My next developments (for MeeGo)

After two months that I’ve taken a break from software development world, the new season is coming, and today I have written some code again so it seemed like a good idea to write the future plans. I will not have as much time as in previous years to devote to software development (I’ll begin to study a Master degree in September), but I will try to ensure as much time as I can because my goals are quite demanding. I hope to meet my expectations.

At first, just comment that I am not going to continue supporting the software I have written for Maemo. All this software was written in Hildon whose future is uncertain in MeeGo, and after several months there seems to be no one interested for change this future, even if Nokia donated $50,000 to Gnome, but apparently they still have not even decided what to do with this money. Cornelius did a very good suggestion here.

I am sorry for the users of my Maemo 5 applications, but you must understand that I can not keep spending time on something that is not going to have a future.

In other topic, my knowledge of Qt and C++ are increasing little by little, I’m writting working software, but surely the code is not as optimized as possible, something I hope to fix over time.

The main reason why I am writing software in C++ now is because I want it to be available at sites such as Ovi Store for Meego. The Ovi Store does not support applications written in Python, there is a request made by the Maemo Community for that possibility, but I doubt that Ovi supports it soon.

My plan is to market some of these applications, ie sell some applications, therefore the source code will not be available. I would love to sell an application and open the code, but if I open the code anyone can distribute the application for free. If anyone has an idea of how to do both without losing sales, I’m all ears.

Of course there will be free copies (and beta versions, etc.) for friends and people who help me to improve the software, testing it, reporting bugs, etc. and if the business goes well I will be able to give better gifts to these people and even create my own company (Yerga Mobile Solutions)

Without further ado, I will list the applications I’m developing so far with Qt and C++. There are more planned applications but those news will come when necessary.

Periodic Table

When I have to learn to program in a new UI platform, I always write a periodic table (I’m a chemist), and in the case of Qt has been the same way. If I fulfil the plans I have for this application it will be the most complete periodic table ever written for a mobile device.

Features working so far

• The Periodic Table itself, with data for the elements.
• Graphics of the properties of the elements.

Some TODO items

• 3D molecules from PDB files (with online search)
• Amino acids data
• Molecular mass calculator
• Hundred of small things

GTD app

This is the killer application I’m writing right now. It is a task management application using the GTD method (method I’ve been following for months). The application is written taking many ideas of Things for iPhone application, but in the end it will be different with different features.

Features working so far

• All task management (add, move, delete, complete, etc.)
• GTD *lists* (inbox, scheduled, next, someday, etc.).
• Projects support

Some TODO items

• Repeating tasks
• Improve landscape UI
• Attach files (audio, photos) to tasks.
• Desktop application (for Linux, MeeGo netbook, Windows and MacOS).
• Notifications.
• Search tasks.
• Synchronize with Remember The Milk, Tooedlo, Outlook, iCal, Evolution, etc. (yay, complicated).
• GPS integration (localized task).
• New, nicer icons.

Of course, I will continue writing open source software for Meego, for these cases the applications will be written in Python with MeeGoTouch libraries (when available). MaStory and CasualServices are the first applications that I will be porting to MeeGoTouch libraries.

PS. That are desktop screenshots for the Qt applications because launching a Qt app in the MeeGo Handset SDK it becomes a blank screen.

State of my nation (related to Maemo)

I have just promoted SharePy 1.0~alpha3 to the Extras repository (don’t scare you this version name because it should be stable enough).
This new stable version has the following new features from the 0.2 version that was until today in Extras:

• Flickr support.
• Picasa support.
• Youtube support.
• Blip.tv support.
• SlideShare support.
• Option to add an entire folder.

Now the application is coded in such a way that it’s easier to add new services, as if it was supporting plugins, still I need to improve this code to make this much easier to other developers who want to add other services easily.

Also I have dropped the support of the Share on Ovi service because from the change in the method of authentication in share.ovi.com it wasn’t working and I haven’t been able to get it working again. Sorry.

There some services that will be supported in the future like Facebook, Vimeo, Metacafe, etc.
If you would like some other service , don’t hesitate in ask it.
Also I have uploaded some python modules to the repositories like python-slideshare and python-facebook. With this names you will imagine that are doing them.

In another related topic, the last Monday I was coding a small application to show quotes from the markets. It gets data from Yahoo Finance.

I was launching a contest in the IRC and in Talk to choose to name, and the winner is StockThis.
Congratulations to man_in_ltop, he has suggested this name. Sorry, there isn’t prize.

The application is simple as hell, you can see some screenshots here:

It will be available in Extras in some hours or days when I fix the last couple of bugs. A new python module is uploaded python-ystockquote, to get data from Yahoo Finance.

To finish the post, just to say, last week I was in a talk that Frade gave about Maemo in the Asturlinux X Anniversary. Also, I did a free software course in the University of Oviedo, where jsmanrique spoke about portable devices with a part about Maemo too. Very Interesting talks.
I am very glad that one of my applications was put as example in both talks. Thanks!

Maemo Wordpy 0.6: And Blogger arrived

Between exam and exam, I had time to launch Maemo WordPy’s new version.
Well it was almost finished and there was a beta in extras-devel repository and it seemed it was working well and it became slightly popular but I didn’t want to launch the final version until I wasn’t receiving the n810 to be able to test the OS2008 version.
So launching it today, I have time to rest and to enjoy tomorrow during my birthday.

Well, here there is a list of the new features for this version:

• Powerful image edition.
• New preferences with support for multiple accounts.
• Define images in offline and upload it when publish. Yes it’s possible now!
• Insert flickr images in an article.
• Upload images to flickr.
• Option for set font size.
• Zoom in text with hardware keys.
• OS2008: Preview article tab.
• OS2008: Option for finger-friendly scrollbars.
• OS2007-OS2006: Preview article in the browser.
• WordPress: Categories sorted alphabetically.
• WordPress: Option for allow or avoid pings.
• Blogger support: Write articles, set labels, upload local images to Picasa, publish/draft. Thanks to Jayesh Salvi.
  An explanation, the support for Picasa is only when you want to insert a local image in an article. In the future there will be major support for Picasa, especially if MS-love-Yahoo goes out forward.
• A nice easter-egg. It’s a small silly thing, but it can be funny. I am going to add a small easter egg in every new version. Please, python gurus, don’t look at the code

Known Issues:
Only for Blogger
If you have installed Erminig, you will have gdataclient 1.0.9 installed.
Maemo WordPy depends on the same library but I have called it python-gdata (taking Debian’s directives) and I have upload it to the extras repository.
I have uploaded the version 1.0.10, which has support for Picasa, this way if you have gdataclient 1.0.9 you will not be able to upload images to Picasa.
There is a solution, uninstall gdataclient and to reinstall Maemo WordPy, with what you will install the new python-gdata version and I think Erminig will be able to work with this version equally.

Unknown Issues:
Many
As you can see this version has a good jump in features, so if there is some problem, please to comment it. Feedback is welcome.

You can download the new version, following the instructions in its web: Install Maemo WordPy
Or it’s possible that already it’s available in your application manager.

You can see the roadmap as it’s changing with every version, since the people suggest ideas to improve Maemo WordPy: Roadmap.

Have fun.

Maemo WordPy 0.5

This version works only with OS2006 (only tested in gregale) and OS2007.
OS2008 will be possibly next week.

New features:

• Interface reorganization. I think that with this the screen space will be better utilize.
• Added Help to the preferences and tags dialogs. Many people don’t know what’s the URL that should be added in the settings dialog and they shouldn’t know. The preferences dialog now has a help option (aka ? icon). Also in html tags dialog, explaining each one.
• Menus finger-friendly. Very finger-friendly. Menu screenshot.
• Added new menu icons from Gartoon iconset.
• Option for delete articles already published. Now only downloads the last five published articles, but there will be an option to choose this in the future.
• Save settings in system backup. When you do a backup to reinstall the system Maemo WordPy retain their preferences.
• Image size now with preserving aspect ratio.
• More html tags: abbr, superscript, subscript, and so on.
• Show/hide toolbar. You can hide the toolbar to get a better vision of the article entry. In fullscreen mode and without toolbar, all space is for writting.
• New way for save and load articles. Now xml files are used to store the articles. Feature for WordPy desktop version.
• Options for ‘save’ and ‘save as’ articles. Before you could only ‘save as’.

You can see the full changelog.

Maemo WordPy has a new page more complete than the previous one (though not much more).
From there you can see the documentation, and instructions for installing Maemo WordPy.

I updated the Roadmap, so you can see the new features to come. The next version 0.6 will be a inflection point, especially for handling images. There will be a small image editor in Maemo WordPy.

As always I am open to any comments about Maemo WordPy, good or bad.
And please don’t forget to report bugs you find.

Finally thank everyone who has asked me to improve Maemo WordPy, which features lacks and good use they had given it. Special thanks to Karl Petermichl.

Nor I missed all the good reviews it has been over the Internet, and even those articles that said only ‘testing with maemo wordpy’. These are things that make you smile.

BTW, thanks also to maemo team.

Thank you very much.

Well, this article is for Maemo WordPy 0.5, it isn’t a thanks article

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