Tip: How to sync Textastic with a server or desktop

14 years ago • updated by 13 years ago • 5

FWIW: Here is a way to do automatic two-way sync between Textastic docs and remote machines.

I mounted my iPad on my unix server using sshfs. You can mount it on Windows and MAC hosts as well if that's your setup. Then I set up Unison to do scheduled two-way sync between my server and the /Users/Documents directory on my iPad. Then I created a hard link (Textastic doesn't see soft links) under my Textastic Documents directory, pointing to my /Users/Documents directory on the iPad. Unison syncs my iPad and server (and my other computers) every 15 minutes.

So right now I can use any one of my computers, including my iPad, to work on my web sites, without having to worry about manually keeping things in sync.

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14 years ago

Interesting approach! Does this require a jailbroken iPad?

14 years ago

Absolutely. I find the unjailbroken iPad to be too restrictive. My apps like Goodreader, QuickOffice, etc. all point to my /User/Documents directory. This directory is synchronized with all my other machines,(unix & windows) so I can sit at my iPad or any PC anywhere and edit my stuff. I know that within 15 minutes, all my other machines will have the same data. The tricky part is setting up exclusions so that host-specific parts don't get synced.

14 years ago

Thanks a lot for sharing this tip! It might be really useful for others.

13 years ago

This is what I'm looking for but with an existing service (such as simplenotes for example) without having to jailbreak my iPad.

13 years ago

How do you create the hard link to the directory? Do you somehow mask the fact that you are linking to a directory rather than to a file? I get the expected error "hard link not allowed for directory" when I try to create it.

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