PyPsion: Psion data handling in Python

Part of the reason that I bought a psion was that I saw lots of hacker activity on usenet, so I was confident that I could get my data out of the dang thing and into something else (like emacs) if I wanted to -- and not just the vendor-supported options.

There are quite a few utilities to run on the psion, but I'm surprised at the lack of perl/python/tcl/scheme code to run on the host computer to do stuff with psion files, like convert them to HTML or email or something useful.

Today, I just had to get the data out of my spreadsheet file: I had a backup of the file on my unix box, but no serial cable. So converting it to text on the psion wouldn't help. So I grabbed the (excellent!) psionics files and started hacking. A couple hours later, I had spr2qif done.

Share and Enjoy!

Modules

psionData

psionData.T is the base class. psionData.DBF handles generic database files. A few utilities for reading/writing structured data.

psionSpr

psionSpr.Sheet is a subclass of psionData.T that handles spreadsheet data. Lots of missing pieces (esp formulas) but can usefully extract data

psionAgenda

beginning of code to read agenda files. Reads day, to-do entries, but doesn't do anything useful with them.

I might work on converting .wrd files to HTML someday.

Examples

Converting Spreadsheet to Quicken QIF format

% python spr2qif.py < sheet.spr >sheet.qif

Exercizing the test harnesses

% python psionData.py < /psion/m/dat/data.dbf

% python psionSpr.py < /psion/m/spr/sheet.spr

% python psionAgenda.py < /psion/m/agn/agenda.spr

References

Python

a nifty object oriented scripting language by Guido VanRossum

The Psionics Files

The crucial documentation that made this possible

PSION

makers if the nifty Psion 3a gizmo