Capt,

compiling on the tablet isn't that bad for this project. Each module is built in a couple of seconds and linkage is similar, its well within my annoyance threshhold at the moment. (if anything, this method is faster than the old way of using vmware scratchbox).

Being able to fixup bugs and do non trivial work on the go is amazing - i created the graffiti wall module whilst sat in the developer room at linuxtag earlier this year

There are a number of limitations which would prevent its use with other larger projects (lack of autotools is a major one) but it works for me.

I do not use the DSP for anything at this moment in time (and infact when the DSP is running the whole device runs slower..).
All code is aimed towards the cpu itself.

The amount of processing power required to do RGB->yuv conversion on the fly would make converting SDL a none trivial operation and I doubt would yeald acceptable performance benefits at this time (Lardmans DSP investiagations may surprise us!).

In the future however I am hopeful we can make use of the rest of the specialist hardware within the OMAP2420 chip package, this includes a hardware RGB->YUV conversion and of course the powervr 3d hardware but this appears to be a non-starter at the moment.

Another possibility is to use the same YUV graphics mode under X11 itself and actually run maemo very quickly in greyscale (sidestepping conversion altogether) - a major compromise, but something "technically" possible which linux/x11/maybe SDL supports (8bit greyscale framebuffers exist).

Thank you for your interest in the project and I am also hopeful that we can build an extensive collection of exciting software toys and projects to show off our nokias.