"N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Hi Folks,
I got the N810 Internet Tablet and I'm going to use it as a "N810 Linux PDA". I know people have asked for PIM and text editiing before, but searching through this forum, the wiki, maemo.org and google doesn't provide that many answers for OS2008.

I learned there are two simple ways to install additional software

1. Installing a program from http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2008
2. Adding a repository, e.g. from http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.ph...&system=maemo4 and install stuff via the program manager

Both can done by clicking on a link (green arrow) to an "install file" from the tablet. The latter is preferable. Am I right so far?

For offline PIM, there's only GPE 2.8 so far. We can expect to see Pimlico/O-Hand. GPE seems more advanced/stable. (I have used GPE 2.7 on OpenZaurus and except for some bugs in Calendar it was acceptable for me.) What are your PIM experiences? Anything usable on OS2008?

There's no GUI Text editor yet for OS2008.

Do people here plan to use the N810 or N800 for PIM and note taking (plain text)? What are your software choices?

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Correct, because once installed with the repository, it's easier to update later.

The Palm/Garnet PIMs are likely another serious choice... they work, work well, and you can sync to another machine, etc...

Isn't a GUI text editor a 'word processor'? (IE Abiword, etc..)

How about a note taking app, such as Notecase?
http://notecase.sourceforge.net
Newly on 2008 in fact... but crossplatform just in case...

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

pygtkeditor had already been released, search the forum for that or for khertan, the develeper

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

That was 1/2 my plan. In my dreams I use the N810 to give talks, but I haven't gotten the usb-to-vga issue resolved yet.

Since my desktop & home computers are Macs, I'm syncing iCal w/Google calendar. 1-way synching w/GPE calendar is straightforward; I had 2-way synching w/erminig working before upgrading OS2008, but haven't re-installed (yet).

I'm vacillating between xournal and maemopad+ for notetaking. One big drawback is that you have to write in landscape mode, so my palm is always drawing something in the lower right corner!

Gnumeric for spreadsheets. Haven't gotten pygtkeditor or Notepad yet, but am working on it.

scott

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

A hardly use word processors (I'm a LaTeX guy), I only need a plain text editor, preferably one that plays nice with the built-in keyboard and stylus (for copy/paste, scrolling, collapsing of paragraphs, ...). I believe the N810 keyboard is not good enough for emacs or vim (though I haven't tried).

I've stumbled upon note taking application but most use a database (instead of flat plain text files) or allow graphics (stylus sketches), and I don't know how to export them to the real world (read my desktop). I don't use anything like tomboy.

On my Zaurus, which has a slightly better keyboard, I've written blog post and letters in gpe-edit (like the Gnome editor gedit) and rsync'ed to my desktop, which worked pretty well for me.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

My 2 cents: I have to agree. I just tried notecase, and I can't even get it to import a plain text file. After having many pda-like machines (Newton, Zaurus, and now n800) I have found plain text is the best for portibility.

I just rolled back to OS2007 for leafpad (a nice GUI-based plain text editor). I have tried pygtkeditor, but found it too slow for editing large (read 200k+) text files. Probably great for small file software development.

Perhaps leafpad or a gedit-like app will be ported to OS2008.

Craig...

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Amen to that! I ended up writing a script to export Outlook Notes to get the plain text out when I stopped using Notes under PocketPC. It shouldn't have to be that much work! If you have plain text you can at least use vi/vim/more/less :-)

I ended up using a (Windows) application called Tombo (not TomBoy) http://tombo.sourceforge.jp/En/ which I have run under Wine for Linux support. Not so useful for the NIT though....

I ended up writing a cross platform version http://code.google.com/p/pytombo/wiki/WxTombo but with the new versions of wx it only partial works now (menus missing). I'm in the process of re-designing the core library and moving to a GTK gui but I do not yet have something ready for prime time so it is pretty much vaporware right now.

I do have a web based search tool for it though and the code is available for that http://code.google.com/p/pytombo/wiki/WebTomboGrep -- it uses python and because the Python runtime on the NIT is missing BaseHttpServer it will probably need a few of the standard library files copying across.

I do not yet have a NIT though (still waiting for the Nokia fairies to visit me) so at the moment I'm not looking into getting it Nokia ready.


Someone has ported Scite (needs packaging), I personally love Scite on the desktop. It should be worth a look.

Chris

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

For a simple text editor what's wrong with the builtin NOTES app? That's what I'm using - it will do both formatted and simple text.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

I learned there are two simple ways to install additional software

1. Installing a program from http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2008
2. Adding a repository, e.g. from http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.ph...&system=maemo4 and install stuff via the program manager

Both can done by clicking on a link (green arrow) to an "install file" from the tablet. The latter is preferable. Am I right so far?

which repository has PIM for the n810 OS2008?

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Go [url=http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.php?lang=en&system=maemo4]here[/url ] as soon as the site is up again

Look for a repo that mentions GPE (a PIM suite). Look for the other repos mentioned as required (I believe it's maemo-hackers). Click both green arrow links (from the IT)

open Program Manager and look for contacts, calendar, and so on.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

It has been a while since I used it, but if I recall, it was, well, too simple. Very slow to load large text files (if at all), and keyboard equivalents were missing, and couldn't edit multiple files.

I actually got nedit working on OS2008, but since it doesn't use GTK, the task manager didn't know it was running. Once you switched away, you couldn't get back :(

Craig...

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

I agree that leafpad is great.

Could anyone with developer skills have a look to this:
http://www.wardenclyffetower.com/Mae...leafpad.tar.gz

It's suppose to be ready for os2008 but needs packaging..

Thanks in advance.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

'free' has a version of leafpad under development for OS2008. It is not hildonized yet, but it does work.

See: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...d.php?p=119961

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

This blog was focused on text editor. It is not a problem, it is preference.
The problem is PIM.
PIM is not just a storage for contacts and calendar.
1. Need item by item sync with "world" (e.g via bluetooth, though doesn't matter how) including (!) MS products
2. Need to be usefull for other application. Email, Meetings, Phone calls (e.g cell phone via Bluetooth), SMS notifications.
3. Need encription for sensitive information (mostly notes)
Not needed all in one product, but combination should work.

Does anybody has solution to it?

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Preferably something that supports SyncML, the standard protocol used by mobile phones. Even standard Nokia phones (i.e. non-Symbian) have decent PIM support: a workable address book (that lets you specify multiple e-mails and phone numbers per contact) and good SyncML implementation.

Supporting SyncML would allow interoperability with OS X and Linux (though Linux's OpenSync implementation is a bit flaky). I'm sure there's a SyncML-compliant synchronization solution for Windows too.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Nothing yet. Graham Cobb is really active these days on GPE, but it's only moving so fast. Each new feature seems to have to go through some kind of lengthy political process before getting implemented.

I see a PIM as being creative ways to view information, not just contain it.

Consider just a datebook: A 3-day view is one example. How about a month view with little symbols or icons so you can see what the event - or pattern of events - are at a glance? Colors and fonts for certain categories, or specific events. A filter on events - perhaps even by icon, or regular expressions for that matter? Task items that are either loosely or rigidly connected with a date. Week numbering. Unique alarm sounds per event (ok this isn't viewing an item, but oh so useful).

I know these are fairly big jobs to implement, but every serious PIM has them. These features can be really liberating to a power user.

Will we ever see all these? Yes, but I'm thinking it's going to take a really long period of time.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

the thing with GPE is that its not only the tablets thats using it. hell, the tablets are not its primary user iirc.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

To quote Graham Cobb, a (the?) primary developer of GPE:

"Although the stable update will be made available in the Extras repository, this beta release is available in the "extras-devel" repositories. To see the update you should add a catalogue to the Application Manager as:

Catalogue name: extras-devel
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel
Distribution: your distribution name: gregale, bora, chinook or diablo
Components: free"

Once this repo is added, just just go to the app manager and loog for the GPE items under "Installable Applications"

I would recommend you at least read the first post by Graham that has a few pointers about this release here:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=22219

The GPE suite is quite good but still has some quirks, The recent update has fixed a few things and the suite wors well together. I would recommend the GPE Summary which sits on your Tablet desktop and provides a summary of that days upcoming calendar items and a few lines from you ToDo list. You can also aunch calendar (which can now be fully closed) by touching a calendar entry on the summary window.

I like the ToDo because it allows single entries to be placed in multiple categories and then you can search and sort by these categories.


Also just recently installed the GPE File manager and it shows 'everything' unlike the built in one which hides almost everything interesting from the user.

Hope these comments are a help. Cheers.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

Yeah I don't see why that should impact the development of any particular platform though. If the system is designed in a good modular way, which I think it must be, then it could be plugged in to any platform.

But those features I mentioned would and could work on any of the platforms.

Thing is, that GPE isn't a PIM. GPE is more equivalent to Maemo.

Re: "N810 Linux PDA": PIM, Text Editor and Software Installation
 

heh, true. my bad...