Hi, I'm Evil Dave. Some of you may remember me from flamewars such as "Template Toolkit doesn't seperate presentation from logic" and "Anti-virus vendors are as bad as spammers".
There was a discussion today on the #london.pm IRC channel about making Openguides data available on PDAs. I think this is a Jolly Good Idea. Being able to consult a database in my pocket for restaurant and pub reviews would be most useful. Yes, there's Vindigo, but its pub coverage is dire, and in any case, you need to be running Windows or Linux to get it working, and all the cool kids these days are drinking the OS X Kool-Aid.
So, I propose that I write a Palm application which encapsulates the more important bits of Openguides functionality and which can be fed a database, updated at regular intervals. I can start work on this once I finish writing some phone stuff for the Palm which I've been sitting on doing nothing for months.
There are plenty of other PDAs. However, Palm OS is the most common, has the cheapest devices, and is also the most primitive. Therefore I suggest targetting that platform first, and then writing front-ends for other platforms if they are thought necessary, using the same database. The format of Palm databases is well-documented and there are libraries available for many platforms. Taking some other route would not work, as Palm OS is so primitive that it *only* understands its own database format. It does NOT play well with others.
Do we have any experienced Palm and/or C developers here? C is my language is choice for working on Palm OS, mostly because perl isn't available, the mini Java VMs are as buggy as very buggy things, and Python - well, it's Python. Other languages available are BASIC, Lisp and Forth. Forth isn't really suitable, my Lisp-fu isn't strong enough, and BASIC sucks arse.
C also has the advantage that the tools are available for free. I use a gcc m68k cross-compiler, and a bunch of free tools for building the GUI front-end and linking everything right. The Palm OS Emulator is available for free from Palm, and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and probably others. And it has the exceptionally nifty feature of talking with gdb.
Such a project would require that the main Openguides project can supply data, with a nice stable structure. It also requires that Openguides people decide what functionality is important for such a tool and what isn't. bear in mind the constraint that plenty of Palm devices only have 4Mb of storage or less. This is used both for the running application's heap and long-term storage of apps and data. We should aim for a total size of no more than half a meg, and anything more than a meg is Right Out.
So, errm, any thoughts?
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 07:45:09PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
So, errm, any thoughts?
No other thoughts at present other than a resounding "YES!". I'll add it to my list of things to think about, I'd definitely be interested in debugging on my trusty Vx and possibly working out a useful export format; I'm unlikely to be much help at the PalmOS programming side of things.
Cheers,
Dominic.
how about SVG support?
Jonathan Chetwynd http://www.peepo.co.uk "A web by people with learning difficulties"
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Chetwynd" j.chetwynd@btinternet.com To: "Discussion of development on the OpenGuides software." openguides-dev@openguides.org Sent: 23 October 2003 20:51 Subject: Re: [OpenGuides-Dev] Openguides/PalmOS - and an introduction
how about SVG support?
We're looking at using SVG to draw maps on the fly. But these would be imbedded inside an HTML page.
Are you talking about as an alternative rendering to HTML, alongside RSS/RDF?
On Wed 22 Oct 2003, David Cantrell david@cantrell.org.uk wrote:
So, I propose that I write a Palm application which encapsulates the more important bits of Openguides functionality and which can be fed a database, updated at regular intervals.
Just to add my voice to this - I think it's a fantastic idea. I tried to use Plucker to scoop the London OpenGuide onto my Palm many months ago, but well um it was a bit too big when it tried to follow all the links. A custom version would be brilliant.
Do we have any experienced Palm and/or C developers here?
My Palmness and Cness are both very rusty. I have done a very small amount of Palm development, and substantially more C, but both were ages ago. I will certainly do my best to contribute to this project.
Such a project would require that the main Openguides project can supply data, with a nice stable structure.
This won't be a problem. All the data is in a database on which I've done some pretty screwy queries and always been able to get out what I wanted. Yes, I am a SQL-loving freak, but I'm an SQL-loving freak that will make your database extracts for you.
It also requires that Openguides people decide what functionality is important for such a tool and what isn't.
"Show me things of type [foo] near where I am" is a must. There's no point in having it portable otherwise.
Things we can do without include full-text searching, showing wanted pages, editing pages, showing pictures.
Probably.
Kake
On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 12:01:05AM +0100, Kate L Pugh wrote:
On Wed 22 Oct 2003, David Cantrell david@cantrell.org.uk wrote:
Such a project would require that the main Openguides project can supply data, with a nice stable structure.
This won't be a problem. All the data is in a database on which I've done some pretty screwy queries and always been able to get out what I wanted. Yes, I am a SQL-loving freak, but I'm an SQL-loving freak that will make your database extracts for you.
I was mostly concerned with the database structure being stable so that we^Wyou don't have to rewrite screwy queries every week. And of course I don't want to be relying on a particular field existing only to find that it disappears or gets renamed or sumfink.
It also requires that Openguides people decide what functionality is important for such a tool and what isn't.
"Show me things of type [foo] near where I am" is a must. There's no point in having it portable otherwise.
Which gets us to the postcode problem again. "I'm in WC1 what else is?" would work, especially if we can hardcode each postal area's neighbours somewhere.
Things we can do without include full-text searching, showing wanted pages, editing pages, showing pictures.
Oh yes, pictures are hard, listing wanted pages is pointless if you can't edit and I don't propose writing a conduit to submit handheld edits back to the site, and full-text searching, while possible, is not, I imagine, particularly useful.
So, we want to: search by location and category - do we have enough data to use locales? search by name (how fuzzy should this search be?) show list of matching nodes show content of a node should we truncate long nodes? we'll lose funky formatting too.
Possible funky features from easiest to pain in the bum: expose data to the built-in search facility support memory cards add this place to my address book export node to memopad beam this node as a memopad record beam this app and the database use a GPS find this place in Citymaps phone this place #include <wishlist_as_long_as_my_arm>
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David Cantrell -
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Ivor Williams -
Jonathan Chetwynd -
Kate L Pugh