New palm environment

New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Dear developers,
I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
environment using FLTK toolkit.

GPE and Opie are powerful projects, but some devices with small
footprint and slow processors don't work very well with it.

This idea appeared when me and Vladimir (who ported Linux to Siemens
SX1 phone) are speaking about Qt/Embedded and GPE performance on SX1.

Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
fast.

I want know what you think about it?

Cheers,

Alan

Re: New palm environment

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Alan Carvalho de Assis wrote:
> Dear developers,
> I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
> environment using FLTK toolkit.

No :) (but see below)

> GPE and Opie are powerful projects, but some devices with small
> footprint and slow processors don't work very well with it.

I agree. GPE and Opie have both a lot of problems, but considering their
history, both projects went a long and winding way to get there.
By starting something new you may start up with a clean and small
core, but eventually you will find that to suit the requirements you
have to add more and more stuff. At the end of the day you may be
reinventing GPE or Opie, which doesn't sound like a good task.

> Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
> good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
> fast.
> I want know what you think about it?

I don't think the UI toolkit is the reason that GPE and Opie are
sluggish. I think both contain a lot of code from people whose
contributions were the first after they started programming for
embedded systems.

If you really want to start something new, go ahead and do it. It's a
fantastic learning experience! But please, do yourself a favour and
wait a bit more until the OpenMoko folks and the Access folks go live
with their platforms -- perhaps there is something where you could
jump on the bandwagon.

Of course, jumping on the bandwagon is not that honorable as being the
inventor of something, but at the end of the day, it may help to get
things actually done, and that's what all want, don't we? :)

Regards,

:M:
-- 
Michael 'Mickey' Lauer | IT-Freelancer | http://www.vanille-media.de

Re: New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Michael,

2006/12/2, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer <mickey@vanille-media.de>:
> Alan Carvalho de Assis wrote:
> I don't think the UI toolkit is the reason that GPE and Opie are
> sluggish. I think both contain a lot of code from people whose
> contributions were the first after they started programming for
> embedded systems.
>

But GTK is become very fat and slow. If memory is not a problem ok,
then GPE need an option to still the application on memory to fast
start-up, like this we have in Opie.

> If you really want to start something new, go ahead and do it. It's a
> fantastic learning experience! But please, do yourself a favour and
> wait a bit more until the OpenMoko folks and the Access folks go live
> with their platforms -- perhaps there is something where you could
> jump on the bandwagon.
>
> Of course, jumping on the bandwagon is not that honorable as being the
> inventor of something, but at the end of the day, it may help to get
> things actually done, and that's what all want, don't we? :)
>
> Regards,
>

Ok, I agree it, seems sensible!

> :M:
> --
> Michael 'Mickey' Lauer | IT-Freelancer | http://www.vanille-media.de
>
>

Cheers,

Alan

Re: New palm environment

[Erik Hovland]

On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 06:13:50PM +0000, Alan Carvalho de Assis wrote:
> Dear developers,
> I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
> environment using FLTK toolkit.

Honestly, GPE and FLTK can co-exist on the same handheld. There are FLTK
libraries and apps available on both familiar and OpenZaurus.

> This idea appeared when me and Vladimir (who ported Linux to Siemens
> SX1 phone) are speaking about Qt/Embedded and GPE performance on SX1.
> 
> Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
> good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
> fast.
> 
> I want know what you think about it?

Scratch your itch. There is enough room in the community for another
environment. But please consider why GPE or Opie can't do what you need
before taking on what could be a huge task.

E

-- 
Erik Hovland
mail: erik@hovland.org
web: http://hovland.org/
PGP/GPG public key available on request

Re: New palm environment

[Vovan]

On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:22:56 +0300, Erik Hovland <erik@hovland.org> wrote:

> Scratch your itch. There is enough room in the community for another
> environment. But please consider why GPE or Opie can't do what you need
> before taking on what could be a huge task.
>

My main problem is perfomance. For example:in Symbian "addressbook"  
application
starts in less than a second; in Qtopia it starts something about 2..3  
seconds!
That is not acceptible for me :) I dont have 400 mhz CPU in SX1, I only  
have 120mhz
so it is a problem...


-- 
Vladimir

Re: New palm environment

[Florian Boor]

Hi,

basically Michael and Erik mentioned the most important things before - i guess
the major problems will be caused by increasing requirements for this kind of
software stacks.

Vovan wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:22:56 +0300, Erik Hovland <erik@hovland.org> wrote:
> 
> My main problem is perfomance. For example:in Symbian "addressbook"  
> application
> starts in less than a second; in Qtopia it starts something about 2..3  
> seconds!
> That is not acceptible for me :) I dont have 400 mhz CPU in SX1, I only  
> have 120mhz
> so it is a problem...

I must admit that a good adaption of one of the existing UI environments to the
SX1 is not really easy but creating and maintaining a new one is not easier.
Imagine what you could achieve investing the time you had to spend in a new UI
environment project in one of the existing ones and optimizing it for less
powerful devices. There is really much room for improvements - large parts of
the software is written for more powerful devices and sometimes without mobile
devices in mind at all. But the main reason to prefer improvements over a new
project is the fact that more people would have benefits from improvements than
from a new project.

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: +49 271-771091-14
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: +49 271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de

1D78 2D4D 6C53 1CA4 5588  D07B A8E7 940C 25B7 9A76

Re: New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Florian,

2006/12/3, Florian Boor <florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de>:
> Hi,
>
> basically Michael and Erik mentioned the most important things before - i guess
> the major problems will be caused by increasing requirements for this kind of
> software stacks.
>

Sure, I agree at end even a FLTK can be fat and slow. Then improve GPE
performance make sense.

> I must admit that a good adaption of one of the existing UI environments to the
> SX1 is not really easy but creating and maintaining a new one is not easier.
> Imagine what you could achieve investing the time you had to spend in a new UI
> environment project in one of the existing ones and optimizing it for less
> powerful devices. There is really much room for improvements - large parts of
> the software is written for more powerful devices and sometimes without mobile
> devices in mind at all. But the main reason to prefer improvements over a new
> project is the fact that more people would have benefits from improvements than
> from a new project.
>

Do you know some simple way to make GPE work on non touchscreen
device? Currently is GPE running on some non touchscreen device?

> Greetings

Cheers,

> Florian
>

Alan

Re: New palm environment

[Florian Boor]

Hi,

Alan Carvalho de Assis schrieb:
> Do you know some simple way to make GPE work on non touchscreen
> device? Currently is GPE running on some non touchscreen device?

i know that there are some people working on getting better support for this
into GTK. In theory you could handle this in the applications itself but that
would mess up the code and cause quite some duplication. The most problems of
pointerless device support should be fixed in GTK.
The GTK Bugzilla contains some patches against GTK 2.6 if i remember correctly
and full support for devices without any pointer device should be available in
latest GTK CVS. Some of the basic PIM applications should work quite well
without a touchscreen, but i don't think using e.g. matchbox-panel is fun with
some keys only. Another thing we need to introduce in a useful way is support
for softkeys which are quite common on devices without a touchscreen.

Another problem is text input if you have a numeric keyboard only. We have a
small tool to do this in X but currently not enough time to do much of
development on it:
http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/thumbpad/

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: +49 271-771091-14
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: +49 271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian.boor@kernelconcepts.de

1D78 2D4D 6C53 1CA4 5588  D07B A8E7 940C 25B7 9A76

Re: New palm environment

[Lorn Potter]

Vovan wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:22:56 +0300, Erik Hovland <erik@hovland.org> wrote:
> 
>> Scratch your itch. There is enough room in the community for another
>> environment. But please consider why GPE or Opie can't do what you need
>> before taking on what could be a huge task.
>>
> 
> My main problem is perfomance. For example:in Symbian "addressbook"  
> application
> starts in less than a second; in Qtopia it starts something about 2..3  
> seconds!

Actually, if you use the 'fast load' option, which loads certain apps at 
startup, you will get a faster startup speed, which is the same way 
symbian loads apps, and gives you the perception that it is faster. You 
can also configure apps to be quicklaunched. For best results, configure 
Qtopia as 'singleexec' which gives the best performance memory size and 
startup speed.


> That is not acceptible for me :) I dont have 400 mhz CPU in SX1, I only  
> have 120mhz
> so it is a problem...
> 
> 

Re: New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Erik,

2006/12/2, Erik Hovland <erik@hovland.org>:
> On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 06:13:50PM +0000, Alan Carvalho de Assis wrote:
>
> Honestly, GPE and FLTK can co-exist on the same handheld. There are FLTK
> libraries and apps available on both familiar and OpenZaurus.
>

Yes, the co-existence is not the a problem. Currently I run FLTK
programs (ipatience for example) on GPE and it work fine.

The problem is how to run Linux on low end devices? In example if I
have a smarthphone with 8MB of RAM, how to run Linux on it? Is
possible run kdrive and GTK applications on it? I think no.

> Scratch your itch. There is enough room in the community for another
> environment. But please consider why GPE or Opie can't do what you need
> before taking on what could be a huge task.
>

Just my consideration above. I am happy with GPE on my iPaq, my
question is just about how to run GPE on devices with low memory.
Maybe my question can be irrelevant because memory is become very
cheap and processors become very speed. Anyway there is a gap that
Linux can fit if we will have a small and fast palm environment.

Hey, it is not a frame-war.
I am just considering if is feasible to create a new environment. But
as we can see it don't seems.


> E
>
> --
> Erik Hovland
> mail: erik@hovland.org
> web: http://hovland.org/
> PGP/GPG public key available on request
>

Cheers,

Alan

Re: New palm environment

[Paul Sokolovsky]

Hello Alan,


      [There were few cheerful replies, so let me show the other side
of it, and do a bit of cold shower. Note that it's only rhetoric
exercise - you will still do what you're bound to ;-) .]


Saturday, December 2, 2006, 8:13:50 PM, you wrote:

> Dear developers,
> I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
> environment using FLTK toolkit.

  No.

> GPE and Opie are powerful projects, but some devices with small
> footprint and slow processors don't work very well with it.

  What makes you think they will work better with something else? More
specifically, what makes you think they will work better with framework
of the order of magnitude/scale as OPIE or GPE?

  For example, do you think that OPIE/GPE authors set it as the aim to
write fat slow frameworks? Or they have secret conspiracy to do it so?
In this case, they are must be involved with proverbial Microsoft too
- it has own UI system, by pretty different technology, but it shows
the same problems!

> This idea appeared when me and Vladimir (who ported Linux to Siemens
> SX1 phone) are speaking about Qt/Embedded and GPE performance on SX1.

  You know, such bright ideas appear to someone every other week ;-I.
For example, another Vladimir (who ported PalmT3) just couldn't resist
to start his own toy: http://hackndev.com/node/571 .

> Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
> good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
> fast.

  Now, that's interesting. *Some* modern features - I will trust your
word, obviously, how could you expect for 2nd-rate GUI toolkit to
provide all modern features? But fast - that's interesting. Do you
have real-world profiling data with good interpretation, preferably,
all yours? Or you trust FLTK authors by word too?

> I want know what you think about it?

  I think that spending time on optimizing existing full-fledged UI
framework, like OPIE or GPE, would be much more beneficial for both
persons who would do that, and for community. YMMV.

> Cheers,

> Alan


-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                            mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com

Re: New palm environment

[Vovan]

03.12.06 в 21:06 Paul Sokolovsky в своём письме писал(а):

OK, I agree that writing a new GUI is not a simple task
and I agree that optimizing Opie or Gpe will be more beneficial, but
is there any way to use Opie or Gpe without touchscreen? I have only
keypad on my SX1 :) And only 16 MB of RAM and only 120 Mhz CPU....

PS: Of course the easiest way is to sell my old SX1 and buy something with  
400mhz CPU
and 64 Mb SDRAM and to be happy with it ))

-- 
Vladimir Ananiev

Re: New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Paul,
(sorry by pre-posting)

Do you know if exists some project or people trying to improve GTK performance?

I found it:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4870

But it is old and based on GTK 1.2.

Alan

2006/12/3, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml@gmail.com>:
> Hello Alan,
>
>
>       [There were few cheerful replies, so let me show the other side
> of it, and do a bit of cold shower. Note that it's only rhetoric
> exercise - you will still do what you're bound to ;-) .]
>
>
> Saturday, December 2, 2006, 8:13:50 PM, you wrote:
>
> > Dear developers,
> > I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
> > environment using FLTK toolkit.
>
>   No.
>
> > GPE and Opie are powerful projects, but some devices with small
> > footprint and slow processors don't work very well with it.
>
>   What makes you think they will work better with something else? More
> specifically, what makes you think they will work better with framework
> of the order of magnitude/scale as OPIE or GPE?
>
>   For example, do you think that OPIE/GPE authors set it as the aim to
> write fat slow frameworks? Or they have secret conspiracy to do it so?
> In this case, they are must be involved with proverbial Microsoft too
> - it has own UI system, by pretty different technology, but it shows
> the same problems!
>
> > This idea appeared when me and Vladimir (who ported Linux to Siemens
> > SX1 phone) are speaking about Qt/Embedded and GPE performance on SX1.
>
>   You know, such bright ideas appear to someone every other week ;-I.
> For example, another Vladimir (who ported PalmT3) just couldn't resist
> to start his own toy: http://hackndev.com/node/571 .
>
> > Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
> > good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
> > fast.
>
>   Now, that's interesting. *Some* modern features - I will trust your
> word, obviously, how could you expect for 2nd-rate GUI toolkit to
> provide all modern features? But fast - that's interesting. Do you
> have real-world profiling data with good interpretation, preferably,
> all yours? Or you trust FLTK authors by word too?
>
> > I want know what you think about it?
>
>   I think that spending time on optimizing existing full-fledged UI
> framework, like OPIE or GPE, would be much more beneficial for both
> persons who would do that, and for community. YMMV.
>
> > Cheers,
>
> > Alan
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
>  Paul                            mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com
>
>


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
|                     Alan Carvalho de Assis                |
------------------------------------------------------------
--
Não importa o que os outros irão pensar,
A cura para a infelicidade é a felicidade

Re: New palm environment

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

Dnia niedziela, 3 grudnia 2006 23:10, Alan Carvalho de Assis napisał:
> Do you know if exists some project or people trying to improve GTK
> performance?
>
> I found it:
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4870
>
> But it is old and based on GTK 1.2.

And that post is also nearly 5 years old. So probably no one work on it 
currently.

-- 
JID: hrw-jabber.org
OpenEmbedded developer/consultant

               Life's not fair. But the root password helps.

Re: New palm environment

[Koen Kooi]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Alan Carvalho de Assis schreef:
> Hi Paul,
> (sorry by pre-posting)
> 
> Do you know if exists some project or people trying to improve GTK performance?

Sure, have a look at the gtk, cairo, gnome-performance, oe and o-hand mailinglists. OE has
a load of patches to improve performance. We could also rename gtk+ to "faster and lighter
toolkit" and proof speedup claims by vigorous handwaving.

regards,

Koen
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Re: New palm environment

[Alan Carvalho de Assis]

Hi Koen,

2006/12/3, Koen Kooi <koen@dominion.kabel.utwente.nl>:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> Sure, have a look at the gtk, cairo, gnome-performance, oe and o-hand mailinglists. OE has
> a load of patches to improve performance. We could also rename gtk+ to "faster and lighter
> toolkit" and proof speedup claims by vigorous handwaving.
>

Hmm, cool.  What you think if we place these information at a wiki
page like CELF do (http://tree.celinuxforum.org/CelfPubWiki). We can
compare its performance and memory requirement with standard gtk.

> regards,
>

best regards,

> Koen

Alan

Re: New palm environment

[Matthew Welland]

If you do decide to pursue fltk for handhelds perhaps you could resurrect 
some of the agenda vr3 stuff to get going?

http://agendawiki.com/

Since fltk is supported by Chicken Scheme a fltk based PDA environment would 
be appreciated by me.

Matt
--

On Saturday 02 December 2006 11:13, Alan Carvalho de Assis wrote:
> Dear developers,
> I want know if is of worth start a new project to develop a palm/phone
> environment using FLTK toolkit.
>
> GPE and Opie are powerful projects, but some devices with small
> footprint and slow processors don't work very well with it.
>
> This idea appeared when me and Vladimir (who ported Linux to Siemens
> SX1 phone) are speaking about Qt/Embedded and GPE performance on SX1.
>
> Some possible toolkit are: FLTK2, pixil or minigui. We think FLTK is a
> good option, because it has some modern features and still small and
> fast.
>
> I want know what you think about it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openembedded-devel mailing list
> Openembedded-devel@lists.openembedded.org
> http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-devel

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