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Sharing between your computers

Sioul on a desktop and on a laptop: most of what you see already travels by itself. What Sioul alone keeps can travel too, sealed with a passphrase, through a folder your sync service already carries: Nextcloud, Dropbox, Syncthing. There is no server of ours in between.

What travels, and how

What How it reaches your other computers
Mail, contacts, events and tasks, with what Sioul writes in your tasks (steps, waits, links, kinds) by their own servers, as with any program
Your notes folder: notes, projects, budgets, papers, scanned letters, pictures and memos by the folder's own sync
What Sioul keeps on this computer alone: your settings and accounts (without passwords), who may write to you, the ties between things, time spent, drafts, invoices, medicines and doses, your watch's days, lists kept on this computer only, where the Porch was closed by Sioul's sealed log, through a folder you choose

Never shared: where things are on each computer (each one keeps its own folders), how text reads on this screen, how pages are laid out, this computer's browser notices, caches, and your own OpenPGP keys (copy them by hand). Passwords stay in each computer's keyring: an account arriving from another computer asks for its password once.

Setting it up

On the first computer:

  1. Open Settings ▸ Your folder and sharing, and find Between your computers.
  2. Folder: choose a folder inside the one your sync carries, such as a new folder Sioul in your Nextcloud folder.
  3. Passphrase, then Once more: a few words you will not forget, at least 12 characters.
  4. Share.

On the other computer, choose the same folder (as your sync shows it there). Sioul sees that another computer shares through it, and asks for the passphrase chosen there. Then Share.

The first time, a copy of what this computer had is kept aside, in case. Then the other computer's settings come, and what this one alone had goes out: two computers set up apart end with the first one's settings and both of their lists.

From then on, changes are exchanged each minute, and when you choose Refresh everything or Exchange now. The panel says through which folder you share, with how many other computers, and when they were last heard from. Stop sharing ends it; each computer keeps its own files.

Your notes folder travels by its own sync, not by Sioul. If it does not seem to be inside a synced folder, the panel says so: your other computer would not see your notes and projects. Moved into one (and chosen again in Settings), they travel too.

Sealed

Each change is encrypted on your computer before it is written in the folder (XChaCha20-Poly1305), with a key made from your passphrase (Argon2id). The folder, and the server that carries it, see which computer wrote, when, and how much; never what: not the names of the things, not their values.

The passphrase is typed once on each computer, and kept in its keyring. A wrong one is said at once.

A lost passphrase cannot be found again

Nobody can recover it for you: it is never sent anywhere. If it is lost, stop sharing on every computer and start again with a new folder. Nothing on your computers is lost.

When two computers change the same thing

The later change wins, one setting, one line, one entry at a time:

  • a setting changed on each computer keeps the later one;
  • time noted on each computer, both stay;
  • a sender let in on one computer and blocked later on the other ends blocked everywhere.

A settings file that is half written, or broken by hand, is never read as emptied: nothing of it is taken out elsewhere.

Some things, one computer at a time

  • Medicines are reminded by the computer you are at only, so that a dose is not reminded twice. A dose marked taken goes to the others at once.
  • The sites' gathered notification comes on the computer you are at.
  • Invoices are numbered on one computer only, so that a number is never given twice. Another computer says where they are made, and offers Make invoices on this computer. See Time and invoices.

Not there yet

A database server instead of a folder, for those who would rather have one; drafts in your mail server's Drafts folder, for other mail programs to see; phones. The format is plain and documented, so that they can come.