Announce: currency convertor
 

I am pleased to announce the availability of a currency convertor for the "Chinook" Maemo release of the Nokia Internet Tablet. The program "gcur", originally by Pierre-Paul Lavoie, has gotten some slight updates.

The "gcur" program does conversion between 166 different currencies. The program will update foreign exchange currency rates from the internet, or use a saved data file if a connection is not available.


Please see the Maemo Garage project site to download the ".deb" package or browse the source code:

• https://garage.maemo.org/projects/gcur/

The program is fully functional now, but I welcome the assistance of developers in creating compiled versions for the Bora and Mistral environments and improving the user interface. The gcur program is written in "C" and already has some Hildon customization.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

is there an obvious method of updating the currency values?

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

has anyone ported "gnucash" for IT yet?

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Yes...did you look at the package?

[1] if the currency values as saved in the data file are more than 30
days old, or if the data file does not exist, the program tries
to download new data

[2] at any time, you can select the "update" choice from the menu
within gcur to update the values

[3] you can run gcur from the command-line with the "-u" option
(which could be put into the gcur.desktop file) in order to update
the values whenever the program is run

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

i see it now. it didn't seem to be updating, since every time i selected 'update' it did not indicate it was updating, only telling me it had data from 1969. but now, three hours later, i see it has updated the currency.

two more wuestions then:
how long should i expect it to take to update the data when i select 'update'
is the currency data current to the hour, day, week, (etc.)?

john

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

off_topic:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/genecash/nokia/index.html

(see the 'Spend It' program - it's not GNUcash, but may help?)

on_topic:

tks for the currency calc app - will take a looksee!

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

The currency convertor gets it's data from the Yahoo! Finance site, at downloads.yahoo.com. In theory, it should take as long to download using gcur as it would through a web browser. However, I've also seen a wide range in download times (a few seconds to a few minutes).

The "timeliness" and accuracy of the data are dependent on Yahoo. One future enhancement to the program would be to specify and use multiple data sources (xe.com, ecb.eu, ucb.ca, etc.), much as the KDE package "keurocalc" does. I would gladly welcome assistance from any developer interested in enhancing the program.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Nice Program! Two suggestions:

(1) Show some sort of progress when updating the currency exchange rates. Or at the very least pop up a "Done!" box upon successful completion.
(2) Have an option to keep the input fields and/or currency pull-down menu selections persistent from one run to the next.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

They are both good suggestions. Though my development skills and time are quite limited, I might be able to get to (1). I believe that the "right way" to do (1) is to update the timestamp message in the footer line of the window.

The "ToDo" file in the source code tree lists something much like (2).

Feel free to grab the source code from the Maemo garage site and make changes, or help out by encouraging someone else, or by submitting documentation, etc.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Some of the other "update" type of programs, e.g. omweather, will pop up a box with 'Updating' (e.g. 'Update weather'), it disappears when it's finished.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

I travel a bit and this is really going to come in handy.

I noticed that it doesn't honor the proxy server setup in the connection manager, nor does it take the http_proxy environment variable if started from the command line.

I'd request a future feature to support proxy connections.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

For me updating still doesn't work. Tried to run in xterm "gcur -u", and then it changes the data in status bar from 1970 to our days;), but actual currencies don't seem to be refreshed - US$/Russian Roubles are still 1:23.00, when even on Yahoo! Finance site itself it's 1:23.88.
And "Save as default" also doesn't function.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Was this project adopted? Wondering if it will continue to be developed. This wouldd indeed be a wondeerful app to have along on a RTW triip.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Looks very easy/simple program to use.. But is there ´Convert´ button hidden somewere or.. I try change USD->Euro, write number it gets to both screens, but number is same at both, it doesnt convert.. :confused:

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

I'll take a look at enhancing this as it would be useful for me too.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Thanks Baloo! :)

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

I started on a simple python implementation yesterday which is doing everything I want at the moment. I'll release it soon and people can feature request if it doesn't fit their needs.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Beginnings of the application - http://linuxuk.org/node/39

I'll add it garage.maemo.org when I've packaged it up in the next couple of days.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Looking forward to trying it out :)

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

since we won't have much info on the screen, it would be very handy to use large toolbars.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Looks very nice :)

I need install Python first?

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Having a MASSIVE convert button can be usefull too:D

also, how about being able to specify our own filters, ie a group of curriencies we use often ?

Its not fun having to go through 166 currenties before finding USDollars :(

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

I found a way to make the updates appear on the toolbar where it says " Data file last updated: "

1./Click "Menu-->update"
2./wait for 1-3minutes
3./close applications
4./restart gcur
5./you should see " Data file last updated: " followed but the current date.

Voila :D

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Yes, it required python.

The Diablo SDK is giving me problems at the moment with packages not being available. Even with a repository change to Chinook inside of the scratchbox the whole thing fails. I'll have to go back to Chinook to release this now.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Was mcurrency ever released? Been looking for it but no luck. Thanks!

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

I need to package it up again as I added some more features (saving currency data for offline usage). I'll try to release a version this weekend but there is a little know event on this weekend called LugRadio live which I will be attending. :0

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Any updates Baloo?

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Just spent 10 days at Disney Land with the kids so didn't have time to package it up. It still has a little problem with the network connection that I need to look at but I'll be spending more time with it tonight. I should have it released this weekend.

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

Is this project still alive??

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

/me still watching for it too

Re: Announce: currency convertor
 

For those who'd like a quick way to convert currencies without installing an application

Point your browser to Google.com, fill in: <amount of source currency> <source, in ISO format> in <target, in ISO format>

e.g. 50 USD in EUR which converts 50 US Dollars to Euros.

Et voila...

Feature is documented here.

List of currencies with ISO format on Wikipedia.

Possible caveats: 1) need to be online (also at least one time necessary to get latest info about currencies) 2) Google stores your information (else, in case of program discussed in this thread's first post, Yahoo would do this). Both IMO diminishable.