Re: My resignation

But usability wonks will point out that a PDA is not a PC, and to get
the common tasks done efficiently, you need a completely different
kind of user interface. (For example Windows CE is criticized for
having a start button. Hierarchical navigation of menus is bad enough
on a PC but even less manageable on a PDA.) Plenty of other examples
exist - Newton, Palm, Jackito etc., and those tend to have more
efficient UI's for a PDA. So Opie seemed like a good idea to me in
principle, but only if it doesn't stagnate, so that eventually enough
apps will be developed to keep most of the users satisfied; as opposed
to just directly running the same desktop apps on the PDA. However,
this approach has more overhead, and needs to be supported by a group
of developers who believe in it. And the task is made easier for QT
apps because porting to QTopia isn't as hard as porting some arbitrary
X application to some arbitrary new toolkit.

So the reason why X is so popular now on PDAs is just to be able to
run desktop apps by simply re-compiling them, or is there some other
reason?

What about efficiency? Isn't it better to have fewer layers between
the apps and the graphics hardware, to get them to paint themselves
quickly and with less memory? It's amazing what old Palms could do
with their limited processing power, memory and such long battery
life. (Of course they had other problems, and were difficult to
develop on.) A Linux PDA has no chance of coming close to that, with
the current level of complexity. The Agenda for example was also
underpowered and despite all the optimizations that were done, could
never run fast enough to be useful. Maybe if they had developed on a
graphics toolkit that was closer to hardware, it would have. (And
there is also the issue that QTopia itself is not very small, so it
may not be the best counter-example.)

One advantage I can see for X is network transparency (run large apps
on a server and display them on the PDA). But PDAs mostly aren't
being used that way, and there is more than one way to achieve network
transparency too.

On 6/4/07, Oliver Fels <oliver.fels_at_gmx.net> wrote:
> I feel that the requirements for a PDA-like device like the Zaurus is more the
> pocket version of a computer. pdaXrom has done a good job here however I dont
> like the sperate way they are going.
Received on Mon Jun 04 2007 - 16:51:29 EDT