So, for us mortals that stayed at home this week, can those who went tell us what happened? news, stories etc... some blogs have a couple of words, but i would like to hear it from the others. What got your attention in the summit?

This looks like a good thread (as any other ) to publish my notes, so here they go (the remarks in parentheses are usually mine):

Maemo UI Vision

Hints
multi-touch
more bling (to appease the show-offs, Nokia wants to hit the mainstream) (Clutter-based)
more social network services

Screens
Small things that matter

• 30 milliseconds tactile feedback
  
• 9x9 mm finger usage area

Importance in UI area

• Stability (highest)
  
• Performance
  
• ease of use
  
• Efficiency
  
• Consistency
  
• Personalization
  
• Finger usage
  
• Aesthetics (graphics)
  
• One hand usage
  
• Sound effects (lowest)

Summary: What can we get out of Fremantle

Application design assuming permanently online
Clutter (not very developer friendly in the alpha SDK to follow) (Clutter has Vala bindings...)
Gecko widgets (probably the reason browserd is always running...)
MicroB addons (maybe XUL?)
More commercial focus (more commercial apps)
Promoting and sponsoring selected applications
Early access to devices for certain projects
Extra focus on interface also for outside projects - Nokia wants to show that OSS can be beautiful.


Alpha SDK - Novemmber 2008
Beta SDK - March - May 2009

Theme Maker and QT 4.4 will be released for the beta SDK (at that time)

Maemo Development Platform

Summary

SDK

• Scratchbox
  
• GCC, GDB

SDK+

• Cross compiling engine based on Scratchbox 2
  
• Tools distribution based on Etch
  
• Final: December 2008

Fremantle SDK - weekly releases, delta documentation, improved visibility and transparency
Automatic SDK updates
Maybe unstable trees for some months after final

Tools

Toolchain based on Codesourcery CS2007Q3
GCC 4.2.1
ARM v7

Crash Reporter
Functracker
Rich reports compatible with GDB

New: System wide low overhead profiler OProfile

• available for Diablo with kernel flash
  
• find performance bottlenecks
  
• viewer

New: Resource leak tester. sp-endurance

• collects stats between tests
  
• viewer

Technology & Architecture

Future goals

• Layered architecture
  
• Configurability
  
• API compatibility
  
• Managed data formats (transferable data between platformms (support for S60 data), maybe syncable PIM)
  
• Independent apps
  
• Openness
  
• Performance optimized
  
• Simple (but not too simple)
  
• Defined (maybe breaking API changes to support that?)
  
• Linux mainstream - easy portability.
  
• Efficiency of development (SDK+)

Multimedia

GStreamer

• Codec hardware acceleration
  
• HW compatibility
  
• Multimedia policy and routing (pulseaudio)
  
• Stable and coherent (pulseaudio is not exactly stable now)

New architecture

• OpenMAX IL (DSP bridge) (this will probably take care of compatibility)
  
  • no more DSP sinks
    
• Helix support planned

New software

• OpenMAX
  
  • Used for codecs
    
• Pulseaudio
  
  • Audio routing and policy
    
  • Audio pre and post-processing
    
• gst-qa-system
  
  • Improved sound testing
    
• Camera-bin (wil be open-sourced)
  
  • High level API for still image and video capture
    
  • GStreamer plugin
    

Midas

Local and remote playback and browsing, playlist management and sharing
Media player daemon (only for playlists)

Sources

• Pluggable
  
• Automatic discovery
  
• API for the crawler (they will share meta tracker for that)

Sinks

• Pluggable
  
• Automatic discovery
  
• Generic API for playback control

Playlists

• Support for commmon management tasks
  
• Persistance

Sharing

• Sink states and playlists are shared between the applications that use them.

Targets

• Ease development of UI
  
• Extendable (also auto discovery of plugins at run time)
  
• Flexibility (you can use in-process and and separate process plugins)

Maemo Extras

Reduce the number of external repos

• Build all source packages in external repos
  
• Show status of builds
  
• Try to discover missing sources.
  
• Help developers to fix any build prooblems
  
• Convince developers to move their packages
  
• Convince teamms inside Nokia to do the same

Add autobuilder checks (warnings)

• Lintian (policy)
  
• package versions
  
• prevent double uploads
  
• report problems with applications that have deps on SDK only packages
  
• report packages that will break SSU

Ideas

• Remove the signing
  
• Automatic autobuilder commit from garage VCS
  
• Package build status page
  
• Application testing by community
  
• Add voting for package promotiion on site
  
• Central location for reporting of broken packages
  
• Multi-package builds (automatic build of required dependencies)

Rich Map application based on Clutter
for Maemo 5 (at least an idea for such, from Collabora

Features

• Scrolling, zooming, fading in on load
  
• Text Markers
  
• Animated signals.

Future plans

• Interactivity
  
• Routes
  
• Python, C# bindings
  
• Custom map sources
  
• Geotagging plugin for F-Spot

Maybe someone can add his from the other sessions...

@Bundyo:

Let me see if I understand you correctly: It's your understanding that the next OS will not roll out with an interpretive language that has OS and Window Manager bindings. True?

Help me see where i said that, 'cause i can't seem to find it.

On the development platform session we were asked which language should be added to the SDK in the future. Not that it was decided, but the audience was more inclined to want Python. Probably they will go with that but we'll see. I definitely prefer to see Vala over Python.

Sorry, I saw "Future plans: Python bindings" and my head exploded. If I had looked more closely I would have realized that that information was related only to the "Rich Map App."

So, from your latest post it seems it is your understanding that the next Nokia tablet OS will roll out with an interpretive language that has OS and Window Manager bindings. True?

Thanks for your time and I'm looking forward to all the forum fallout from the Summit.

Yup... they didn't say interpretive, but most choices are in that area (unless they decide to go for C++).

Bundyo, thanks for the transcriptions of your notes, it must have taken a while.
Any apps to come, side from multimedia? or maybe a hint about nobounds? would be nice to know.

Boy, I can second that notion. Thanks incredibly.

Roger

Thanks Bundyo.
Did they mention if the new device would have 2 full sdhc card slots.

Holy **** batman, that's a lot to look forward to. Uber thanks bundyo.