Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

re pdf reader - the main left/right/up/down thumb button turns to next page and scrolls up/down - it just doesn't seem t work in some magnifications. try "fit to width" in view options and it should work for you.

as to gui points, a good article in many respects and I can understand why there isn't more drag n drop functionality, some kind of "scrap" effect on the "desktop" and resizable "windows" for apps. it does seems to make the overall feel somewhat dated.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I'd like to add a few things, before people here start idolizing the Newton for the wrong reasons (there's nothing against idolizing for the right reasons, though!):

- The Newton Connection Utilities have been mentioned. Actually, next to Sony Ericsson's "synching" software, they are the worst I've ever used! NCU only ever worked properly with a Mac, the Windows version was buggy as heck and was never fixed by Apple. And the only reason NCU worked, was because it is almost as basic as you can imagine (Read the part about file structures in Sean Luke's article). Still, even then the Newton did better than the Nokia NXXX line...

- "MichaelandJones" writes about several Newton models, including his OMP. It is, in light of Nokia's new model, prudent not to forget that the Newton line only ever became truly useful and magnificent with the MessagePad 2100 (and got canned less than a year after that model's appearance). The early models had bad HWR, annoyingly slow processors, lack of storage (only one PCMCIA slot) and buggy software. It's interesting to see how the Newton's history is now repeated, at a much faster pace!, by the Nokia NXXX line. I only hope Nokia never fired their equivalent of Steve Jobs and are now thinking about getting him back!

- For me, the only thing that makes the Newton worthwhile (to a degree that I'm still using my 2100 almost dayly), is its User Interface. All the rest -- including the great HWR -- has been repeated on other platforms (the Newton's HWR as available as a commercial product for Windows: PenOffice. Try it if you have a tablet pc, and then buy it :rolleyes: ).

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Ah, you're right - clicking the right button goes to the next page (the down button just scrolls down). However, the usability is limited, because the documents I watch (e.g. my bus table) must be zoomed in order to make the text readable, and then the horizontal scrollbar appears. At that moment the right button click just scrolls sideways, there doesn't seem to be a way to go to the next page through buttons.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

The way to go, a la RepliGo on PalmOS, is to let the document scroll to the right edge, or to the bottom, then at the next button pression, change the page.

This would work at either zoom level, and wouldn't need the document to be zoomed in or out

Omar

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Ok, maybe not calendar items, no, but you know the contacts import is cr@p.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I guess you didn't see my point. With Newton Connection Utilities, you could synchronize important data from your PC/Mac directly to your Newton. There was no piecemeal "use X for the calendar, Y for the contacts, and Z for the todos" needed; it just gathered simple, vital data up and transferred it to the device, with no effort. Uh, yeah, didn't the HPC/PalmPC/PocketPC/Psion perform this simple duty, years ago? Don't all cellphones created after 2001 (or so) do this? Even my old Nokia 6340i cell, from 2001 did this.

By the way, the last time I used GPE calendar, the buttons were all messed up on the bottom - is it still that way? I also liked the simplicity of the 'Dates' app, but there was a bug in it, that didn't show the dates from December 2006, so I dumped it.

I have tried Google Calendar, and I currently have all of my 'home' calendar items in there. Problem is, I get meeting requests at work in Outlook, so I have to manually copy them to Google. Then I have to view them on the 770 with Minimo, not Opera, because Opera won't render Google Calendar, and Minimo will.

Oh, and by the way, I work at a global corporation, where we have to use Outlook+Office. We do not have the luxury of setting up an Evolution server, (whatever that is) or ScheduleWorld to distribute this data.

I have already written a simple freeware program called OutLink that is available somewhere on this website, that extracts your Outlook data into an XML file. Can't anybody take that free software and figure out a way to get it populated into the complicated labyrinth of folders and data within Linux Maemo/Debian? I guess not.

I mean, come on, even my 'old' iPod can synchronize contacts and calendar items, and it is a friggin' jukebox!

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

You've got a choice: either Nokia do it all for you/us (in which case you wouldn't have the device, and it'd cost what a Newton cost, not what an N800 costs), or they can leave stuff open for third parties to fill the gaps for what people want.

I much prefer the latter approach. Only the former makes any sense if you want "just dump data on and things happen magically". FWIW, I've never had particularly good synchronisation from *any* groupware product to Psions/Palms/mobile phones, but I accept that some people do seem to be happy with it. In fact, in many ways, the offline viewing that GPE Calendar on Maemo gives me (of both my Google Calendar and my Outlook data) is probably the best mobile calendar experience I've ever had. Do I wish GPE Calendar were faster and had a slick UI like Dates? Yes. Am I glad that Nokia didn't spend the time on it and delay releasing the 770 14 months ago? Also yes.

OutLink sounds interesting - I'd not heard of it before. Perhaps some publicity would be useful (e.g. on maemo-developers) and linking it up with the OpenSync port which (just) needs a GUI. However...

...is just trolling. No-one can take it if they don't know about it.

Cheers,

Andrew

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Therein lies the problem; you have used that hopefully word again. This same type of teary-eyed plea for hobbyist developers to update free software, (with no incentive to support or enhance it) is very familiar to me, as a former Newton user.

Plus, I didn't think we were supposed to install the OS 2007 on the 770; I thought I read that it wouldn't work on the 770, or it would take too much memory on the 770. I am under the impression that the 770 is already running its last OS version.


Should and possibly don't work for me. I don't work in should/could/would/possibly/probably. When I went to the VSLive conference in Frisco a few years ago, Microsoft was handing out toolkit CD's for WinCE like candy. I installed it, and I was able to easily write a few apps for the PalmPC and the PocketPC.

Does anybody in the world, including Nokia, Hello?, know where I can download a toolkit that I can install, without spending months trying to get it to possibly work, so that I can build the stuff I want?

Hmmm...I think I made this plea for a toolkit for the Newton a few years ago. Déjà Vu.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Yeah, petty the poor Linux users in exactly the same situation... oh, no, wait - it works for them. It's a question of motivation and market size. I imagine (from what I know of the Mac OS X software market at the moment), that a lot of Newton software was shareware - and the development environment wasn't free.

Maemo devices attract (in particular) hackers, therefore the software is developed that *they* want, rather than to meet a perceived need in a small marketplace.

Wrong: the 770 is not on its last version: see Ari Jaaksi's comments and the OS 2007 on 770 project.

(Please don't use bizarre colours: not all skins on this site have a dark background).

Those are my own caveats. I haven't used them, so can't commit to them working, can I?

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/702

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Hey, can we reduce the drama (ie, "teary-eyed plea", et al) and get closer to objective discourse? So far the trolling and flamebaiting in this forum has been kept to a minimum (to an amazing extent compared to other fora I frequent) and it would be nice to keep it that way.

Obviously Nokia can step up closer to the plate and deliver some sorely-needed functionality, especially for business users. By the same token, surely the developer community is at this point fairly mature so that we can start seeing more collaborative efforts to fulfill them in the open source spirit always intended for this device family. Heck, if I wasn't such a hardcore (read: sadly limited) Visual Basic developer and had more time I'd be right in the thick of things. But my challenge to those identifying critical needs, understanding the requirements and complaining about the gaps: can you contribute to a solution?

Note to Andrew: keep up the great work. ;)