Bookmark syncrhonisation

I use Firefox at home and at work. Is there a way to have common bookmarks between the two?

* There are a couple of firefox plugins (bookmark sort and sync and foxmarks) which puport to do this, but I haven't quite got them to work. I'm not sure if something is inherently wrong.

* Both use ftp, and require an ftp-to-sftp bridge. (Alternatively, interactive http (I can't remember the real name) which the server doesn't. Foxmarks by default stores your bookmarks on their server, but I'd rather not do that. Google does something similar? I have a perfectly good server. And I don't really want to make either of my computers an ftp-server, even indirectly.)

* I could sync the profile bookmark files elsehow. In fact, I generally bookmark something less than once a day, so simply periodically copying the files to/from a remote location would be fine. But it should EITHER be automatic, OR not break if I forget.

* At least one of the computers must be a windows computer.

* It would be *nice* if it could sync most things, but leave the bookmark toolbar alone.

So, it seems like it should be so obvious. But what is the right method? I could have a script which copies the files, but will it break if I go home early and bookmark something?

Bookmark sync design

Google sync will probably take care of me. But in case you're curious, here's what I would do if I could, it sounds simple enough. Does anyone write Firefox extensions, please implement it! I might get round to it, but not soon.

* Remember the time of the last sync and if since then:
** If the local is unchanged and the remote has changed, copy the remote to the local.
** If the remote is unchanged and the local has changed, copy the local to the remote.
** If both have changed, "merge" the files.

* Merge means, examine both markup-language trees and put in the output everything in either input

* The above sync operation should be run:
** Automatically before adding a bookmark
** Automatically after adding a bookmark
** Automatically on opening the browser
** Automatically, [once] a day
** Manually with a button that shows the current state and says "upload" "download" or "merge"

I think this has all the properties I want. So long as both computers are online while I'm using them, bookmarks will propagate not slower than 24 hours, and never become conflicted.

The worst that can happen is that one computer be offline when I use it and that I then delete or move a bookmark in one browser and do anything to a bookmark in the other (which is unlikley, if it's offline, I'm probably not firefoxing, am I?). In that case, the bookmark will have to be redeleted. You could fix this by adding mark-up elements to indicate which computer did what, but it's probably not worth it.

Note, this works because I don't use add bookmarks all the time. Opening an scp connection every two minutes could be wasteful, but one a day is fine :)

Also, you could do something similar external to Firefox, but you'd have to watch the bookmark file and see when it changes, and have a cache from before it changed. And it works fairly easily because of the tree-nature: you *can* sync text files, but merging is confusing.

David Brin - Uplift

Thanks again to MCG, I read Startide Rising, the second uplift saga book. Somehow the characters all seem a little fake, but the plot and characters are interesting, and the universe and politics and implications of different remaining instincts in intelligent dolphins are very interesting.

( Spoilers )