Before implementing a patch in the Nokia 770’s implementation of Python, he asks: “But as this patch has a solution based on my vision I would like to know the opinion of readers beforehand: Which of the 2 behaviors must remain? And which should be changed?” (Translation via Babelfish.)
I don’t trust my understanding of the issues (via the shaky translation and my thin programming background), but Python programmers on the 770 probably ought to visit his site and weigh in on the issue.
* Dialogues do not work; the glade files are hardcoded as being in /usr/share … while the installation on the device is in /var/lib/install/usr/share …
* We really need a proper normal mode without margins. The margins are costing us too much realestate, and as a result the text is too small.
* The Full screen button does not work.
He notes: “If I am not mistaken, the INdT package is based on 2.2.7; Renato build also 2.4 package, but it has many more dependencies, so I thought I start with this one.”
Update:Renato Oliveira at Tux en Recifewrites that he has “made all packages to install abiword-2.4 in maemo 1.1rc5, these packages require you to install using ‘dpkg’ and not ‘application-installer’, for ‘application-installer’ I will make packages soon.”
Martin Grimme’s blog entries are now appearing in the Planet Maemo stream. A week ago, he wrote his first impressions of the Nokia 770:
[P]utting the protective case over the screen, the device automatically goes into standby mode from which it recovers in less than a second.
The screen is incredibly sharp and has a 800×480 widescreen on the area of two matchboxes. The contrast is great and you can actually use the device in bright sunlight, where most LCDs fail horribly!
The stylus is a simple piece of plastic, yet it is a good pen for clear handwriting. This makes the handwriting recognition actually useful, after you got used to it. You can write several words at once and the device tries to guess the characters. The more you practise a clear handwriting, the less mistakes the Nokia makes. If you spot a mistake, just write over the wrongly recognized letter again to correct it. That way you can even insert spaces or delete characters by crossing them out. However, the writing area is limited and only fits two or three words at once. Because of ambiguities you have to manually switch between alphanumerical and special characters modes. If your handwriting doesn’t fit the predefined rules, you can teach the device your own rules.
Without zooming in, websites are readable, but most often damn tiny. The Opera browser can either zoom the whole contents (excluding flashs), or just increase the size of characters while still horinzontally fitting the page on screen.
The device seriously lacks RAM and the software isn’t rock stable. I saw the desktop hang or crash rather often. Nokia definitely has to work on this! The system also seems to leak memory.
He sums up with what seems a fair and accurate assessment so far: “Apparently the device isn’t a good replacement for a PDA or a tablet PC, but it does work well for the task it was designed for: browsing the web and sending/receiving emails at public WLAN hotspots (or anywhere else, if paired with a bluetooth-capable cell phone). It yet has to be found out for what else it can be useful, though. :)”
Later that day, he posted an entry with these additional notes:
Damn, the N770 is addictive! After hours of hacking, I finally turned the toy into a “real” computer with a SSH daemon. Now I can log into that thing and work on it from my computer! And the other way round works as well. All this was accomplished without even hacking the user or root passwords. The current way to gain root would involve patching the firmware. But I don’t think that I’m in the need of a root account now that I have fully working SSH access, even sftp with nautilus.
Bye bye, USB cable! There is a better way to exchange files.
What next? Maybe I’ll put a webserver on that beast…
Python is also running on my N770 already, so I can start programming tomorrow.
This is a French site, apparently, and the 770 is contrasted, especially in several of the photos with the PocketPC. His conclusion (translation by Babelfish) notes that “at least [it will] meet unquestionable success [with] the geeks. As for touching [the] general public, who knows?” and “Well done, Nokia!”
Laurent is struck first by the size and weight:
When one takes it in hand, the weight and the obstruction form part of happy surprised. indeed, the machine is announced to 230 G, but [that] is false! It is 230g with its cap, and [onceit is removed], that becomes much more reasonable since it is nothing any more but 185g that you have then in hand. One thus returns to something of very correct and comparable with equivalent Pocket PC: Dell Axim x51v or iPAQ hx4700.
He also reports:
Once the machine is on, the screen first of all appears remarkable in terms of resolution and smoothness considering its size: 800 X 480 pixels. The interface is very ‘ linux,’ i.e., rather little colored but it seems very powerful and should be customized rather easily to make a machine that’s a little more fun. The reading of video is fluid, as is the splendid display of photographs.
you can already use a bluetooth keyboard, although I didn’t try it. The virtual keyboard is actually fairly good and easy/fast to use
On the other hand, the HWR engine is crap.. well.. the recognition is not that bad, but you’re limited to a small zone to write (not the whole screen) and it’s a bit annoying to use. Plus it doesn’t seem to make word-recognition, so sometimes the result is a bit weird… all in all, using the virtual keyboard is better, faster and more accurate.. :-/
Sometimes I don’t know what significance some news has, because the real significance isn’t to me, or to users like me, but to someone with very different needs or interests in the Nokia 770. Hence I submit these items, understanding they are likely of more interest to developers than users and that I cannot be a reliable scout for developers. Nonetheless . . .
Mohammad DAMT reported a few days ago that he had ported the lightweight Cherokee web server to the Nokia 770, posting the above picture indicating his success.
“What is this Cherokee?” you may well ask. Its website advises us that:
Cherokee is a flexible, very fast, lightweight Web server. It is implemented entirely in C, and has no dependencies beyond a standard C library. It is embeddable and extensible with plug-ins. It supports on-the-fly configuration by reading files or strings, TLS/SSL (via GNUTLS or OpenSSL), virtual hosts, authentication, cache friendly features, PHP, custom error management, and much more.
Perhaps we’ll see wiki-like apps for individual use implement Cherokee.
And Wirelexsoft announced its beta version of the VistaMax IDE for Maemo. This IDE is based on Eclipse and offers an alternative to using Scratchbox to develop and compile applications for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
Also, the first Maemo version of Tclkit is out. Tclkit is “a compact, single file executable containing a complete scripting runtime, including a rich scripting language (Tcl), a high-level GUI toolkit (Tk), a powerful object system (IncrTcl), the Tcl Virtual File System (TclVFS), and an embedded high-performance database (Metakit).” Does that mean we will start to see apps written in Python or Tcl with GUI frontends based on Tk? (Oops, out of my depth now. Anyone?)
Well, the website advises: “Need Tcl/Tk on your machine? Tclkit is the fastest and easiest way to get it there. There is no installation involved.” Sounds good to me.
Don’t know how this works, or if it’s a port of gnome-sudoku or gnudoku or some other version, or as it’s a new app entirely. We await more information eagerly, being Sudoku enthusiasts. Anyone with further information, please advise.If any of our readers installs the game and can send us photos or screen captures and a description of how it works, please let us know.
Update: Nacho Barrientos wrote that the “Software is usable and works ok.” He adds that he isn’t the developer, but is only writing some patches to improve the features. The author, Luca De Cicco, in response to our queries, said that the game was developed from scratch to run on GPE and easily ported to Maemo (and, btw, it runs on PC’s).
Klaus Rotter, one of the developers who’s gotten his hands on a Nokia 770, has been rewriting the clone of Bomberman for the Sharp Zaurus, and he’s gotten that rewrite working on the Nokia 770. He notes that “There is nothing special yet, no Maemo/Osso support, just plain SDL” and adds, “But it works…” You can download the software at http://www.rotters.de/dl/bomberman_0.8-1.deb
Over at Mobileread, Mikhail Sobolev announced a new version today of FBReader, the e-book reader being ported from the Sharp Zaurus (and which we last wrote about a month ago). The new version 0.7 now accepts Plucker, palmdoc and ztxt formats (in addition to fb2, html and plain text).
The announcement didn’t include the Nokia 770 port Misha is preparing. But having two different readers for e-books in Plucker format is a luxury we can hardly wait for. Hope the issues preventing an easy installation are close to being worked out. Keep us posted, Misha!
Etrunko (Eduardo de Barros Lima) reports on his (void *) blog that he has resumed his port of evince, a PDF viewer, to Maemo. Above, a PDF with thumbnails; below, the same document at fit-page-to-width. See (void *) for more screen captures of evince.
Update: The PDF reader installed on the Nokia 770 is Xpdf I’m advised anonymously. From what I read, Evince seems to be faster at rendering complex documents.
