Here’s a present in the holiday spirit — etrunko has released Gnumeric for the Nokia 770. Info about the release and how to install (and a pointer to evince) are at his website, (void *).
Thanks to Bill for pointing this out!
Archive for the 'business' Category
A Nokia press release on mobility notes that “while employees may be in the office, they may spend more than a third of their time away from their desks.”
This, of course, echoes the noteworthy Bill Gates argument that workers really need an auxiliary, ultra-mobile device that is “complementary to their PC, and [in which they] have all their states, the same applications, [which they are] able to carry that around, … that’s very attractive.” What’s needed, he says, is a way for people to get at information easily, with such portable devices being extremely practical.
Of course, that’s what is already here with the Nokia 770, if you change it into a business device, rather than just a web one. Or use it as a remote controller, an “auxiliary display” Gates calls it, of your desktop.
Seems to me this is the opening salvo in the Nokia 770 business-use case, or for one of the 770’s successors as the Internet Tablet splits into home and business camps.
Eduardo de Barros Lima, aka etrunko, has reported on his (void *) blog that his modifications necessary to make Gnumeric run on Maemo platform are now accepted into the Gnumeric mainstream.
This means, he writes, that “If everything goes fine, by the end of this week we may have the debian packages available to install in the Nokia 770. w00t!”
With AbiWord also in place, that means two of the three main business use apps can be accessed on a 770. A presentation app or viewer doesn’t appear to be in the works, however.
Tomas Frydrych reports on his successful efforts to get AbiWord installed on his Nokia 770 in his “blog of an AbiWord hacker,” The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts (or so it seems).
Initial observations on using AW on the device:
* 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.”
Image of AbiWord 2.4 from Tux en Recife; our earlier report.
Update: Renato Oliveira at Tux en Recife writes 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.”
Link to the new packages.
Renato Oliveira at his Tux en Recife blog posted photos of the Nokia 770 running Abiword 2.4 “a few days after its release.” (That was Monday, October 3.) Among the new features in version 2.4 are on-the-fly grammar checking in English and equation editing.
Here’s one photo, processed to increase the contrast, showing a document being edited.
Here’s another photo showing Abiword being chosen from the applications menu (that looks like the Abisource web page on the screen).
You can download this latest version from http://evolutum.gotdns.com/~indt/abi/.
A query on the Maemo developer’s list wondered if Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents would be viewable on the Nokia 770. OpenOffice.org files were also brought up.
I asked Eduardo de Barros Lima, who’s involved with the porting of Gnumeric, about this and he reported back:
[A]ll the ports made to the maemo platform will do exactly what the original program does. They are basically UI adjustments to fit the 770 reduced screen.
So, the Maemo Gnumeric version will open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets the original gnumeric does.
This applies to Abiword and Microsof Word documents too.
On the list, Karoliina Salminen noted that the OpenOffice.org applications may be hard to fit in a resource-limited device like the 770. So I asked Eduardo about that document type too and he said:
About the OpenOffice documents, we have here in INdT office people working on importer and exporter plugins for Abiword and Gnumeric, that will make these two programs able to open and write documents and spreadsheets using the OpenDocument standard. We hope to have them done by the end of this year.
Nothing to report yet on PowerPoint files. Thanks to Eduardo (aka etrunko) for the explanation.
Well, since back in June, the Gnumeric spreadsheet has been identified as ported to the new platform. I ran across Eduardo de Barros Lima’s gnome developer blog, (void *), this week, where he wrote that he was collaborating on the port to the Nokia 770.
He pointed me to these three pictures from June of Gnumeric running on a 770, including this full-screen image, showing 11 default-width columns. The normal-view display still fits 9 columns in.
And to make things perfectly clear, Eduardo stated “the gnumeric port is done” and that he is starting the port of the last Evince version.
Nice to know these pieces are in place.
Odds and ends
Freeciv
Civ for mobile use?
http://forum.freeciv.org/viewtopic.php?p=7660#7660
>>BTW, before starting to port FreeCiv to Symbian, it makes sense to optimize it for the Nokia 770 device, which runs Linux but which has less resources and screen resolution than a workstation. Having tested there graphics, the protocol and the basic UI layout, it possible to drill into the Symbian OS. Does anybody have Nokia 770?
Multiplayer strategy game, GNU license.
AllenPoppe.com
Access Acquires Palmsource?
http://allenpoppe.com/?p=30
>>Palm appears to be on the verge of releasing a Windows powered Treo. Which shows their waning confidence in the long term viability of the Palm OS and Nokia has developed the 770 which runs on Linux. This makes you wonder on the future of the Symbian OS, which is owned largely by Nokia and powers most of their phones.
(void *)
Gnome Developer
http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2005/09/gnome-developer.html
>>For this moment, i am colaborating with three projects, two of them are directly related to the Maemo platform that are the ports 2 applications (Gnumeric and Evince) to the environment that will be used by Nokia 770.
English Day
http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2005/08/english-day.html
>>Every thursday at INdT Office in Recife, we have to speak and write only in English.
I recognize Marcelo Oliveira in that picture!
For Mongo
I love the fall
http://4mongo.blogspot.com/2005/09/i-love-fall.html
>>Lastly is a wireless Linux based browser from Nokia. The price point is high but it has its strong points. Check out the Nokia 770 Tablet.
abigidea
Nokia 770
http://abigidea.blogspot.com/2005/09/nokia-770.html
>>Just been playing with the all new Nokia 770 - its cool but i havent quite figured it out - i think it may have an identity crisis - its not a pda, its not a phone, its not a tablet PC, its not a laptop - but its lack of established identity makes it quite quirky.
I think “playing around with the idea of” is meant.
mike’s hq
http://venus.cslab.aueb.gr/~mikem/2005/09/06/24
Mike’s dream cellphone. Maemo is one of the acceptable OSes. In Greek.
MISOFTWARE
Broadcasting y Nokia 770
http://misoftware.blogspot.com/2005/09/broadcasting-y-nokia-770.html
About wlan. In Spanish.
LINUXFR.ORG
Journal: Un agenda électronique ?
http://linuxfr.org/~ploum/19308.html
Handheld hesitancy. In French.
A last item
Karoliina’s blog
Bug squashing camp illustrated
http://www.karoliinasalminen.com/blog/?p=34
>>This entry was entirely created with camera phone and 770.
Use case, shoot pic, browse with 770 thru bluetooth, upload to site, write entry. No laptop needed
I like that last comment: “No laptop needed.” Music to my ears. And let’s get that 770 to Sven! We want GIMP to edit photos like these!
— Roger Sperberg
