What would you like to see in Cacko 1.22 ROM?

[rebski]

I am so close to a decision to buy an 860 and this thread is giving me all the encouragement I need.

[I would love to see a version of the rom that didn't include the sharp pim programmes as the kde ones are so much better. At the moment I tend to use the sharp programmes simply because they are there and I can't get rid of them and don't like having duplicate software on my system]

One reason I like the Proto/tkc rom on my 5500 so much as that contains only the operating system and a handful of utilities and system tools. All of the applications I need are available to be installed separately, thus avoiding duplication and clutter.

Is a similar facility envisaged here?

[Also, I'm not sure how many people would want to install a bunch of application packages right after flashing the ROM. Maybe I'll open a poll later to find out]

It looks like this is what I am asking for.

[rebski]

Sorry for the quotes being in [..]

I shall use Guided Mode next time until I get used to this.

[stbrock]

I am one of what I think is a large number of Zaurus users who want both Qt PDA applications and X applications.  People who want only standard idiot-proof PIM functions often won't have opted for Zaurus in the first place.  Some sort of integration of Qt apps with pdaXrom is the high priority for me, like the earlier posters.  

But if technical issues make this impractical for the near-term, what about a CACKO ROM version integrated with XQt or pocketworkstation? It took me a lot more time than I wanted to get them working from a lot of conflicting, mostly outdated, hard to find posts and web pages, and there are still keyboard and environment glitches I haven't been able to fix.   XQt offers the immediate ability to run a reasonable number of X apps alongside QT apps. And pocketworkstation gives you apt-get as well for an enormous amount of software, much of which runs fairly adequately on the Zaurus.

I'm banking on pdaXrom to surpass these alternatives across the board soon. It already does in many ways. But if some kind of integration with CACKO or QT apps isn't in the cards for the next release, please make it easier to use XQt or pocketworkstation in the interim. This should help attract new users to CACKO, users likely to upgrade to pdaXrom as it continues to develop.

[Flandry]

Yay!  You/Cacko isn't dead!!

I'm so excited to hear there's going to be a next version!

     

Anyway...

My wishlist as i can remember at the moment (some repeats from others):
-The KO/PI PIM applications that everyone is raving about.  As someone above mentioned, i hate to have redundant programs installed, and the PIM stuff installed just doesn't do it for me

-Fix (if at all possible) the bug with the screen brightness/ musicplayer blank screen, so that other n00bies don't run into the same weird problems i had (the screen would blank for about 30 seconds at a time, and then come back on, only to go blank again as soon as a button or screen event occurred)

-Consolidate the media apps.  I can't recall which does what, but i know that only one player 'sees' directories, while the other player can't play OGGs.  The OGGless player is the one that my Zaurus Remote Control activates.  Combining all the functionality into one would be really neat, if possible.  I also like the suggestion that the buttons on the RC be remapped (stupid stop button!), but i think that's probably beyond the scope of this project.

-Does anyone use Netfront?  I was trying to figure out why both Opera and Netfront are installed.  Maybe we only need one browser (unless there's an orthogonal feature set, like with the media apps).  Just a thought

-Finally, for some reason prboom doesn't seem to work right from the menu (but fine with some fudging from the shell).  I read somewhere this is only a problem with Cacko.  A rather minor thing, of course.

Anyway, i'm really excited to hear you're working on a new release. Thank you!

[mcamou]

Thanks, guys, for your feedback!

Second this. How about a base ROM with no apps and then a bunch of ipk's with the extra stuff? (cal/addr/hancom/video player/etc....)

The main problem is that fewer programs will fit with such a setup. Basicaly because jffs2 used for /home has worse compression than cramfs or the new squashfs. Also, I'm not sure how many people would want to install a bunch of application packages right after flashing the ROM. Maybe I'll open a poll later to find out :)

Hmmm...perhaps two different ROM images, a "bare" and a "full" one. The "bare" one doesn't include (almost) anything and then you can install the .ipk's you want. Interesting point re: jffs2 vs. cramfs/squashfs, though.

Another thing: change the Security app so instead of asking for a PIM it asks you for a real, typed (via hard or soft keyboard) password. Would that be doable?

[lekter]

-Does anyone use Netfront?  I was trying to figure out why both Opera and Netfront are installed.  Maybe we only need one browser (unless there's an orthogonal feature set, like with the media apps).  Just a thought

I have deeply used both Netfront and Opera and I must say that Netfront is by far a better browser for my 760.

- I really like the way it renders web pages using wrap and big fonts, so you NEVER have the horizontal scrollbar.

- I like the fonts too

- and the way it manages bookmarks.

- The offline mode, where you select pages from your bookmarks and download them to view offline.

[maslovsky]

But if technical issues make this impractical for the near-term, what about a CACKO ROM version integrated with XQt or pocketworkstation? It took me a lot more time than I wanted to get them working from a lot of conflicting, mostly outdated, hard to find posts and web pages, and there are still keyboard and environment glitches I haven't been able to fix. XQt offers the immediate ability to run a reasonable number of X apps alongside QT apps. And pocketworkstation gives you apt-get as well for an enormous amount of software, much of which runs fairly adequately on the Zaurus

Actualy I was thinking myself to lay with X/Qt and include it into the next ROM. That should ease other from daling ith installation and configuration hassle.

[maslovsky]

My wishlist as i can remember at the moment (some repeats from others):
-The KO/PI PIM applications that everyone is raving about. As someone above mentioned, i hate to have redundant programs installed, and the PIM stuff installed just doesn't do it for me

Looks like a "Lite" version of the ROM is what people would like to have.  I'll open a poll to see how many would want that. But they will have to sacrifice internal flash space because, like I said, jffs2 compression is worse than cramfs/squashfs.

-Fix (if at all possible) the bug with the screen brigh
tness/ musicplayer blank screen, so that other n00bies don't run into the same weird problems i had (the screen would blank for about 30 seconds at a time, and then come back on, only to go blank again as soon as a button or screen event occurred)

I forgot what was the solution to the problem. If I find it out, I'll try to include it into the ROM.

-Consolidate the media apps. I can't recall which does what, but i know that only one player 'sees' directories, while the other player can't play OGGs. The OGGless player is the one that my Zaurus Remote Control activates. Combining all the functionality into one would be really neat, if possible. I also like the suggestion that the buttons on the RC be remapped (stupid stop button!), but i think that's probably beyond the scope of this project.

I'm starting to like that idea too. All of the many existing players have issues. I think the best candidate for the onle one player is kino2. The main reason is that it uses mplayer, which supports virtualy everything. I have full access to kino2 source, so it's only a matter of updating it to be a good mplayer front end. And yes, I should be able to support remote control with user-configurable button mappings.

-Does anyone use Netfront? I was trying to figure out why both Opera and Netfront are installed. Maybe we only need one browser (unless there's an orthogonal feature set, like with the media apps). Just a thought

I think many people do. That's probably going to be another  poll - what whould people like to see as the default preinstalled browse and what should be just repackaged.

-Finally, for some reason prboom doesn't seem to work right from the menu (but fine with some fudging from the shell). I read somewhere this is only a problem with Cacko. A rather minor thing, of course.

Worked for me as far as I can remember. I donl't have it right now but it did work.

[iamasmith]

Actualy I was thinking myself to lay with X/Qt and include it into the next ROM. That should ease other from dealing with installation and configuration hassle.

I was wondering if there's anything particularly build specific in the PDAXROM feed that would stop us from using all the XLibs against the XQT server. That is JUST the server and none of th XQT libs.... see where I'm going... one X package feed with no need to worry about library conflicts...

At the moment it's a bit of a black art... I did have a VERY brief go at splitting off the libraries from PDAXROM into a cramfs, adding them to ld.so.conf and running some PDAXROM apps (I was wanting to use Scite) but it didn't get very far in the limited time I had. This was an experiment towards producing an IPK that would install XQT and the PDAXROM base libs.

What are your thoughts ?, do you have any insider info on this ? - Are there any missing render extensions in XQT that PDAXROM libs need ?

Practically speaking I think this would be perfect for my purposes. I would actually prefer to use QT apps because they are optimised for the screen size but for quick ports it would be great to have all the base libs that PDAXROM gives. - I think this is most practical because when I started to play with XQT I had difficulty answering the question "What do I want to run from the  X world that I can't do in Qtopia" - the answer was very little.

If this route was to open up then there would need to be some guidelines for people wanting to use libSDL packages, i.e. either get a Qtopia libSDL or get an X version - don't get both !.

...anyway just some thoughts.

[ltrm]

As far as a good music player goes, I'd like to see one which was optomised for use with the screen closed.

By this I mean with a better interface from the external controls or the remote control.  It would be neat to be able to switch playlists without opening the Zaurus.  The stop key could be used when the player was already stoped to change mode or something.  

I used to have a panasonic walkman[sic] which could could be operated with just one button on its remote control.  You had to either press and hold the button or double click it and it would make a corresponding beep to let you know what it was doing.

Since the Z is a bit smarter than my old personal stereo would it be possible to use a speach synth to tell me what playlist I was on, etc.  I may be getting a bit carried away now.  

Other ideas would be an option to switch processor speed to the powersaving option when playing and then back to what ever was set before when stopped.  When I'm listening to music on my Z its usually in my pocket and not doing anything else anyway.

Also I'd like to see a player which could play two or tracks without a pause between them, maybe this could be done by using two copies of mplayer.


What ever happens its good to see that there's a future for a QT Rom.

[svs]

Will be great to port bemused (bluetooth remote music control) on Zaurus.
http://bemused.sourceforge.net/

[maslovsky]

I was wondering if there's anything particularly build specific in the PDAXROM feed that would stop us from using all the XLibs against the XQT server. That is JUST the server and none of th XQT libs.... see where I'm going... one X package feed with no need to worry about library conflicts...

At the moment it's a bit of a black art... I did have a VERY brief go at splitting off the libraries from PDAXROM into a cramfs, adding them to ld.so.conf and running some PDAXROM apps (I was wanting to use Scite) but it didn't get very far in the limited time I had. This was an experiment towards producing an IPK that would install XQT and the PDAXROM base libs.

What are your thoughts ?, do you have any insider info on this ? - Are there any missing render extensions in XQT that PDAXROM libs need ?

I have no idea yet. In fact I havn't even tried X/Qt yet, but was planning to.

[maslovsky]

By this I mean with a better interface from the external controls or the remote control. It would be neat to be able to switch playlists without opening the Zaurus. The stop key could be used when the player was already stoped to change mode or something

I was also thinking that remote control keys and Zaurus buttons should have different (user configurable) functions assigned when playing and when stopped.

Other ideas would be an option to switch processor speed to the powersaving option when playing and then back to what ever was set before when stopped. When I'm listening to music on my Z its usually in my pocket and not doing anything else anyway.

I think this is a great idea. I always keep forgetting to downclock the processor when playing music, so this would be a great option.

[mikew]

Just came across a small bug in Cacko 1.21B that you may want to fix in a future version.

The caps lock on the pop up keyboard behaves the same as shift lock, rather than just shifting A to Z keys.

Would also be nice if we could use all the Zaurus keys with Japanese characters on them, perhaps to switch backwards or forwards between running applications, rather like Alt-Tab & Alt-Shift-Tab in Windows.

Also Alt-6 to Alt-0 could perhaps be user mapped to specific applications, theirs just enough space above the keys to stick a bit of paper show the apps.

Mike

[iamasmith]

Mike, re task switching... I suppose you know about Shift-Home and Shift-Menu ? (get a few tasks running first).