Messages

256

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Text editing

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:46:46 am »

I know some Perl, too [fx: glances over to Camel book on shelf], but I've been lucky enough not to have to use it in anger very much.

I find awk just the right size for text wrangling — small enough to remember and understand all of it even when using it occasionally, while Perl needs more looking-up and trial-and-error.

(For proper coding, I used C, then Java, and most recently Kotlin.  I'd love to be able to write and compile Kotlin on my Gemini itself, and to transfer and run Java/Kotlin programs I've written elsewhere.  But it seems there's little chance of that.  )

257

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / List of online stores selling Geminis and accessories

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:40:30 am »

I remember Clove back when they were a Psion dealer…  I haven't had any recent dealings with them, but back in the day, ISTR they had a very good reputation.

258

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Time between Locked and Shipped, Generally?

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:36:39 am »

Yes, this forum does seem to be relatively civilised, with a reasonably high signal-to-noise ratio*.  Perhaps because world+dog hasn't discovered it yet…  

I think it was a couple of days between my order being locked and accepting delivery.  (South-east UK.)

Of course I was a little frustrated and disappointed that it took around 5 months more than initially hoped.  It was a long wait.  But then we knew that this was a tiny start-up trying to achieve a miracle on a shoestring; and I made allowances.  And it paid off!  The Gemini's not perfect, but it's a good deal closer than I dared to hope.  Many of the issues are software/firmware ones, and will probably get fixed; again, not immediately, but I'm in this for the long term, so I try to be patient.

The way I look at it: Planet have been acting all along in good faith.  They may have been a little optimistic at times, but who isn't?  I don't think they've ever deliberately lied about anything.  They've clearly been working extremely hard to build, publicise, and support the Gemini, and do the best they can for their backers.  In return, I think a little patience, a little grace, a little goodwill is entirely appropriate!

(If for no better reason than that it's more likely to get results  )


(* I find myself wondering whether the average age in here is higher than elsewhere, and if so, whether that might have something to do with the relaxed tone.  I'm only mid-40s, but I also spend a lot of time on an old-time BBS called CIX — in fact, I own the ‘planetcom’ conference there!  The average age there is quite high, which is probably partly why it too is such a civilised place.)

259

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / firmware over-the-air, what does it do?

« on: June 15, 2018, 06:25:09 am »

Most of the answers are in this topic.

But in short:

Technically, I think the firmware is the low-level code which runs under the OS and co-ordinates its access to hardware.  But firmware updates also seem to update some parts of the OS and apps too.

They're voluntary; the Gemini will inform you that a firmware update is available, and offer to download and install it — but there's no obligation.  (You can also check manually in Settings -> About phone -> Firmware Update.)

Right now, if you have a rooted Android, it will offer the update and try to install it, but it will fail.  So don't accept it!  We're expecting Planet to make the new firmware available for direct download in the next few days, so you'll be able to use the Flash Tool to apply it.  There's supposed to be a way of doing that which will leave your apps and data intact, though that's not confirmed yet.  And Planet say that once this next update is installed, future OTA firmware updates should work fine on rooted Android.

260

Gemini PDA - Android / New firmware update released

« on: June 14, 2018, 05:50:27 pm »

Do we know if there's going to be a Mac version of the flash tool?

The impression from Planet is that that's very unlikely, unfortunately.

Still, even though very awkward, it is at least possible to flash from a Mac, by booting into Linux.  Having done it once, I've kept the Debian 9 USB stick, and another stick with the Flash Tool &c, for precisely this eventuality — so although it's a pain shutting everything down and rebooting, the flashing shouldn't take too long.

And it shouldn't be needed very often.  If comments above are accurate, this is the last time it'll be needed for a simple firmware update; after this, we'll only need it to change the OS.

261

Gemini PDA - Android / New firmware update released

« on: June 14, 2018, 01:55:44 pm »

Does anybody have detailed instructions on using the flash tool?

I posted some details here after (finally) getting it to work.

Highlights: I only have Macs, and didn't want to dual-boot, so I set up a Linux live USB and booted from that.  It failed completely with Ubuntu, but worked with Debian 9.  (However, wifi didn't work on the official one; it needs the unofficial Debian 9 with non-free additions.)  It also needed an extra library to be installed, but I found a source for that.  (All the details are in the linked post.)

Once it's running, you set up the Flash Tool as described on Planet's pages, power down the Gemini, set the Flash Tool going, and then connect the Gemini — I didn't need to boot the Gemini at all.

HTH…

262

Gemini PDA - Android / New firmware update released

« on: June 14, 2018, 11:27:43 am »

you can untick the user partition in order to avoid data loss.

Is there any detail on how to do that?  (It's not something I want to try without being sure!)

And yes, Planet do seem pretty responsive considering their circumstances.  (Their heart's clearly in the right place.)

263

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Text editing

« on: June 14, 2018, 07:35:04 am »

Ah, I wasn't thinking of coding or heavy-duty editing; for that, as you say, there's vim!  (Not for the faint-hearted, of course, but there's nothing better for text wrangling — except possibly the awk language, which is also available.)

Vim seems to work well in Termux (which probably justifies a topic of its own).

I hadn't seen OniVim before; at first glance, it seems to fall between the two stools of vim for text manipulation, and a decent IDE for coding.  Do you think it would work well on the smaller screen?

264

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Games

« on: June 14, 2018, 07:24:36 am »

What Android games would you recommend?

Of course, this has to come with a health warning: games that are too good are likely to suck up too much time that could be spend doing productive things (especially given the Gemini's nice keyboard)!

The games I've always returned to are puzzles, as they can fill a couple of spare minutes, while still giving an interesting challenge (either a single small game, or returning to a more complex one).  Currently I'm enjoying:

• Simple Solitaire Collection: a nice app with 17 solo card games.  Fairly configurable, with a range of difficulty levels and themes.  I'm already spending far too much time playing Simple Simon and Spider…
  
• Shortyz Crosswords.  This comes set up to download daily ‘American-style’ puzzles (straight clues, few black squares) from several free American sites (Washington Post, Newsday, &c).  However, as a Brit, I eschew such puzzles (and such spellings)!  Luckily, it can also download cryptic puzzles from CruCryptics — and it can use any puzzles in Across Lite format (.puz) that you throw at it, which gives quite a range of options.  It works well.  (Niggle: it's set up for portrait mode, with the current clue across the top; a landscape option would make better use of the screen space.)
  
• A crossword solver is also useful (for finding words matching given letter, solving anagrams, &c).  The best I've seen so far is Lexeme which seems to have a big dictionary, a large variety of search types (using its own entry format), and tapping on solutions can jump to their definitions in another app (e.g. Aard 2).  Only niggle is that the large font size doesn't work well in landscape mode, showing no more than 3-4 solutions at a time.
  
• Simon Tatham's Puzzles.  This is a collection of 39 Japanese-style logic puzzles: sudoku, hitori, fillomino, light up, nurikabe, slitherlink, and many more (though given different names).  This is also available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and accounts for most of my wasted time on the desktop!  The puzzles don't work so well on the small screen — especially in the more difficult modes, where the finer detail in larger puzzles is hard to tap on.  But they're all playable from the keyboard too.
  
• Fabularium is a player for interactive fiction — i.e. text adventure games.  These have come a long way since I played them on my BBC Micro many years ago…  Now there's a huge range available free in standard formats (Infocom, TADS) that can be played with a variety of apps.  There are several such for Android; this one seems good, but I've not compared them.

What other games or puzzles are worth looking at?

265

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Music playing

« on: June 14, 2018, 06:27:27 am »

What Android apps do people use for playing music?

I have a large iTunes library (3.5K albums), all fully tagged, so I'm looking for something that can play that (or as much as will fit on the SD card!).  I don't use manual playlists much, but have a few automated ones (selecting by genre, play count, date added, rating and/or comments).  I also tend to shuffle by album (especially within a single genre or playlist), and like to view the track info (especially composer, comments, and lyrics).

I don't use any streaming services; it's all local files (mostly MP3, with some AAC).  Obviously, if you use streaming, you'll probably be looking at a different choice of apps!

The best I've seen is Rocket Player.  The interface is a bit whizz-bang (though they all seem to be), but it looks pretty powerful, handles all my tracks, and can shuffle by album.  It shows all the tags, and can even do automatic playlists (though they don't seem as powerful as iTunes's).

Any other recommendations?

266

Gemini PDA - Android / New firmware update released

« on: June 14, 2018, 06:04:42 am »

I reflashed my Gemini with the rooted Android.  Now it's offering the new firmware.

Does anyone know if it's safe to install on a rooted Gemini?  If so, will it ‘un-root’?

267

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Text editing

« on: June 14, 2018, 05:52:02 am »

What Android apps do you use/recommend for editing plain-text files?

I tend to have many files with memos, to-dos, meeting notes, lists, quotes, journals, account details (nothing sensitive), song lyrics, and general notes.  I don't need the features of a dedicated to-do list app, nor the styling &c of a word processor; but the ability to load and save plain text files (for syncing with my Mac), to handle big files (one is 1.7MB), to open multiple files at once, to use a proportional font, to handle both UTF-8 and CP1252 encodings, and to make good use of the screen space.

I'm currently trying Jota+, and it seems to tick all my boxes.  It's very smart about file formats and encodings, has a built-in file viewer, can open multiple files in tabs, can add file shortcuts to the home screen, handles big files, can do regular-expression searching, has only a single toolbar/tab-bar, can count chars/lines/words, and is themeable.

Niggles include failure to recognise PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keypresses, and it seems to have a bit of trouble with my 1.7MB file (with odd slow-downs).  But I'd still recommend it.

I also tried SNotepad, but that wasted far too much screen space on toolbars, title, &c.

There is of course Planet's own Notes app, which is supplied with the Gemini and probably great for occasional note-taking, but it's more for keeping lots of short notes in one place — a replacement for the Psion Jotter app — instead of a file-based app, so it's less suitable for me.

What others are worth looking at?

268

Gemini PDA - Android / Apps: Text viewing

« on: June 14, 2018, 05:10:04 am »

What Android apps do people use/recommend for reading ebooks and other text documents?

(Rather than hijacking other topics, I thought it would be a good idea to have some dedicated topics for discussing and recommending apps!  I'm new to Android, so having to find apps to cover all the things I used my Psion for.)

My requirements are slightly unusual, in that I have loads of books in Palm DOC (.pdb) format which I've edited/formatted myself.  (I'm very fussy about typography &c!  I used to read them on my Psion using Simon Quinn's EBook program.  But I'll probably be converting them to FB2 or HTML or similar.)

The reader I'm trying at the moment is AlReader, and I'm liking it so far.  It handles .pdb files, has a built-in file viewer, can read files on an external drive, and can add book shortcuts on the home screen.  I like its almost-full-screen mode, with just a thin progress bar along the bottom.  It has a choice of fonts, colours, and textures.  You can configure the actions attached to a wide variety of taps, swipes, and some keypresses.  It has some nice animations (intuitive but fast and unobtrusive).

My main niggles so far are that most keypresses aren't supported (so e.g. I can set the ‘1’ key to the ‘Find’ function, but not F or Ctrl+F; and that it doesn't preserve whitespace when showing text (ignoring any indentation and double-spaced sentences).  Also, ideally it would support the same sort of auto-bookmarking that Simon Quinn's program did (with a tag at the bottom of the file giving the character used to start heading lines — I always used a chevron) — though I don't seriously expect any programs to support that these days, now better formats are available!

Before that, I briefly tried FBReader and Cool Reader, but wasn't so impressed.  (I think they both had character-set and formatting issues, and the former had trouble opening files in other folders.)

What apps are you folks using, and what do you like about them?

269

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Shipping email (I got my Gemini PDA)

« on: June 14, 2018, 04:39:14 am »

I'm glad you're happy, Pete   As I slowly get my Gemini set up and get familiar with it, it's starting to feel more like ‘my’ machine, and I'm sure I'll be loving it to bits before too long.  It's certainly a worthy Psion replacement.

The question of apps is an interesting one.  I'm completely new to Android, but have already found a few promising apps.  This topic's already spread far too wide, though, so I'll start some new ones!

270

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Shipping email (I got my Gemini PDA)

« on: June 13, 2018, 12:43:17 pm »

Have patience.

The wait is temporary; the Gemini is eternal