[maemo-developers] Development of simple gamess for maemo and iphone (ipod touch)

[From: Yves Piguet]

Hi,

> I think of programming some little applications (strategic games as
> kalaha) for maemo. I would love to compile (nearly) the same source  
> for
> the ipod touch (or the iphone) later.
>
> I have some experience with the maemo plattform (VNC viewer) but only
> read some general articles about iphone development. Is there any body
> who ported a maemo app to iphone, or who knows how to be prepared.

Not porting a Maemo app, but (cross-)developing for multiple platforms
including these. iPhone OS is a unix variant, so you should be able
to share C code related to your own algorithms (of course), network,
and file system as long as you don't need to access system files or  
share
files with other applications (it's neither possible nor permitted).
The GUI is programmed in Objective C, an object-oriented superset of
C, easy to learn. Libraries aren't compatible with Mac's.

Begin with the free Xcode environment + emulator on Mac OS X. Then
you need to pay 100 USD/year to run applications on your own iPhone
or iPod touch and 100 other devices for tests, and to distribute them
on the App Store. Read the documentation and play with the available
sample applications, to make sure that what you intend to do is
possible. Get used to the user interface by loading free applications
available on the App Store. The differences with desktop GUIs are
much more important than for Maemo.

I'm not sure GPL is incompatible with iPhone applications now that
the Apple NDA has been relaxed. With your own code, of course, you
do what you want.

The only multiplatform development environment which could be
considered for both Maemo and iPhone is Javascript, afaik.

Hth,

Yves