Squeak on Handhelds (Update)

Aaron Reichow revaaron at bitquabit.com
Sat Mar 17 20:04:54 UTC 2007


Ian-

Does this differ from what Gerald has done here?
	http://g-24.net/squeak/770.html

That VM works fine on my N800, FYI.

Other than the stuff you've mentioned, did you add any other Nokia  
770/N800-specific stuff? I'm most interested in the ability to launch  
Squeak from the app menu and switch between it and other apps using  
the running apps tray on the dock.  When you run any plain old X app,  
without the right magic words mumbled behind the scenes, you don't  
get an icon for the app there. Which makes it a bit hard to use the  
plain-X11 Squeak VM that Gerald provides above and I use- if you open  
another app, there's no quick and easy way to pop back into Squeak,  
rather you have to close or minimize the apps that have gotten in  
front of it. Woe-is-you if you go to the Home screen, which can't be  
minimized or closed as such.

Also, the Nokia softkeyboard is something we'll likely never have.   
Not saying it's impossible, but it's not like the generalized soft  
keyboards on other PDAs. Rather, it's part of GTK+, and whenever you  
a GTK+ text widget goes into focus it pops up.  No way to bring it up  
on other apps or have their keypress events end up in the right  
places.  There are some hacks we could try, but so far, Brian Rice,  
others and I have created some soft-input keyboards/schemes for  
Squeak and I think that's the best way to go in general.

For anyone using Squeak on the N800/770: If you've not used it, make  
sure to try out Genie!  IMHO, it's probably the best character  
recognition system I've ever used.  Full on HWR like on the Newton or  
ParaGraph's CalliGrapher are superior, but I'm able to get very high  
accuracy and a lot of speed using Genie on the 770 and N800-  
recognitions are instant.  I've a handy gesture for inserting  
characters I might not remember the stroke for- when you perform it  
it pops up a menu (A-M, N-Z, 0-9, etc) asking for what char you want  
inserted.  I don't think it's in this image yet, but the image I've  
been using and sharing for use on the Nokia 770/N800 I have up here:

http://www.bitquabit.com/rev/images/

called pda32.  It is based on Squeak 3.2 and has a dock for switching  
windows, launching stuff, etc.  I don't think some of my recent work  
is in it yet, though. If people are interested I'll get a new version  
up and keep folks up to date.

Regards,
Aaron

On Mar 16, 2007, at 9:32 PM, Ian Piumarta wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In case anyone is interested, I've compiled a VM for the Nokia N800  
> and put it here:
>
>     http://squeakvm.org/unix/release/Squeak-3.9-10.arm-linux- 
> gnu.tar.gz
>
> I've tested it superficially and it runs standard images, the mouse  
> works fine, and you can take it in and out of fullscreen from the  
> world menu.  However there is no VM support for the N800 buttons  
> (so middle- and right-click cannot be generated) nor for the system  
> virtual keyboard.
>
> Cheers,
> Ian
>
>




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