Cacko3k Feedback

[kahm]

I got to spend some time in Japan last October and had a blast. Missed seeing the Linux Cafe in Akihabara, though. I don't suppose you have a map of the area (or know of one online)? I'm curious as to where it is.

Here you are, Sir:

(the Linux Cafe is at the red blinking dot).

This map is from a PalmOS program called Akibamap which I used regularly. It's a pity there's no arm Linux version! It still works on the PalmOS simulator (on my PC) though...
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Extremely cool. Do you do something special for Japanese support? I tracked down and installed Akibamap on my (English) Clie TJ35 and, as expected, it's all mojibake  The only other Japanese-language software I have for the Palm is Dokusha, and it includes fonts...

I *really* wish I'd had something like this when I went on my trip. Live and learn. I'll be better prepared for when I go back. (Of course, speaking Japanese at greater-than-kindergarten levels would help, too. Something else to put on my list of things to do. It's amazing to see the reactions of people over there when an obvious gaijin manages to string together more than 3 words of Japanese coherently. Choruses of "Jouzu, desu nee!" follow   )

[euroclie]

Extremely cool. Do you do something special for Japanese support? I tracked down and installed Akibamap on my (English) Clie TJ35 and, as expected, it's all mojibake  The only other Japanese-language software I have for the Palm is Dokusha, and it includes fonts...

[off-topic]There's CJKOS and J-OS, those two solutions should provide a Japanese environment (fonts, basically, but also IME) for almost every PalmOS flavor, as far as I know. But they're commercial or shareware, require some RAM, and the fonts are not necessarily pretty... Your best bet would be a Japanese ROM reflash, I know that this could be done easily on pre-OS5 devices, but I think this has become difficult/impossible with OS5.[/off-topic]

I *really* wish I'd had something like this when I went on my trip. Live and learn. I'll be better prepared for when I go back. (Of course, speaking Japanese at greater-than-kindergarten levels would help, too. Something else to put on my list of things to do. It's amazing to see the reactions of people over there when an obvious gaijin manages to string together more than 3 words of Japanese coherently. Choruses of "Jouzu, desu nee!" follow   )

I wish there was an easy way to make accented characters (for French) and Japanese Kanji/Kana coexist peacefully on the same device, but as of yet I've still to find a satisfactory solution, even on the Zaurus... Also, I'd like to see a Zaurus port of Akibamap, that would sure be pretty useful, especially with the Zaurus large screen! As it is, the Cacko3k ROM English localization is so good that there is virtually no Japanese leftover! Hmm... maybe I'll try to add Japanese support back later on!

As far as Cacko feedback goes (let's try to get back on-topic, sorry for the non-Zaurus digression), I've installed and run DoomDemo succesfully, and Quake as well. Doom runs fine (except that the keys are inverted but that's easy to fix) and smoothly, but Quake was choppy as hell in 640x400, I had to resize the display to 320x240 to get (marginally) better performances. I had not been tested this game before (on the Sharp ROM), does anyone know how well it performs on the Sharp ROM?

I followed the instructions I found here to install Doom, Quake, Kismet and Wellenreiter, everything seems to run fine (except the performance problem). I didn't do any real-field WiFi testing with Kismet or WellenReiter, though (I was too busy talking whith mammothrept this afternoon at the Linux Cafe!), all I can say is that my Zaurus did succesfully connect to their WiFi open network with a Planex CF card (GW-CF11X).

[kahm]

[off-topic]There's CJKOS and J-OS, those two solutions should provide a Japanese environment (fonts, basically, but also IME) for almost every PalmOS flavor, as far as I know. But they're commercial or shareware, require some RAM, and the fonts are not necessarily pretty... Your best bet would be a Japanese ROM reflash, I know that this could be done easily on pre-OS5 devices, but I think this has become difficult/impossible with OS5.[/off-topic]

I'll see what I can do. I've got lots of ram in this thing, and it was retired ~6months ago when I got the 860 so I'm not doing much with it anyway.

I wish there was an easy way to make accented characters (for French) and Japanese Kanji/Kana coexist peacefully on the same device, but as of yet I've still to find a satisfactory solution, even on the Zaurus...

That's an interesting point - I'm using lcfont as the application font for my 860 (Cacko v1.22lite), and it seems to support both Japanese and French characters. What kind of problems are you having?

Also, I'd like to see a Zaurus port of Akibamap, that would sure be pretty useful, especially with the Zaurus large screen! As it is, the Cacko3k ROM English localization is so good that there is virtually no Japanese leftover! Hmm... maybe I'll try to add Japanese support back later on!

Once we get cacko3k finalized that's the first thing I want to work on - getting the Japanese back in  I'll be updating the Howto I wrote as soon as we figure out the best way. As for Akimap, I assume there is some sort of update mechanism for refreshing the map, or do they just put out new versions of the program? (If they provide updates, porting wouldn't be a bad idea. If not, keeping a 3rd party port up to date would be...difficult.)

As far as Cacko feedback goes (let's try to get back on-topic, sorry for the non-Zaurus digression), I've installed and run DoomDemo succesfully, and Quake as well. Doom runs fine (except that the keys are inverted but that's easy to fix) and smoothly, but Quake was choppy as hell in 640x400, I had to resize the display to 320x240 to get (marginally) better performances. I had not been tested this game before (on the Sharp ROM), does anyone know how well it performs on the Sharp ROM?

Quake doesn't perform well at all, apparently. 640x480 is definitely out. There were some questions going on regarding how to scale it to full screen from 320x240, but I haven't seen if they solved that one. That's one of the big advantages of Opie blowing backwards compatibility - they can use newer compilers and soft-float for better floating point performance. Don't know how much of a real difference it makes, though. I'll likely test Opie on my 860 once cacko3k is finalized.

[euroclie]

That's an interesting point - I'm using lcfont as the application font for my 860 (Cacko v1.22lite), and it seems to support both Japanese and French characters. What kind of problems are you having?

Basically, many applications cannot display simultaneously French and Japanese characters. For instance, with the original Sharp ROM, Netfront can't display the French characters correctly unless you replace the Japanese fonts by western fonts. I didn't try very hard, though, it should be possible to find a font (unicode?) that handles both. The problem is that French is using single byte encoding but with "extended ascii"-like characters (code 128 to 255), which most Japanese software interpret as a multi-byte character, eating the following character in the process...

Once we get cacko3k finalized that's the first thing I want to work on - getting the Japanese back in  I'll be updating the Howto I wrote as soon as we figure out the best way. As for Akimap, I assume there is some sort of update mechanism for refreshing the map, or do they just put out new versions of the program? (If they provide updates, porting wouldn't be a bad idea. If not, keeping a 3rd party port up to date would be...difficult.)

I think that they do release a new package every now and then, but all we should have to do is handle properly the .pdb file containing the data, and just omit the .prc file containing the executable. I'm sure that if we ask politely to Akibamap's author(s), we could get the permission to use their database. But then, I have the feeling that it doesn't get updated very often...

All in all, even a "simple" mapping program which would let you write a quick note (like "I found this super gadget at xxx JPY in this shop"), associate it with a shop (input the name manually, if needed, and point it on the map), and browse the notes afterward to locate the best price you found on a given product... yes, this would b useful, indeed.

Quake doesn't perform well at all, apparently. 640x480 is definitely out.

OK, I was a bit afraid that something was "broken" or missconfigured, but from what you write, I gather that the Cacko ROM provides normal performances.

[kahm]

Basically, many applications cannot display simultaneously French and Japanese characters. For instance, with the original Sharp ROM, Netfront can't display the French characters correctly unless you replace the Japanese fonts by western fonts. I didn't try very hard, though, it should be possible to find a font (unicode?) that handles both. The problem is that French is using single byte encoding but with "extended ascii"-like characters (code 128 to 255), which most Japanese software interpret as a multi-byte character, eating the following character in the process...

Ah. So it's an encoding issue on the application side. You'd need something like Firefox, which would let you switch encodings on the fly. (Or stop viewing anything but UTF8 encoded pages. )

I think that they do release a new package every now and then, but all we should have to do is handle properly the .pdb file containing the data, and just omit the .prc file containing the executable. I'm sure that if we ask politely to Akibamap's author(s), we could get the permission to use their database. But then, I have the feeling that it doesn't get updated very often...

All in all, even a "simple" mapping program which would let you write a quick note (like "I found this super gadget at xxx JPY in this shop"), associate it with a shop (input the name manually, if needed, and point it on the map), and browse the notes afterward to locate the best price you found on a given product... yes, this would b useful, indeed.

Something to look at for my next trip over. (Which, unfortunately, won't be for a couple of years.  

OK, I was a bit afraid that something was "broken" or missconfigured, but from what you write, I gather that the Cacko ROM provides normal performances.
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Sounds like it. Last time I tried quake myself was on a 200mhz Ipaq. I'm always nervous when trying to use a $700 PDA like it's a $100 Gameboy. (Or a $300 PSP now, I suppose) So I rarely play any arcade/action style games on PDAs - just puzzle games.

[euroclie]

Ah. So it's an encoding issue on the application side. You'd need something like Firefox, which would let you switch encodings on the fly. (Or stop viewing anything but UTF8 encoded pages. )

Opera does let you switch on the desktop version as well, I wish there was such a menu in the Linux ARM version! As for reading only UTF8 pages... Well, maybe it's time for me to apply for a new job in Japan, then?

Sounds like it. Last time I tried quake myself was on a 200mhz Ipaq. I'm always nervous when trying to use a $700 PDA like it's a $100 Gameboy. (Or a $300 PSP now, I suppose) So I rarely play any arcade/action style games on PDAs - just puzzle games.

I also never play those kind of games on my PDA. I might keep Doom to impress people - though at the current rate at which things evolve, your average PocketPC user has games much more impressive than this now - but I find that I have rarely time to play even puzzle games. My wife is more skilled at Bejeweled on PalmOS PDAs than I ever was!  

[euroclie]

BTW, anyone else using Cacko3k has problem sorting contacts in the addressbook? I mean, it's not even a Japanese vs. English alphabet sorting issue, it's just that when trying to sort contacts by full name, they are not sorted at all! I thought that it sorted the categories separately, but even within a category I get strange results with contacts being displayed more or less in the same order that they were created...

[kahm]

BTW, anyone else using Cacko3k has problem sorting contacts in the addressbook? I mean, it's not even a Japanese vs. English alphabet sorting issue, it's just that when trying to sort contacts by full name, they are not sorted at all! I thought that it sorted the categories separately, but even within a category I get strange results with contacts being displayed more or less in the same order that they were created...
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Yup. I use Ka/Pi, but I tried putting a bunch of stuff into the stock addressbook. Seems like the addressbook sorting is completely broken. Sorting the column by tapping on the header sorts in first->last or last->first entered, not alphabetically. The labeled tabs across the top don't select anything unless you click on "#", and entering text into the quicksearch field gets nothing.

[euroclie]

Yup. I use Ka/Pi, but I tried putting a bunch of stuff into the stock addressbook. Seems like the addressbook sorting is completely broken. Sorting the column by tapping on the header sorts in first->last or last->first entered, not alphabetically. The labeled tabs across the top don't select anything unless you click on "#", and entering text into the quicksearch field gets nothing.

This pretty much sums up what I get, too.

[kahm]

Another issue. Unzip doesn't work. It's in the rom as a link to zip, where in Cacko 1.22 it is a seperate program. Unzip ends up working exactly like zip - compress only. I copied unzip across from the 860 and it works fine.

I've also found something that annoys me about the 3000. I can't turn it on with the screen closed. When I'm using it as an mp3 player, with the 860 I would just reach into the top of my pocket and turn it on, then press play on the remote to launch the media player. With the 3000, I have to take the whole thing out of my pocket, open the screen, turn it on, then close the screen and put it back into the pocket.

[euroclie]

I've also found something that annoys me about the 3000. I can't turn it on with the screen closed. When I'm using it as an mp3 player, with the 860 I would just reach into the top of my pocket and turn it on, then press play on the remote to launch the media player. With the 3000, I have to take the whole thing out of my pocket, open the screen, turn it on, then close the screen and put it back into the pocket.

Do you have "suspend when the display is closed" checked in the Light Settings application? Does it make any difference if checked/unchecked?

[sriley]

Another issue. Unzip doesn't work. It's in the rom as a link to zip, where in Cacko 1.22 it is a seperate program. Unzip ends up working exactly like zip - compress only. I copied unzip across from the 860 and it works fine.

Yep.  I just found that out and came here to post, but you beat me to it.  

[kahm]

I've also found something that annoys me about the 3000. I can't turn it on with the screen closed. When I'm using it as an mp3 player, with the 860 I would just reach into the top of my pocket and turn it on, then press play on the remote to launch the media player. With the 3000, I have to take the whole thing out of my pocket, open the screen, turn it on, then close the screen and put it back into the pocket.

Do you have "suspend when the display is closed" checked in the Light Settings application? Does it make any difference if checked/unchecked?
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Suspend when display closed is the first thing that I turn off. I use it as an mp3 player so it spends a lot of time running when closed. I also like to leave it running in between using it at work, so it gets closed a lot. Having it suspend every time drives me nuts.

It doesn't matter whether the "suspend when display is closed" option is on or off - it won't turn on with the lid down. I suspect it's the inclusion of that option that prompted them to change the usage of the power button in the first place.

[iamasmith]

OK guys, I'm back, I can see that kahm has been busy with Opera repackaging for the 3000. Great stuff.

What I would like now is a list of things that you discovered in the last two weeks (since my ininitial hitlist posting)

voice recorder possibly to be added from 860 build.... to be tested.
Opera to be added
Wireless Monitor
Memory Monitor applet.. swapfile bits. - fixed in patch - just include.
Battery/CPU Frequency Application... Anton says he will work on this. (please don't start lobbying Aton for updates, he's not got a device to test with yet and is very busy on the regular Cacko stuff).
Remove the Shift toggle from keyhelper.xml
Media Player is screwed... missed pic144 directory... simple fix.
Remove samba from /etc/rc.d/init.d otherwise inetd dies when you sync.
DHCP in certain environment seems not to work... need more detailed info.

kahm, did you narrow down your DHCP issues any further ?

Oh, BTW: If you could consolidate your issues into single posts along with any workarounds that you implemented then that would be great.

Regards,

(very tired Andy.. up since 5.30am to drive from Carvoeiro to Faro for my flight)

[collywobbles]

OK guys, I'm back

Hope u had a good break! All C3000 owners have been eagerly awaiting your return...
Russell