[maemo-developers] Developing for maemo...

[From: Simon Pickering]

> Thanks, Brad... So, concerning Python/Gtk+... Is that thee best way to
> go?
>
> Also, can you (or anyone) suggest any good resources for developing for
> maemo (outside of the SDK docs, of course)... And by "developing for
> maemo," I mean learning the most applicable language, the best IDE to
> use, etc.
>

I just learned Python to write some quick GUI apps. What I did was buy 
Python in a nutshell (I hate computer based reference material, pygtk 
take note!) so I have something both to look up questions about syntax 
and also to browse and get an idea of how the language works.

I then chose a program to create; one always needs something to do/a 
goal for a language, otherwise it's quite hard to stay focused. I also 
browsed around existing programs until I found something that looked 
about right (so I could create a skeleton for my new code and get 
started on the interesting stuff with as little effort as possible) and 
I went from there, deciding what features I wanted and then researching 
and adding them.

In terms of IDE, I think I'm using gedit (which happens to do syntax 
highlighting for Python along with every other language under the sun), 
anything more complex is fairly pointless IMO as Python code doesn't 
need to be compiled (though helpful syntax tooltips might be nice a la 
VB).

The differences between Maemo and GTK (from the Python point of view) 
are reasonably small. I tend to develop and test my code on the PC as 
it's faster than copying things across (though this depends on how 
tightly linked into the Maemo services you are) then copy to the device 
every once in a while. I set a variable/#define to allow me to quickly 
switch between targeting Maemo or GTK.

Hope that's of some help,

Cheers,


Simon