What about bounties? I'm sure there's a LOT of people (myself included) willing to contribute towards a GPS project that will use vector maps.

Very good observasion - I like your analysis and would like to continue.

It is obvious that developing new applications for the tablet is not a simple matter. Just consider the number of things you are expected to be familiar with before you can produce something worthy of general consumption:

1. Gtk+ - if you have never programmed in Gtk+, here is about 2-3 months of evenings burned out to learn the toolkit.

2. Automake - there is a decent number of on-line manuals on the web, and yet, it is another 2-3 weeks for a novice to pick up the stuff.

3. Debian packaging - don't get me started, if you've never done it before, you would waste 2 weeks easily figuring out what's going on.

4. Hildon-specifics - I have spend good three days trying to figure out why my app would come up and be killed by dbus right away. A number of people have lived through the same thing (even yesterday, there was someone on the mailing list asking the same very question).

5. A bare minimum knowledge of d-bus and Linux file structure.

This is just for starters. Looking at the prerequisites list, you can notice that new applications written for 770 exclusively might be in the pipeline, but it would take them some time to come out.

Which leaves us with porting of what already exists in GTK+ app pool. Look at the Nokia's very own "Porting an existing application" HOWTO.
They pretty much suggest you to gut your application - you are going to end up with two different source trees to maintain. What Nokia developers should have done is to take a simple GTK+ application and illustrate how to modify it so that the changes would stay in the same source tree.

One thing that I have not figured out is how to setup $srcdir/debian files so that I can still use the same set to build .deb packages both for a desktop as well as 770.

If anyone knows the answer, please, let me know.

Enough of ranting - here is my small contribution to the brave new world of nokia 770 - if you are an aspiring developer you might find my personal notes useful:

Vlad's Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Notes

Let's together make 770 a replacement for all PDAs, iPods, $100 PCs and what-have-you out there!

I am an aspiring 770 developer, I just haven't actually got started yet I am a novice Linux user but I develop SW for a living (on Windows though) and I have done some Palm development in the past too. Getting started on the 770 is a struggle so hints and tips like your help a lot. Thanks!

Thanks for such an insightful post, michaelalanjones. I had a Z too before the digitizer on the screen died, and it's definitely a familiar scene here with the 770. There is more interaction from the corporation that put out the product, but it's still fragmented and somewhat "unofficial"-- people get replies to their questions depending on how busy the developers are and so forth.

Most people spend a lot of time struggling with the platform-specific details instead of developing apps, much like Z; they always require more customization than you might think. Thus you end up with a handful of overworked, skilled coders maintaining some of the larger applications and a million unmaintained, semi-functional smaller apps. It also doesn't help that Nokia has taken the stance that a lot of the really exciting possibilities like BT keyboards, USB host, and PIM apps are not officially sanctioned (If you break it, you get to keep both pieces!). It would be great to see an official roadmap of sorts, kind of like the Mozilla team did as far as desired features, timelines for releases, etc. I'd really like to see some effort put forth by Nokia to try and make porting applications easier-- less Hildon/Maemo, more plain GTK/X. Silly things like not showing an icon for non-Hildon apps or having an esoteric approach to keyboard input really kill the enthusiasm when someone is trying to get up to speed on the platform.

My worst fear is that like all the other Linux PDA companies (Agenda, Sharp, etc.) we'll have a short window of active development before the corporate backing disappears, leaving us with an orphaned device and no clear path for progress. We then get to start all over again when the next vendor comes out with the Foo-3000 PDA-like device that runs a non-standard version of the Bar-Tk++ toolkit. The 770 has a lot of potential and I really hope that we can actually get a larger community of developers involved in spite of users flaming (You know who are) and the stability issues experienced. It really seems like a pivotal time to me now. People are starting to lose their enthusiasm for the device as the honeymoon period is over, Nokia's gone silent about any more releases in the short term, and the overall pace of development and discussion (Aside from complaining) has declined. I would hope that things will improve, but we really need some more feedback and interaction from Nokia.

Just my 2c,
Larry

I'm typing this while waiting for an application to build. A few observations -

The pace of development - quite a few packages released early on, less in the last few weeks. This may be more to do with folks sharing their personal "essentials" - I certainly appreciated ssh and Vnc - and some stuff that proved to be relatively easy ports. I'll admit to having some stuff on my 770, e.g. micro-emacs, that I probably should share. The more involved stuff is going to take longer, perhaps even requiring more than one person per port. So I doubt the pace has slowed, it's just not delivering installable packages at the same rate.

"Other Linux PDAs" - it's not just those that are in trouble, all PDAs have been in trouble for a while, because phones are now far more capable and because of the way they're sold seem cheaper to folks prepared to sign the contract. I guess that's part of why Nokia don't call the 770 a PDA. Anyway, without the software it isn't.

Anyway - my app has just built using my new approach, so the orginal source tree isn't modified at all, it just sits in a sub directory. So let's see if it installs and runs....

It's normal for open source projects. Sourceforge (and to extent even say Debian?) are full of that kind of software. 90% are too ambitious to get really anywhere. Sometimes years go by before somebody picks up the work, just ask some developers at #maemo :-)

Obviously we need more projects! Perhaps Nokia should market the device more aggressively to a narrow sector of consumers: the Linux user community.

It's funny - for a long time there was complaints that Linux/OSS was strong in internet/infrastructure, but we had no games... Perhaps the impression of the Linux developer community is just that the 770 is a 'geek toy', a device for your freetime.. and perhaps the developers have less experience of mobile platforms, and don't see the really useful everyday application ideas?

I understand your view and agree, but my personal experience over the past few days with the 770 suggests to me that the 770 will not make it in the mass market and not because some people are "expecting too much" from the 770. I for one only want to use the 770 to browse the net and , most importantly, to read my work e-mail on the web (since the e-mail client is poor and their is no citrix clent). As documented in this forum, however, the 770 has a problem with outlook web access, and the proposed solution, installing a proxy server, requires a degree in computer programing in linux. Further, I do not see any report that even this proposed solution fixes the problem with owa. I really do not want much from the 770 other than to browse, but, without outlook web access, I think I have no choice but to return the 770. It is really a shame too because the 770 probably CAN do what I want, but an average consumer like me cannot make it happen. This goes equally to the creation of the swap file that I have read about with great interest. An average user like me just cannot do what it takes to get the 770 into prime form. Ultimately, I cannot see a mass market for a device that leaves an average user in this position. Very disappointing because the news reader is excellent, and I was anxious to play with viewing movies on the device. DAMN OUTLOOK WEB ACCESS!!