Re: [iPAQ] crosscompiling question

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001 16:11:28 -0500
George France <france@handhelds.org> wrote:
Hello!

> On Thursday 20 December 2001 03:03, Adriaan Joubert wrote:
> > Hi,
> > PocketPC crashed on me once and I took this as a 'Sign from Bill',
> and
> > upgraded to Linux. Browsing the web with dillo is just extraordinary!
> >
> > However, I strongly agree with Tom that better apps are needed if
> linux
> > is ever going to be a truly useful operating system. I'm a long-time
> > user of Psion, and there are very few real applications that one needs
> > on a PDA to make it truly useful:
> Please see the applications for the iPAQ at:
> http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qtopia.html

Just for the logs ;)
I strongly agree with the rest of all the people that "complained" about
the lack of applications. And I also agree on the fact that QTopia, QPE
and Qt/embedded looks very nice at the first glance.
But on the second look, as it was already mentioned on the list, the
licensing terms of Qt/embedded are more than questionable. Moreover there
will also be a technical problem with it since from what I know it will
not be possible to mix GPLed and commercial Qt/embedded applications on
the same device. They have to prevent this so that the dynamic linking
does not conflict with the GPL.
I already discussed that with Trolltech and tried to explain to them the
possibility of dual licensing. But either they did not want to understand
or plainly did not understand what dual licensing could mean and so the
email contact ended here.

After that I had some deep thoughts about what to do and finally came up
with the only possible solution: Do it yourself using X11, GTK+ and C.
Why?
X11 because I finally believe Jim (thanks Jim!) that X11 is with it's
performance and compatibility and other very nice features far ahead
compared to all the other systems like Qt/embedded, nano-X, pico-Gui and
so on. Compare them and you'll find that X11 performs best, also on the
iPaq.
GTK+ because I think it is currently the most powerful and yet easy to use
toolkit. The only other alternative I could think of is FLTK. It would
even be somewhat more portable since it also runs with nano-X. But GTK+
has more power especially the very nifty theme ability makes it ideal to
tailor it's look and feel to a PDA and have a consistant look and feel for
all applications at the same time.
And finally using pure C makes the whole thing performant enough to be
usable on for example the iPaq or now the Sharp SL-5000.

And now? Where do we go from here?
What is first needed is a descent desktop for PDAs. The frames currently
used in Familiar are nice but not at all what I would expect for a PDA.
The screen is simply too small for something like this, sorry.
Applications should run in full-screen mode all the time. Only dialogs and
other pop-up windows should really be "windows". A window manager has to
take care of which window to show and which to hide, cpwm is one small
window manager that could do it.
On top of that we need an application manager. Something that will display
a table of icons for the available applications. This is plain useful and
I don't think that someone could be against it.
After that we need the applications themselves, starting with system
settings programs for general systems settings, network, etc. Then the
typical PIM applications and then add-ons like email, browser (though
dillo is very nice and already available!).

Now the good news:
I started playing around with some ideas and started to write some code
and I would be willing to share it.
The bad news:
I have almost no time to spend on this. Every time I start programming I
fairly quickly have to stop again because I have no time anymore.
I need help!
I expect a whole set of applications almost to be comparable to the QPE
suite to be about 3 man months of intensive work. I would love to do it
but either there is someone who is willing to pay me for that, or I'll
have to wait until I have the time _or_ we start a community project for
it! I would love to contribute my few designs and some code and also to
coordinate that effort, in case someone else is interested in it too.
Maybe this could be hosted on sourceforge.handhelds.org? (BTW: I am
currently unable to login to handhelds' sourceforge ... after Login button
Netscape says "unable to locate the server handhelds.org" ...).
Name? Maybe GPE - GNU PDA Environment (which also makes clear that all
this will be GPLed except for the libs which will be LGPL)?

Oh well ... so far for today.
> Best Regards,
>
> --George
> _______________________________________________
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Viele Grüße
  nils faerber

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