What Program Do People Want To See Coded? Options

[Capn_Fish]

I've been bored lately, and am looking for a project to work on (from scratch, I have yet to master working on a team). What ideas do people have?

Guidelines:

-Not necessarily Zaurus- or N810-specific
-Nothing 3D
-Nothing TOO massive (like a desktop environment or web browser, strangely enough I don't feel as though a game would be "massive")
-No "contribute to existing projects" requests, please (unless you feel excruciatingly, and I do mean excruciatingly, strongly that that's the way to go)
-Preferably only requiring one or two external toolkits/libs

Notes:

-It will be a C/C++ app
-The only external lib I really have experience with is SDL, a little FLTK. I'm willing to learn to use common libs like ogg/vorbis
-There are no guarantees that this program will ever be {started|completed|stable} or will {follow your idea exactly|follow anybody's idea at all}.

Thanks.

[Frederic Bergero...]

I'm curious to see what other people will propose.

In my case, I wish I had an application on my Zaurus (this is important because I want to use it anywhere, anytime) on which I could do drills to learn/memorize how to conjugate verbs in a foreign language (especially German, Spanish, and French). For example, I would like to be able to be quizzed by the application for various verbs at singular, plural person and different tenses.

I know... It doesn't sound very interesting (particularly if you're not learning another language). But well, this would be very useful to me.

Maybe such an application already exists. If someone knows about it, please tell me.

[Dromede]

Heh... i don't think we really need any new apps. But what we do need is someone to improve the existing ones. I'd like to see touch scrolling in xpdf and xchm for instance. the pdf viewer in cacko had touch scrolling so maybe you could use that code as a reference...

We really need new control panel apps written for speed. the existing python based apps are too slow.
If you are REALLY bored then do this --> http://www.directfb.org/wiki/index.php/The_DirectFB_Desktop
That would surely help the entire embedded community

[canguy247]

Heh... i don't think we really need any new apps. But what we do need is someone to improve the existing ones. I'd like to see touch scrolling in xpdf and xchm for instance. the pdf viewer in cacko had touch scrolling so maybe you could use that code as a reference...

Try using the middle mouse button and dragging...

Canguy

[the_oak]

Something I've always thought to be missing on my Z is a paint/graphics program. There ARE a few, such as Cloverpaint, Petite Peinture, Sketches of Z, FreeNote QT, but most are scaled too small, support only qvga screen rotation (portrait mode), or are missing one thing or another. For instance, most existing projects cannot open but one or two image formats. Some only save as png, or pdf, then won't let you edit after you save to that format. Most do not have tools for selecting a square, rectangle, circle, or ellipse. Must haves are: undo tool, fill tools, line width tools, color selector. Crop to selection, and clone tools would also be welcome. It would be nice to be able to use the more common 3d filters such as drop shadow, cut out, inner bevel, etc., and support layers. Something like Conduits Pocket Artist maybe?

[Jon_J]

I'm probably going off the deep end asking for this, but what about a graphical partition manager?
Something like Gparted for Linux, or similar to Partition Magic for windows.
I know all these things can be done in a console with parted, but this method seems to require reading and referencing documents to get the numbers just right.
Someone could probably just compile Gparted for pdaxii13 and other 'X' based ROMs, but it would be great to have this utility for Sharp/Cacko Qtopia.
Several months ago, I was wanting to make a linux ext2 partition on my Cacko C3100, but the instructions just seemed complicated and I didn't want to mess up an almost perfectly working setup.

[the_oak]

ooh, ooh...........how about a print dialog? Something that would take a path and filename as an argument, and allow choosing a network printer, then output the file to the command below.

First create a txt file (with at least 4 lines) named test.txt in your /mnt/card/Documents folder

The following command will print a text only file to a printer, but the lines will be stairstepped. It best prints to ps printer I think. It needs a filter to print to non-ps printer? Anyway, command is:

CODE

cat /mnt/card/Documents/test.txt | smbclient //ATHLON/HPPSC500 \ -N -c "put - me"

(where //ATHLON is my printer server, and /HPPSC500 is the printer share name)

EDIT: It stands to reason that smbclient package needs to be installed. Also add a line to your /etc/hosts with IP address of your printer server. Like this:

192.168.0.1 ATHLON athlon

[the_oak]

More information on printing to Zaurus and some ipks can be found here:

http://www.wayga.org/ipkg/

But what to do to get them to work, I don't know!

[the_oak]

A little more work on printing simple text files from Zaurus:

CODE

cat /mnt/card/Documents/test.txt | smbclient //ATHLON/HPPSC500 \ -N -c "put - me"

The above referenced print command has some limitations that can be worked around. My printer does not know how to interpret Unix (Linux) new lines at all. It stairsteps the new lines. However, if you have Textmaker installed, you can save your text file as a DOS text file, and this helps. But printer still does not know how to interpret new lines that exceed 80 characters. Word wrap does not seem to help. So if you hit the return at the end of each line (before reaching 80 characters), then the next line will print. One more thing: add some extra lines to the end of your text file, or the last line(s) will not print.

[matthis]

A calendar that syncs with google calendar (both ways) for the cacko rom.

[Capn_Fish]

Thank you for all of the suggestions! I have, unfortunately (Or fortunately, if you care to see it that way) have discovered a new project to work on.

I don't mean seem baiting, but I don't currently care to tell people what it is. I feel lousy when I say I'm doing something, then never do it, which is what's likely to happen. I hope I'm not offending anybody in any way.

Frederic Bergeron: That's an app I'd like to have as well. The issue I see with it is all of the irregular verbs that are out there (going from my limited Spanish knowledge, at least)...

Dromede & the_oak (II): I agree, however I tend to get bored of writing frontends right before they become useful

the_oak (I): Agreed as well. I don't have the knowledge yet to pull it off, though.

Jon_J: Once again, a great idea, but 1) it's already been done, and 2) see second answer above

matthis: I would guess that many people would like that, but it goes into the whole QT thing, as well as syncing knowledge (heck, I haven't even figured netwoking stuff out yet).

Once again, sorry if I disappointed {any|every}body, and thanks for your responses. If I forgot a response to your question, it is simply an oversight, NOT intentional.

{Rants|Complaints|Annoyances|etc} about my nondisclosure can be posted here or directed to my PMs

[zmiq2]

Oh, come on captn, just post some info like if it's a web app social networking stuff, a linux graphic app or whatever, in generic terms !!!

As a suggestion I'd say a fax server for the zaurus, or just make sure the existing fax software works ok. Yeah, I know fax sounds like past century tech, but it's still used in some cases.

Luck with your project !!!

[Capn_Fish]

OK, we're talking about an add-on library.

In other words, likely nothing of direct excitement

[adf]

a simple pim that syncs with google apps? this just off the top of my head, it is late at night and I'm listlessly surfing.

[Capn_Fish]

As an update, I realized that the library I wanted to code had already been made (dang...).

Anyway, we'll see what happens, and feel free to keep posing ideas.

adf: That has the same sort of problems as matthis's request: Network programming/syncing. I don't have the skills to do that. Sorry.