[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Porting non-GTK applications to maemo

[From: Antonio Gomes]

On 23 Jun 2006 17:47:18 +0200, Tim Teulings <rael at edge.ping.de> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> > I am also member of maemo mailing list, but wondering the same
> > question as you. Have you got any reply ?
>
> No, I have not. Not that nice :-/ Nevertheless I tried to compile my
> library/applications using the SDK. At least under PC and using the
> emulation (XNest...) I was able to get my applications starting. There
> seem however some pitfalls regarding the X server:
>

So I am facing similar problems. I start porting a XUL-based
[http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/] application for maemo 2.0.
Getting a build targeting i386 was not that hard, and it does start up
and show up (with some issues though) on sbox (xephyr), On the other
hand, building it for arm was painful, but after some hackings I got
it. When I try to run it on the n770 it does not show up at all ...
any idea what could I be missing ?

> * I got X11 exceptions when loading a font of iso10646-1 encoding (unicode).
>
> * XOpenIM returns NULL, so it seems that there is no input method
> (strange, how do they implement the on screen keyboard? I though they
> would use X11 input methods!?). Of course other methods depending on
> that (for example XmbLookupString) do not work either since they rely on
> a valid handle. I have do code an alternative source path for that :-/
>
yeap, vkb will be an issue in a soon future: AFAIK  APIs  available
currently rely on gtk (rebember mine is a xul app). Maybe I have to
found out a way to pop it up/hide without any GtkIMModule stuff.

> * My main windows opens nearly full screen, which is bigger than what I
> defined as maximum size using X11.
>
> * Starting programs from console works without problems (and without
> DBus), but I fear starting them from the program manager (from icon
> click) will fail because of missing DBus session handling.

Same as I: on sbox , if I launch mine from command line I works fine,
but from menu-extra I runs for a few seconds and then it's killed, and
it's expected once there is not any dbus handlings added so far.

> * I havn't yet found a DBus example which does not depend on the glib
> extension :-/

Any good documentation about maemo/osso/dbus ?

> If you are also starting porting your information I would be interested
> in exchanging our findings. I would suggest you answer to my mailing
> list request to the mailing list claiming your interest, too, to give it
> more weight.
>
> So after fixing my input handling code my next goals will be getting
> keyboard input running and after that DBus and debian packaging (which I
> have some initial knowledge of which I have to reactivate)
>

I got packing already, Vkb and dbus are still issues.

> Btw., my GUI library is http://illumination.sf.net. If you have further
> questions => ask!

http://tonikitoo.blgspot.com ... lots of minimo/mozilla stuff there ;)

thanks for any hint.

-- 
--Antonio Gomes