maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Announce: Traveller for NIT's

jolouis	2009-05-04 , 14:42
Posts: 631 \| Thanked: 837 times \| Joined on May 2007 @ Milton, Ontario, Canada	#14

Cool App! I haven't had a chance to actually play around with it, but looks pretty slick especially for an initial release.

The icon does not show until a reboot happens though

I found this a while back and pushed into the flipclock postinst file, seemed to help with the icon stuff:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -r /etc/osso-af-init/af-defines.sh ]; then
  source /etc/osso-af-init/af-defines.sh
fi

if [ -x /usr/bin/dbus-send -a -x /usr/bin/gtk-update-icon-cache ]; then
  dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.freedesktop.Notifications /org/freedesktop/Notifications
org.freedesktop.Notifications.SystemNoteInfoprint string:"Updating icon cache" || true
fi

if [ -x /usr/bin/gtk-update-icon-cache ]; then
  gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/hicolor || true
fi

Maintaining cross-platform compatibility is always cool, but just remember that you're probably missing out on some of the great features of the tablets. That being said, it's entirely possible to write an app that takes advantage of things like power savings, alarmD etc AND still functions normally on other OS's, you just have to be really cautious in your coding that's all.

We had the same type of issues and discussions while doing the FlipClock development, and in the end after rebuilding everything to fully take advantage of the Tablet-specific stuff (which makes a big difference in the performance and practicality of the app... see exp in a moment) I look back through the code now and find that to make it fully portable to a non-tablet OS again is actually quite simple to do... I just haven't had a reason to do it yet...

Some big points that you may/may not be aware of with an app like this (just from my experiences with FlipClock and related discussions):
1) Power management is IMPORTANT. Don't overlook this; don't ignore it; don't pretend that on a tablet it won't matter. Any app that has a clock and alarm functionality should either A) implement power management or B) make sure the user is aware of the possibility that the tablet will run out of juice if left on battery only over night with the app running. The first version of FC that we had drained a full battery in about 5-6 hours; the most recent version I've left running on my tablet for about 4-5 days without noticing any significant change in load between having the app on and not having anything running... this makes a big difference esp. when travelling or having alarms/etc.

2) AlarmD is your friend on the tablets. You don't have to rely on it, and for cross-platform compatibility you can always just have a little option to detect if it's there and do things normally if it's missing (I've got a config setting in FC for this, but detection will be in the next version); but it does give you some pretty awesome advantages; namely helps with the power consumption thing, and lets your app auto launch at alarm times.

Anyways, seems very cool! If you need some advice/help with anything drop me a line

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