Dear Mac Users,
who are waiting for a new "MacPDA" or new Newton with a Mini OS X / OS X Lite.
Since we can't expect too much from Apple in that direction we have continued to work on it ourselves. And now, there is a new version available for download, testing, giving feedback & support, etc.: DR4.5 (tested on ROM 3.10 on the 5500 series, might work on C860 but fails on SL6000).
To get a first impression of the latest Screen Shots:
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=ScreenshotsThis release mainly fixes some glitches in the User Interface and adds
NSButtonStyle to NSButtonCell (incl. proper translation from Interface
Builder files) so that buttons can e.g. have the rounded bezel style with blue background.
myPDA-Zaurus-Edition consists of four components (more or less mature)
1) mySTEP - the LGPLed toolkit libraries
- libFoundation
- libAppKit (Xraw backend),
- libAddressBook (written from scrach to be neat, small and compatible to Cocoa naming schemes)
- libSystemUIPlugin (for MenuExtras)
- libPreferencePane (to create plugins for Settings)
- nib2mib (our version of nib2gmodel)
- and others
2) myPDA - the runtime environment (X-Server, mlvwm, SystemUIServer, ...)
3) myApps - Application suite (Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, File Finder, Viewer, Phone Dialer, Recorder, Browser, etc.)
4) Zaurus-X-gcc (2.95.3) - an ARM cross compiler plugin for Xcode
capable of Objective-C. So application development is done on a Mac
with Xcode, Interface Builder and Cocoa. Application bundles (extension .app)
can be copied to the Zaurus to run there. For development purposes,
applications can run on the Zaurus and redirect their graphical output
to Apple X11 on the host Mac.
All is compiled for the Sharp Zaurus (which uses an ARM-Linux 2.4) to
fit within 32 MByte file system and 32 MByte RAM (which is the main
reason why we can't use the latest full GNUstep and develop as a
parallel fork). The applications are also available as "dual
architecture bundles" for Test-Driving on a Mac OS X machine.
Here are links to more information and downloads:
Product Page:
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=myPDA-Zaurus-EditionmySTEP library:
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=mySTEPtest Drive:
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=TestDriveARM gcc:
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=Zaurus-X-gccFuture development is planned to migrate to the C860 and SL6000 models and might become a "MacROM" bundle instead of an .ipk application.
We would really appreciate feedbacks. A dedicated discussion forum can
be found at
http://www.dsitri.de/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=9-- hns
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Dr.Nikolaus Schaller
hns@computer.org
DSITRI
http://www.dsitri.de Oberhaching
Germany
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