I am looking for clarification as to why there are so many issues and problems with developing for the Maemo 2008 platform.
As a previous Palm user, I was able to do a wide variety of things on my devices. This was even on one device (Sony Clie NX70V) that had half the processing power and a fraction of memory!
Is someone willing to help me understand what an end user needs to know to understand this?
I am not looking for deep explanation, but a general perspective from someone who has developed for both.
thx!

I think you will have to be way more descriptive. What, specifically, are the problems you would like to discuss? I have not done much work for Palm devices, but I at least made some attempts - had the SDK and all set up. To me it's always been infinitely easier to make Maemo applications.
As you mention power and memory - are you maybe talking about problems with running applications? This again sounds strange to me, if you compare with Palm devices (2KB-12KB heap sizes..).

So, you'll just have to be a bit more specific or it'll be very difficult to comment.

With PyQt4 development has become quite easy.. whether you're doing it for M2008 or M5 .. both Diablo and Fremantle have PyQt4 bindings thanks to Attila.

I too, would like to know what specifically the problem is?

TA-t3:First off, THANK YOU for responding and taking the time!

Let's start with Mypaint as an example. I asked earlier today on that thread about a 2008 version and got the same (for the most part) answer as with other inquiries for this. Thanks to anders_gud for his explanation on this. Other than his explanation, which I still don't understand in terms of the coding terminology, is it possible to create a more stripped down version of this or similar for 2008?

Another seemingly simple thing is the old missing EQ in Maemo mp3 players. There were several in the Palm OS platform to choose from and again for devices much more limited!

I am stuck on the fact that I see lot's of old Palm apps that did a variety of things on what is supposed to be a more archaic platform. Why?

I suspect it is the root drawback of the "open platform": there is no reward for spending energy and time if the end product is given away for free!

I think this is where the iphone and Android platforms have got it going on with the "freemium" model.

Now, if this is NOT the case, I would really like to hear more as to why not...

And thanks again for all of your input here in this community. It is valuable!

It looks like you have run into two very specific problems, the complexity of backporting MyPaint (in its current incarnation) from a newer platform to an older one, and the limitation of EQ (limited on Maemo 5 and, as far as I know, entirely missing from Diablo).

This does not indicate a general problem in the development process for Maemo though. I still maintain that it's vastly simpler to develop for Maemo than PalmOS, at least for someone with my background: I'm used to develop for Posix-compatible, Unix-like platforms. I can for the most part develop exactly as I do for my desktops, and, for non-GUI applications, just take whatever I need from the huge pool of existing Debian applications and re-build for Maemo. GUI applications need more work, but, except for some missing pieces the selection of libraries and tools is huge.

As for what will be developed specifically for Maemo (after all, what you want on a mobile device isn't necessarily interesting on a desktop and therefore maybe not already existing): Please note that this is limited by the number of active developers and the time the device has been out. These two numbers alone are vastly smaller than for e.g. iPhone, and probably Android as well. That taken into consideration it looks good to me, we're getting new useful applications every week at least. I just installed a couple of new ones today.

TA-t3: thanks for the dialogue...

I am starting to see a little of where you are coming from.

One quick related question as to, "we're getting new useful applications every week at least. I just installed a couple of new ones today." Were these n900 or n800 apps?

My issue is with focus of the "community" on the n900. I have no intension of getting one as I am NOT a GSM user. I do, however have an Android phone (Samsung Moment) that I just got prior to Christmas and love it. My two devices complement each other very nicely.

I say I have an "issue" because it seems that many developers have moved on from the n810 to the n900 or more specifically from Diablo to Frementle and are finding many of the same problems they encountered on the previous platform. I make this assumption from all the "whining" of n900 users.

So, all that being said, I would really like to see two apps on my device.

1 An audio editing app. Something beyond the abilities of Wave Edit Pro but simpler than say Adobe Audition or Cool Edit (a fullblown desktop app).

2 An image editing app. Something beyond the abilities of Resco Photo Viewer but simpler than Photoshop. Actually, I would like a layer based graphics creation tool along the lines of Photoshop...

If you aren't aware, I am a media producer; ie video, audio, graphics web... So I am very GUI oriented. I love these devices for what they allow me to do and I always want to push them beyond what an engineer had in mind when developing them.

Anyway, I hope you get the picture.

I see. The new applications I installed are for the N900. I still use my N800, but there aren't many new applications coming there - that's true. This is often the case with older operating systems. In that sense PalmOS had a much longer legacy, most new applications were still m68k apps that could run on just about anything.

For the existing N800 applications that I sometimes want a fix or update for I have to fix those myself, which I do. I use the original source, fix, rebuild and install. That's for 3party software, of course. I don't have to do this very often though, the last time I did this was to fix a BT problem with Maemo Mapper.

There are probably some developers out there interested in the kind of applications you would like to see, but I'm not sure how many -- I myself wouldn't want to do those on this platform, I prefer desktop-sized screens for those things.

Yeah the problem you're seeing is backporting an app can sometimes be quite complicated - and a lot of people don't want to go through the effort of doing that for a device that is not used by many people anymore. The N8x0 is somewhat of a dying breed.

I personally just barely started using mine again because I prefer my own Pandora Radio client to the Android Pandora client on my G1. There is N8x0 instructions in my links in my sig.

However, what you'll find is that I am not maintaining pianobar in the Diablo repo's simply because pianobar depends on libao which is not on Diablo. Meaning that I would also have to go find and grab libao and re-package that for diablo too. I did find a deb out there in a long-since forgotten repo that I link to for people to use.. and compiled specifically for diablo just to have it functional.. but I don't keep up with it.

So, while my python front-end works perfectly as-is on the N8x0 devices (I use it).. pianobar was a compiled app that does not. Unfortunately due the change in the processor from the N8x0 device to the N900, C++ and compiled apps are not simply portable from one to the other and require maintenance.. Thus.. it's less attractive for developers to be maintaining several builds from several platforms - especially old dying ones.

I see. The new applications I installed are for the N900. I still use my N800, but there aren't many new applications coming there - that's true. This is often the case with older operating systems. In that sense PalmOS had a much longer legacy, most new applications were still m68k apps that could run on just about anything. Again, my point, look at what was done with virtually nothing to work with. This is why I am frustrated when developers tell me no on my request to see things happen on the 2008 OS. That would be like people who developed for Win 3.1 saying that Win XP doesn't have enough power!

For the existing N800 applications that I sometimes want a fix or update for I have to fix those myself, which I do. I use the original source, fix, rebuild and install. That's for 3party software, of course. I don't have to do this very often though, the last time I did this was to fix a BT problem with Maemo Mapper. OK, that ability would be nice to have

There are probably some developers out there interested in the kind of applications you would like to see, but I'm not sure how many -- I myself wouldn't want to do those on this platform, I prefer desktop-sized screens for those things. I understand but the popularity of the iphone and recently touch have proven that end users are finally showing a desire for this kind of mobile functionality.

hope the color coding makes sense, your quotes are the magenta, my responses are the green.

Well.. and as I said - if a developer chooses to go the PyQt4 route then no changes are required to their app to work on the N8x0 device. As long as the dependencies are there then you are good to go.

The problem comes in that if it needs a dependency you *don't* have, like mine, then you become SOL because nobody wants to take the time to try and rebuild those dependencies when they aren't their responsibility.

If someone ports a C/C++ app to the N900 they are likely going to tell you "No" when you ask for N8x0 just because that requires them to work in a whole new build environment for something they don't have.

This is why I like coding in Python.. but unfortunately it doesn't help with the dependency situation.