Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Awesome essay. I highly recommend UI developers of Maemo read this immediately (as well as other application developers that could use a bit of a UI overhaul). As an upcoming developer, I know I gathered some good ideas from it.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

He brings up some very good points, and I would personally love to see an unconventional, object-oriented interface on the 770/N800.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I said something like this last week, Sean, here:http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=3988&page=4; although I wasn't as polite. I was brutal. I basically said that the Newton OMP in my drawer, which still works great, is infinitely better as a PDA than my 770.

I know, I know, Nokia says: "But it's not a PDA, it's an Internet Tablet!" Whatever.

I have to add to your list: Newton Connection Utilities. They sync'ed my Newtons, which included the OMP, 110, 130 and an eMate 300. Sure, you can copy files via the USB cable, but what files, from where and to where? Who knows? The Linux fanboys? Joe User doesn't.

The Newton was able to easily copy the most relevant data from the PC or Mac since its inception (uh, was it in 1993?), and the Internet Tablet can't even import a list of contacts, calendar items or really anything, in 2007, 14 years later? The 'import' feature is cr@p, and it is inconsistent. Give me a break. I am not going to re-enter all my contacts by hand - that's ridiculous.

I did a project for my Operating Systems class in college, on the Newton OS, and I did a lot of research about the ARM processor and how it can idle down, sleep soundly, then wake up, and switch on immediately, when it needs to alert the user of a timed event. The Internet Tablet, which also runs the ARM processor, is crippled, so that it will not do one simple thing, which is: wake the heck up, to tell Michael that he is missing a staff meeting. I need that.

Can somebody make a decision to switch this feature back on? Can we even get a simple cron for this? Today?

Finally, you did mention the toolkit, and here is the thing - I know C++, VB and Java - that is what I use at work. I do not have hours and hours of free time to learn a new language like Python or Scheme. I would actually pay for a robust C++ tool (something like Visual C++) or a tool for Java, to develop real apps for the Internet Tablet.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I wish Apple had sold off the Newton IP rather than burying it. Such a lovely device to use, and the OS was terrific. Every PDA manufacturer could learn a thing or two from the Newt. With some work, it could have been a better OS to put on the iPhone than OS X. Steve's gone for style over function :-(

Great article!

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

What a phenomenal article! I don't need the N800 to accomplish the same tasks as a Newton, but his points on some of the mind boggling asinine UI decisions in the device are right on...particularly regarding the iconography and ridiculous waste of space throughout. (The taskbar at the top takes up FAR too much screen real estate with it's ugly border, as does the application icon section to the left.) It's a complaint that bubbles up to nearly all *nix distributions...that the UI is designed for geeks by geeks, and almost as an afterthought. This isn't as big of a deal on a workstation-class machine, but it is a serious impediment on a portable device.

One thing I've noticed in the PDF viewer is that there is no way to use the hardware buttons to move to the next page in a document. You can scroll around the page while zoomed in, but as far as I can tell there is simply no way to navigate page by page. Between that and the fact that you can't rotate the document on this gorgeous screen...I am just floored!

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

:eek:
this had me LOL:
"The scroll triangles adjust the menu -- I wish I were kidding you -- by the pixel. Not the item. The pixel. It's really fun pressing and holding for things to slowly go by."
Makes me feel sad all the Newton IP doesn't have a platform. hope someone at Nokia or Apple is listening...

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Fortunately at least the top bar is themeable in the way that it can be made a bit less space waster. Also the left and right application borders can be stripped off. I agree that they should take less space by default, but I'm just saying that using community themes, you can get a bit more space for apps in 770 and N800. e.g. nuvotheme uses 45 pixels in the top bar for apps while all default themes use 60 pixels.

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa.../NuvoTheme.deb

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

OK, I'm going to dismiss a lot of your points - although that doesn't mean I don't agree with the spirit, just to clarify the detail so it doesn't come across as FUD.

You see the external media: there's nothing on here, so there's nothing to get confused by. If you use the File Manager and copy stuff to the clearly labelled MMC card, it'll then show up when plugged in to a PC.

I think here you're making the mistake of assuming that because you've poked around with Xterm (or followed instructions to do something "out of the ordinary"), you assume others will too.

What would a Nokia-provided sync actually import calendar items *to*? They don't provide a PIM. GPE Calendar does provide an import (and synchronisation) which works well for me with ScheduleWorld and Google Calendar.

It's done (late, admittedly): OS 2007 includes an alarm framework:

http://maemo.org/platform/docs/howto...face_bora.html

Hopefully GPE will be updated to use it shortly.

C++ should be possible with gtkmm/maemomm and possibly Laika/CDT in Eclipse. I dunno, though.

Cheers,

Andrew

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

This is the one thing about the UI that actually bothers me daily, the rest I'm pretty flexible with. I've seen so many UIs, I can adjust.

But the missing page scroll button hampers my daily use. In the pdf reader I have to go out of full-screen and use the stylus on the arrow at the bottom, and in the browser I likewise have to use the scrollbar (seriously, who actually uses the scrollbar for page forwarding even on a desktop? After you figured out a better way (keys, wheel mouse, whatever). It's tiring.

I expected the five-way button to let me scroll page-by-page up and down, as the five-way button on my T3 will. Instead it just moves line-by-line up and down in some menu to the left or some such other useless thing. The button on my T3 works intelligently enough to "know" when i want to scroll. This should definitely be possible to fix in the N800 UI, we're not talking paradigm shift here (unlike the database vs. file system discussion).

The five-way key should let you scroll page-by-page up and down, and scroll left/right when there is a horizontal scrollbar in the application.

(Actually there's one more thing I would like: Rotate browser window to portrait mode, for use when reading Slashdot. Slashdot keeps all the text in a narrow center column, very bad for the N800 landscape screen. Ah, I see you mentioned rotation too, in the quote above:) ).

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. ;)

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Well, I put it out on InternetTabletTalk.com, exclusively, almost a year ago. I guess I should have put it out on something like tucows or dogpile, but I didn't. As a matter of fact, I just checked the EXE date and it is from Thursday, February 09, 2006, 1:58:28 AM. So it is almost a year old. I stated that it was freeware, and it still is.

I just now tried to go to the software download link on InternetTabletTalk.com, and I see that the link is no longer viable. I guess the website upgrade broke that.
_____________________________

I will put Outlink out on the web again, this time, not just on InternetTabletTalk.com. I can't do it now; it is on my home PC.



Below is a screen capture of Outlink running, and a screen capture of the resultant files, all easy to read/understand XML:

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

You should definitely announce it on maemo-developers, I think there's a quite clear split between development/hacking on the mailing list and end-user type questions and more community-based content here.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I am not trolling/flamebaiting. I am making points. Sorry if you can't handle a dissenting viewpoint.

I do want this device to succeed, and simply trying to cajole developers is not enough. Developers will write for this platform if they want to, and have the time.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I didn't say your contributions were limited to trolling and flamebaiting, michael, so no need to get your feathers completely ruffled. I'll gladly give you credit for the salient points, but by the same token, I'll also kindly and respectfully ask you to, as I did, minimize the drama exemplified in the hyperbole.

Your assumption that I "can't handle a dissenting viewpoint" is a prime example of what I'm describing. It's an inaccurate accusation, disingenuous, arrogant, totally unnecessary and serves only to place the other party on the defensive. It would be great if all of us, myself included, could work harder on avoiding such antagonistic fare and stick to constructive (even dissenting, which I'm sure we are ALL mature enough to handle) dialog.

If you wish to engage in flaming, I respectfully request you use private messaging.

On topic, I wholeheartedly agree with your last statements. See, wasn't that easy? ;)

Thanks.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Okay, I'll jump in and start back on the topic of the betterment of the Maemo GUI by saying that I've been working on a Home applet that would essentially launch web bookmarks, applications, and files from a single, one-touch location. The applet is called quick.launch, and would be customizable by adding and arranging items as the user chooses. Now I'm not an advanced developer by any stretch, and I'm finding it a bit daunting to create such an application at this level. So I'd like to invite any developers that would be interested in collaborating with me to get this and likely other application ideas up and running for these devices quicker than I, or anyone else, could possibly do alone.

Here is the latest screenshot of how the application looks so far. I'm thinking that each "cell" would act as a button and hold various item icons. Each cell would act as the touch controls by snapping to the center cell for display of the item title/name and for launching the item (either from the center cell button or from the select key on the d-pad).

For example, if you were to press the far left cell/button, the items would shift right four places while displaying the selected item in the center cell. At which point you could launch that item or continue navigating via the other cells/buttons.

I'm available via Gmail if anyone is interested.
- Derek Coleman

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

So the topic of this conversation was the inconsistencies in the UI of the N800. Can any of these issues be fixed/altered by 3rd-party developers or can they only be "fixed" by Nokia?

I, too, am a former Newton owner, and I am considering the purchase of an N800 to replace an aging Tapwave Zodiac. However, I don't want to leave a mature (OK, old) system (Palm OS) for an unfinished/unrefined platform in the N800. While I have only played with the N770 and N800 at CompUSA, many of the issues Sean brought up were immediately apparent to me in the limited time that I spent with the device.

It is my intention to set up a scratchbox and do some digging, but is it at all possible to alter the interface in a more substantial way than just altering the theme? Just how malleable is the Hildon UI? Can the icons be replaced? Is there an IDE for building Maemo apps? Which languages can be used?

Thanks in advance for any info.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

About your last question : for GUI apps, to my knowledge, C, C++ (N800) and Python.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Anyone could entirely replace all of the GUI on a Maemo device, and just keep the underlying OS for power management, wifi, X etc.

Indeed, this has already been done with the GPE and Opie ports - but I don't think they offer enough (or have been sufficiently well publicised) to gain any traction.