OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Software => Topic started by: Srono on March 18, 2006, 02:59:07 pm

Title: Pocket Pc Vs Zaurus (for Application Development)
Post by: Srono on March 18, 2006, 02:59:07 pm
Hi all,

I got a project in school which is developing a face-recognition program for handheld devices. My supervisor asked me to choose platform that i like. Surprisingly, beside palm and ipaq pocket pc, he gave me an 6000L and a 5500 to choose

Because i haven't had much experience, so i would like to ask which platform (pdaxrom/oz/sharp rom v.s windows pocket) is easier (faster to learn) to develop a GUI applications, especially graphic one. Can anyone give me some pros. and cons for each platform?

I am considering to choose zaurus because i am more familiar with it and i guess it is easier to find opensource libs...

Im totally new to write an application for handheld devices. I have only worked with small scripts in Zaurus.

Thank you very much !
Title: Pocket Pc Vs Zaurus (for Application Development)
Post by: Armagon on March 18, 2006, 03:29:30 pm
Quote
Hi all,

I got a project in school which is developing a face-recognition program for handheld devices. My supervisor asked me to choose platform that i like. Surprisingly, beside palm and ipaq pocket pc, he gave me an 6000L and a 5500 to choose

Because i haven't had much experience, so i would like to ask which platform (pdaxrom/oz/sharp rom v.s windows pocket) is easier (faster to learn) to develop a GUI applications, especially graphic one. Can anyone give me some pros. and cons for each platform?

I am considering to choose zaurus because i am more familiar with it and i guess it is easier to find opensource libs...

Im totally new to write an application for handheld devices. I have only worked with small scripts in Zaurus.

Thank you very much !
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First: Concerning the systems you are asking about, I only have experience with pdaXrom (and the C1000.)

I think an important consideration is the development environment and language that you are used to.  If you are used to programming on Windows with Visual Studio, I bet you'll find Pocket PC development and debugging to be easier -- I expect that it'll be integrated seamlessly into the IDE.  [My background is Win programming with Visual Studio, and I find linux development to be foreign -- but I still intend to learn it.]

The pdaXrom SDK is really easy to install and use (presuming you have some familiarity with linux style development.)  Scroll down to "documentation" on [a href=\"http://mail.pdaxrom.org/contrib/]http://mail.pdaxrom.org/contrib/[/url] to see about native or cross-compiled C++ development.  [I'm afraid I can't speak for Sharp or OZ.]

That's presuming you want to use C++ -- probably a safe bet if you are doing facial recognition.  If you just wanted a GUI app, I'd recommend using python (pyGTK, pyQT, ...)  It is possibly to do the GUI in python, and the rest of the code in C++.  I've never done it and I think it'd take some work.

On the Pocket PC, you may be able to use C# and .net -- my coworkers say good things about them, in terms of rapid prototyping and creating full-fledged apps.

One other thing to consider: it may be worthwhile to compile your project for two architectures.  It is often useful to make a PC build and an embedded build concurrently.  Then you can do most of the debugging on the PC build, and only test the embedded build occassionally -- which can reduce the time of a compile/debug/test cycle.  [But, make sure to test that embedded build!  It does you no good to have a working PC build and a broken embedded build.]

One advantage of pdaXrom (and OZ/GPE), is that the same graphical X windows app will compile for both your PC and Z.

Good luck!
Armagon
Title: Pocket Pc Vs Zaurus (for Application Development)
Post by: Srono on March 20, 2006, 03:29:18 am
Thanks a lot for your helpful advices, Armagon!