Squeak on the Nokia 770 (touches on old iamges, Morphic, SM, wxWidgets, and more!)

Aaron Reichow revaaron at bitquabit.com
Fri Oct 6 03:38:04 UTC 2006


Stef-

On Thu, 5 Oct 2006, stephane ducasse wrote:

> did you try Genie on it. Because I remember that nathanael optimized
> Genie.

When I was working on Dynapad, I had begun to do some work with Genie.
However, a lot of my work was intitially focused on CharRecog. Basically,
I had gotten it to a point where it was useful enough for me that Genie
wasn't a priority. Genie is really cool, really powerful, way more
extensible, and can do a million things more than CharRecog. However, it
is also slow (on PDA hardware) and IMHO it is confusing to figure out what
to do with it, how to configure it, etc.  If the platform were a PC/Mac
tablet, then Genie it would be, and the work would be worth it- Genie
would let us do a lot more than enter text- with enough energy put into
it, it could become a complete gesture control system for a PDA.  Genie is
where I will begin to focus my efforts when I have a PDA-type device with
enough power, but until then I will be sticking with some other solutions.
Genie isn't that bad on a fast enough high-end PDA, but even on a Zaurus
C760 (400 MHz PXA255) or a Dell Axim X51v (624 MHz XScale), I found Genie
frustrating at times in 'real world' use compared to Genie.

For those who want to use Genie for a PDA-type system, I would suggest
getting a computer like the OQO or the Sony VAIO UX-series for something
very close to the size of PocketPC PDAs or, if you'd like something with a
larger screen, a UMPC or a Sony U-series.  Me, personally, I'd kill for
any of those computers, especially the smaller ones (anything but a UMPC).
However, I don't have the kind of cash required- most PDAs are only
$200-400 USD, which is still a lot of money, don't get me wrong- but it is
a lot cheaper than the $1500-2500 required to get one of those x86
handhelds listed above.  Then again, I'm always open to donations if folks
would like me to refocus my efforts on higher-end hardware. :)

Or, at the very least, a Linux-based Zaurus- anything past a C750 would be
good. The PXA255 @ 400 MHz or above is important.  Or, something
similarily spec'd for WinCE, but on CE preferably something with a CPU
speed of 520 or 624 MHz. CE machines are slower than the C750+ Zaurus
models.  I think this is due to a better memory bus in the Zaurus models
specifically, as those same CE machines running Linux benchmark similarily
as they did under CE. The upper end of the PDAs available aren't too bad
for genie, but the Nokia 770 is too slow.

To check out an image with Genie and a set of gestures for text
recognition see:

ftp://ftp.squeak.org/3.0/unix-linux/iPaq/TinySqueak.image.gz
ftp://ftp.squeak.org/3.0/unix-linux/iPaq/TinySqueak.changes.gz

It was created by Kevin Fisher and it is based on Squeak 3.1a.

> Stef

Regards,
Aaron

revaaron at bitquabit.com || rev in #squeak on irc.freenode.net
   "Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must
         raise themselves to Liberty." -- Emma Goldman

> On 5 oct. 06, at 23:04, Aaron Reichow wrote:
>
> >
> > 3. Using an updated and modified CharRecog.  CharRecog is a really
> > neat
> > character recognition engine that, if memory serves me, Alan
> > himself wrote
> > for Squeak.  Unlike Grafiti, you have to train it, it doesn't come
> > with
> > any built-in set of gestures.  To use it, I used to define one of the
> > hardware buttons on the PDA I was using as the hotkey to start it
> > within
> > the text field. I think there is an alt key command that will start
> > it as
> > well, but I don't remember what it is. I also added an item to the
> > scrollbar menu to start it.  I've written a fair amount of code and
> > text
> > with this- once you get it trai
>
>
>



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