RE: [iPAQ] Browsers and Mail Clients

>I wrote the beginnings of a Gtk-based mail app that uses IMAP (through
>c-client) as the back end. I'll try to clean it up and release the source
>in the next few days so that others can play with it -- right now it does
>little more than display your INBOX and let you pick messages from it. I
>am targetting the iPAQ screen size from the start, so I'm trying to keep
>it as visually small as possible.
>
>There is also a possibility of building a small web browser based on
>GtkHTML...

If we are going to start writing GUI applications ourselves(rather than
porting existing apps), we need to define a standard for doing this. This
should include at least: GUI layout standards(maybe a gnome or KDE
"handhelds" spinoff), IPC conventions(or again variations on existing),
syncing protocols and operations to Desktop or network. There should be
common code to do all of this easily. I guess since I opened my big mouth,
I can start and RFC for the effort. I am a software engineer ("QNX
development, server applications" is my title) and have been with linux
since you had to make floppy disks to install it. I don't do much front end
work (I try to avoid it), but I have experience with GTK and straight Xlib
APIs. I don't know why I am giving a resume here...

Anyway, if anyone has some comments on doing this, lets hear them, I'll add
my thoughts to an RFC and post it somewhere(where?).

Questions I have for the community (these are all about GUI):

Should we create our own beast or derive something from one of the Desktop
managers (gnome vs. kde battle ensues)?

Should we try to look similar to WinCE, or Palm? What about this wheel menu
I've read about on this list?

I know you can rewrite the GTK drawing routines; maybe redoing the draw, and
relocating menubars will be sufficient for a nice interface?

We probably want to use 100% screen size for all apps; do we really need a
WM? I know GTK will work without one [a WM] if you just run it the same
size as the screen resolution (I have done a project for a touch screen
kiosk like this, it turned out really nice). Add a program that can toggle
apps (pseudo-WM, maybe the gnome-panel can do this for us) and we're golden
;) This may not work, for us...Anyone see any caveats here(mainly can we
still interact with gnome, I think the answer is simply “Yes", but I’m not
sure.)?

I'll think more about this when I can't sleep tonight, you guys let me know
about the above.

Chris McFarlen
Received on Wed Sep 20 07:30:28 2000