Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

The thing about HOW-TOs is, they are written by people, over the eons that *nux has been around, who found them useful and expanded on them for the benefit of others. Maemo is a fast-moving target, but the HOW-TOs for standard linux are largely applicable. And users are doing the same thing here, too. Here's one who has made some pretty nice documentation.

The basic introductory wiki articles are not the easiest to find, but they are not so bad. If you ask a novel, coherent and clear question in the right forum of T.M.O., you typically get a knowledgeable answer.

Really, the main challenge is that maemo.org is suffering from growing pains and is fragmented because of the various pieces that were pulled together, but still not melded together. Search is a joke because of that, and it really does need to be fixed. There is the added challenge of having an overlord of sorts, so sometimes things don't get done because they have to navigate company hallways first.

There are good things and bad things about having a device company directly involved in the platform. I guess you'll find there are some advantages to the situation here vs. the Zaurus, but there are disadvantages, too.

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

I think it is necessary to have a launching point, say, a few stickies at the top of the N900 forum, for things such as:
- New owners start here
- FAQ
- T-Mo+N900 beginners start here

Very much like the Joomla forums do. These postings could, likewise, be an introduction in plain English, but with links to relevant postings, Wiki articles, off-site resources. Wiki's tend to become section- and link-happy, unfortunately.

As you said, there are useful documents, but there isn't a narrative that stitches them together. One way to look at it is that when someone is shopping around between say, a Droid, iPhone & N900, they happen upon a link/posting that says, hey, we've got a cool device, and here's what you can do with it, and how. As opposed to now, someone wants to look at Google maps with Starbucks overlaid, and all they get is a list of problems people have.

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

I'm open to submissions. If the two stickies there aren't what you have in mind, feel free to send the writer of either a message with the new content. If you think a new sticky or two is needed, as well, post a candidate and if it's good i'll probably stick it.

As i mentioned in the first reply, these things become available because people make them.

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Late to the zaurus party, but I was happy 5500 user!

Actually it was from, Casio, Sharp Digital Diary type, Newton (loved it, still works), Zaurus (good times)..... long drought...... then n900 (loving it!).

If I could drag a few thing about the newton over to the n900 it would be the perfect machine for me.

x

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Welcome to maemo. :D

Which things?

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Just to answer the original topic, I have a long history with PDAs and especially Linux based PDAs. My history begins with the iPAQ which I flashed with Linux ("please don't brick please don't brick") and then the Zaurus C1000 with the various stages of SharpROM and others, OpenZaurus, OpenEmbedded/Angstrom and then Zubuntu Linux.
My intensive involvment in Opie was based on the idea that a mobile device should have a simple but powerful and flexible environment instead of a fully blown X server running some window manager.
Well the Opie project went down the river though I find a few of the good ideas being covered in the Hildon desktop though I still miss something like the documents tab (TrollTech/Nokia, are you listening? :) ) where access to various documents was easy and simple sorted by type.
The only thing the Zaurus lately lacked of was performance which I now find with the N900.

But there is one thing which no PDA since Apples Newton has delivered ever since: A hand writing recognition fully integrated into the GUI. Write everywhere you want and let it be converted for you is a promise no device ever kept.
Plus a complete interoperation between the PIM components and applications. There is room for improvement, folks :D

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Thanks for the welcome Flandry.

I'm really enjoying the n900, and maemo 5 is an improvement over previous vers. I've been watching nokia since n800 ( after problems started to creep up on the 5500 (whch still works, but has the back up battery annoying thing). However he newton was really the only PDA that intergraded so well into my life, and I've been hoping to capture that level of integration again.

So few of my fav things (and no I don't watch oprah..lol)

1) The Note pad app.
This little app had to be my most used feature of the Newt. It was always available, it captured your info in digi ink, translated handwriting or a mix. This allowed me to for example actually write down notes as people are speaking in digi ink without looking if I wrote it down correctly. It was also searchable, easy to start a new note (simply draw a line across the screen). Supported different kinda of notes - voice, drawing, task lists. I would love to have an app that had these function.

2) Cut and Paste via conextual menus or even drag & drop.
I think there should be a system wide way to copy without the keyboard. I know that in some app copy via the app menu is supported

3) Screen Rotation
Though seems to be split down the middle on this forum, I think this plateform is all about control and choices... so I say give folks the choice. Though develpoers can and some do have it working in there apps (xjournal,

4) UI elements
I’m really enjoying the maemo5 UI, but sometime it seems like they (sometime developers) waste precious screen space. In the sketcth app for example there is about 100vx30h px used for UI that I don't need on the screen all the time. It would be useful to be able to hide all UI and bring forward only the things you need when you need then similar to this from autodesk (video) . Of coiurse I realize there is a compromise for a finger base UI, but I think this is an area that can be improved. The newton was fairly efficient in this way, although it had a physically larger screen which helps.

5) The screen size
Take the screen from the 810, with the minimum amount to border (I think you mentioned something like that too). I feel like markets are finally waking up to larger than cell size devices. The newton was big, too big.... but a joy to write, read and sketch on.

6) Printing
This would be nice, It’s really great to have on the time when you really need it. I would hope gimp print would get ported.


I’m sure I could think of other things...lol. But that enough.

If I could get some of those graphic apps from koffice on the n900 it would be a dream come true (pending how they work). I really want this to be a content creations device and not just for viewing. Man if I was a program I would make some kickass apps....for me ;) I’m thankfully , though for the hard work of those develping great polished apps for maemo!

lately, a good read which has been posted here before is this old n800 UI compared to the newton article

Thanks for asking

x

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Hey, that was not fair mentioning the Newton Notepad. Makes me look at my N900 with some resignation :eek:
Did I mention that I owned a Newton 130 and a 2100er ? Have to dig @home where they are retiring :)

The 130 was a rather large brick but the 2x00 devices topped it in terms of form factor and weight. But 2 PCMCIA slots, wow...

Can't be that difficult to port the basic cups libraries to the N900 but then you need the connectivity to the printer or print server. Either via bluetooth or WLAN, some still can be accessed via infrared (I did this once with the Newton, that was fun these times :cool: )

Plus your apps need (or be compiled with) printing support which none of the ones I came across are. So printing is a longer way to go and I doubt the SDK comes with cups included to build it in most apps.

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

hehe, oops. Still take my 2000 (upgrade to 2100) out to show ppl how good they still are.

Yeah, I was trying to stick with SW, but that was nice.

Hmmm, I'm not to sure how many printers use IR anymore, but I used the IR printing a lot.

Bluetooth print though could work, perhaps just by have a printing app, that you pick the pdf, jpg, .wrd files through the files sys.

x

Re: Any other Zaurus owners feeling quite at home on the new n900?
 

Maybe something like this. A quick click on the paint brush brings up the other tools. And which ever tool your currently are using will be the icon on the button.

What ya think? Sorry if this is off topic.

x