[maemo-developers] Maemo & Linux mainstream (was Re: Projects Nokia should support (yours?))

[From: Neil Jerram]

Hi Quim,

2008/10/24 Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com>:
> Thanks for the very good feedback!
>
> Answering to Till and Neil, who came up with requirements difficult to
> combine: mobile uniqueness versus API compatibility across several
> platforms.

Many thanks for your response.  It is clear that you understand and
are trying to incorporate the point/viewpoint that I was expressing,
so thank you for that.  Also I appreciate how the overall problem that
you are trying to solve is more difficult than mine: you are trying to
work out how to promote and sell new products, whereas I am trying to
maximize the benefit of my free software time.

(And I could be right to suggest that maximizing community benefit is
a path to commercial success, but I could equally well be wrong; I
just don't have the experience to know.  In my free software project
there are similar issues: with limited resource, should we concentrate
on fixing bugs, and working on specific things that people report on
the mailing list, or should we ignore those and work on big sexy new
features?  I don't yet know there either!)

Just a couple of further comments below...

> The problem is not that much on the performance side. Performance is of
> course a problem but in our opinion not as big as the differences in use
> cases and UI requirements for a small touchscreen.

I completely agree that the UI requirement differences are very
challenging.  I just don't think that we have yet fully explored the
possibilities for addressing this within the infrastructure, as
opposed to by modifying application level code.

I'm thinking of things like transparent, overlaying,
application-specific keyboards; pervasive and easy ability to zoom and
pan what you are seeing on screen; arbitrary mapping of available
hardware buttons to input events that make sense to applications; and
so on - by definition this list is not complete.

> I don't know developers not willing to produce software that users find
> amazing and fall in love with. Ok, in fact I know some  ;)   but you get
> my point.

I do.  But I'm worried you're missing amazing applications that
already exist.  As well as supporting new development, what about
asking for recommendations of existing apps that would be great on the
tablets, with a little polish?

>> (Note that "writing" here includes activities like packaging.  In an
>> ideal world, I would only have to package each new version of my
>> software once, upload the source package to Debian, and everything
>> else would follow from that.  Note that this has now been achieved for
>> the Openmoko phone, so it is entirely possible.)
>
> Even if it's technically possible, there is something no technology
> solves (at least nowadays): the use cases for someone in the move with a
> device in their pockets are different from someone sitting with a
> computer on the table. For many apps just this is critical.

Yes, but I think the Debian people would say that they want to include
mobile stuff too, not just desktop.  Hence (1) there may already be
suitable mobile apps there; (2) even if not, it would still (I think)
be a good distribution channel for future mobile apps, plus
infrastructure needed for them.

>> - the existence of hildon.
>
> Hildon is available in Debian and Ubuntu.

That's good, sorry for not checking that myself first; it means I
should be able to push my hildon bindings upstream too!

> It covers features important
> in the mobile context that GTK+ is not covering as for today.

I hadn't appreciated that, through just using the widgets.  Is there a
write up of this somewhere?

Regards,
       Neil