] multimedia/pictures storage On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 21:51:39 -0000, "Ron Ferguson" <[email protected]> wrote: >It doesn't actually work like that. > >Consider that you use the Legacy defaults, then instead of having it just >in >the Data folder the path would be C:\Legacy\Data\DropBox\fergy.fdb, on a >second machine it might be stored in My Documents with the path being >C:\~My >Documents\Legacy\Data\DropBox\fergy.fdb. I am not concerned about where the fdb is stored. That should not be a problem with Dropbox (as you stated) ... other than my concerns about live updates that I expressed at the end of my previous post (and the end of this one). If you re-read my post, I was trying to illustrate my concerns about PATHS TO MULTIMEDIA LINKS that are stored in said fdb. Just like the case when Dropbox is not involved ... if you copy a database to another machine the file structure for the multimedia files must be the same or you will have to fix things (maybe an easy fix, or maybe not). And I was also trying to point out that not all "C:\My Documents" folders are created equal. >On changing the fdb file in the first computer, the file is copied to the >DropBox server in the sky, and on opening Legacy on the second PC it will >copy the file to that DropBox, overwriting the contents. Which concerns me because we are talking about an Access database with tables and rows getting updated right and left all the time. My database is 48mb. If I change a tag on an individual does it upload 48mb to the Dropbox server? Then if I untag, does it upload another 48mb? Even on a high-speed connection (where upload speeds are usually 1/10th the speed of downloads) this can take a lot of time. Maybe this is described in the Dropbox documentation, which I haven't read. It just seems like the potential traffic associated with placing a database in a Dropbox folder would be problematic. I personally would be leery of this configuration. It may work OK 99% of the time. But does it work 100% of the time? And when it doesn't, how will you know it didn't? I have a Dropbox account and it works great for certain things. For example, I think it works great as a way to backup your database (i.e. tell Legacy to write the backup zip's to the Dropbox folder). But I don't think I would trust it with the task of keeping two WORKING copies of a database in sync. To each his own I guess. -- Dennis Kowallek (LTools) http://zippersoftware.com/ltools http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ltools Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
