Things Yet To Be Done With The Zaurus

[speculatrix]

It occurs to me to ask whether we've managed to do so much with our zauruses that we've become jaded, that every obvious problem has been solved, that every question has been answered on this forum already, and you're all bored  

So, we need to come up with some fresh challenges  

I have some ideas, but rather than hog the limelight, I'll let others take the stage; I'm curious to see if other people come up with the same ideas.

[the_oak]

Yup, I think you've hit the nail on the head. We've gotten stale. My Z does almost everything I want it to.

Not to say there aren't useful things yet to be done. My list would be kind of 6000-centric:

Top of my list would be drivers to take advantage of hardware acceleration for 6000's video. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Cacko for 6000 would be nice, preferably with built in support for > 2 GB SD cards. (Also looking forward to possibly pdaXrom on 6000.)

One for everyone would be current flash player, and java (and whatever else is needed for youtube/hulu playback).

Drivers for more USB devices like G WIFI.

[jfv]

Write a good driver for the Sharp CE-AG06 camera that allows the Zaurus to be used as a webcam or as a security camera.

[Capn_Fish]

USB VGA out could likely be implemented in some way. I'm sure a good number of people would enjoy that.

[sdjf]

A more up to date version of Opera!

Port the ImageMagick suite for the Z.  (Awesome command line image editing tool)

Someone asked in another thread for music writing software.  Where is he?  That would be for a more limited audience, but still seemed like an important app that's needed by some.

sdjf

[matthis]

Someone asked in another thread for music writing software.  Where is he?

That's me! There is denemo for composing + a bunch of stuff for midi playback in debian, but a nice do-it-all app for qt would be nice

[fpp]

My C760 is gathering dust because my Nokia Internet tablet(s) do all the work. What I need to take it out of retirement is an exciting new port of Android :-)

[jfv]

Port the ImageMagick suite for the Z.  (Awesome command line image editing tool)


sdjf

Uh? I have ImageMagick on my Zaurus. I don't remember where I got it, but if you can't find it, I'll be happy to share. It's just a few binaries.

[kurochka]

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26174

My question in that thread stills awaits its hero.

Basically, I need step-by-step guide on how to install and run cell phone Java applications (specifically Go Bible) on Z.

[xamindar]

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26174

My question in that thread stills awaits its hero.

Basically, I need step-by-step guide on how to install and run cell phone Java applications (specifically Go Bible) on Z.

It has been done before as far as I know, but I haven't tried it myself.  Maybe this will help out a little?
http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html#java

[speculatrix]

Some great ideas, only some of which I thought of!

I would like to see pdaXrom brought up to date, being turned into a set of installable apps over the top of a minimal Angstrom/Debian system with modern (Android compatible) kernel with EABI binary. It would have to include the latest standard linux applications,  and a fully tested core set of applications such as mail + web browser + rss reader + media player etc .

I would also like to see Qt4 with a full suite of apps, running on the latest kernel, to be a modern replacement for Cacko, with a working development platform as a vmware image so that people can write new applications or port old ones without having to face the efforts of building a cross-compilation platform.

I would like to see some of the libraries ported from the Nokia tablet or Sony Mylo2 so that we have a vague chance of getting proprietary s/w like Skype running.

I'd like to see SDIO drivers for all those funky SDIO adaptors.

ok, that's enough from me for now.

lets see if we can be ambitious but realistic. some of these things are more of an evolutionary integration exercise rather than revolutionary!

[Capn_Fish]

I would like to see pdaXrom brought up to date, being turned into a set of installable apps over the top of a minimal Angstrom/Debian system with modern (Android compatible) kernel with EABI binary. It would have to include the latest standard linux applications,  and a fully tested core set of applications such as mail + web browser + rss reader + media player etc .

There's no hope for it to be based off of Angstrom/Debian. Otherwise:

Minimal system- Easily done
Kernel- check (2.6.23, IIRC)
Apps- Close (meaning a good deal of apps, no idea on versions)
Core apps- See "Apps" (Sylpheed/Claws-Mail, Dillo*/Webkit-based/FF*, no idea, Quasar/MPlayer)

Note that this info is a good deal of my opinion, and completely unofficial. Whether or not my judgments accurately reflect the current status is debatable (though I obviously tried to present the best information I could).

*doesn't build right now

[cortez]

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26174

My question in that thread stills awaits its hero.

Basically, I need step-by-step guide on how to install and run cell phone Java applications (specifically Go Bible) on Z.

It has been done before as far as I know, but I haven't tried it myself.  Maybe this will help out a little?
http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/custom.html#java

Just stumbled across this interesting site.
Java SE Embedded 1.4.2 for ARM

    * OABI, glibc2.3.3, Soft Float
    * EABI, glibc2.4, Soft Float
    * EABI, glibc2.4, Hard Float (VFP)

As Sun's commercial blabla says: "Platforms available for embedded use include not only standard Java SE platforms but also platforms that are exclusive for the embedded market. In all cases, the products offered are fully Java SE compliant".

I haven't tried it yet, but it might be interesting!

Cheers,
cortez

[Ragnorok]

- "Headless" to me says "no GUI".  Unfortunate.  A lot can be done from the command line, but the Z is a graphical device.  Be nice to leverage that.  'Course that dramatically complicates things...

[koan]

How about a Twitter client ?

For eternity I've been looking for a Today program that will play nice with all my software...

Or a slideshow application that will rotate pictures instead of scaling them when you try to show a landscape picture in portrait mode or vice-versa. Add in the ability to flip through EXIF thumbnails instead of scaling down megapixel images and you'll have a winner.

I think a lot of software has been ported but no one has made the effort to convert it to play nice with the PDA form factor. For example, applications on Debian or pdaXrom that can't go full screen and behave as if you have a ton of memory and a fact CPU.