Hello,<br><br>Sorry for bothering everybody the direct way via the list. I just didn't find a better idea to reach all mentors. I hope all non-affected people forgive me for wasting their bandwith ;)<br><br>I am a bit ... well ... disappointed that my proposal about porting the phoneME-Java-implementation to Maemo only got two votes.
<br>I know this project does not sound as cool as many others because its basically just the base-technology to make rocking stuff happening on top. I tried to explain my proposal a bit more in-detail and attached a new version at the end of the mail.
<br><br>I would be really happy if I could get your vote - java support on Maemo has always been a long-term wish for me - and the opportunity to work on it is nearly too great to be true.<br><br><br>Thank you in advance, lg Clemens
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="5"><b>PhoneME
for Maemo</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><b>Abstract</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">PhoneME
is a Java Virtual Machine which has been opensourced lately by Sun.
Shrinked to fit especially the needs of handheld devices this Java-VM
is very lightweight and offers thanks to its just-in-time compiler
state of the art performance and fast application startup.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">The
goal of this project is to port and adopt phomeME to integrate
flawlessly into maemo, allowing new applications to be exchangeable
between different versions of Maemo (e.g. Nokia770-IT2005/2006;
N800-2007) and allow a lot of existing software (including many
mobile phone games) to run out of the box.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><b>Background</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><u>Current
situation:</u></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Maemo
is a great platform for application development, but it also shares
some weaks with other systems:</font></font></p>
<ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Binary
compatibility problems (library interfaces change, different
compilers used)</font></font></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Till
now only used for Nokia770/N800 devices</font></font></p>
</li></ul>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">The
consequence of these points is that for examlple software written for
Nokia770/IT-2005 won't work on a N800. So although APIs are quite the
same a developer would need to package three versions of his/her
application for every maemo version. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">This
is perfectly acceptable considering how easy it is to port existing
GTK/Gnome applications to maemo, however for new software which
should be created once and not maintained for every device seperatly
this approach is a bit painful.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><u>How
Java could help:</u></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Java
has a well defined cross-platform-„ABI" and a stable and
well-defined API. Thanks to the virtual machine applications written
once run on all Java implementations of this profile (well, minus
bugs ;)).</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Considering
that already a lot of applications written in Java exist, this would
not only open the door for developing new cross-platform applications
but also for a lot of already existing software. </font></font>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Thanks
to java's abstraction these existing applications could be also look
and act like a native maemo application.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Broader
java support on various devices also means that software companies
maybe will choose Java (and support those java enabled devices)
instead of using some proprietary technology (like .NET compact or
whatever).</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">An
important part of this project is also to make java a first class
citizen on maemo. This includes an application manager for java
applications, including midlets – which allows to create entries in
the program menu and also to download, install and delete midlets.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">To
sum it up:</font></font></p>
<ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">A
Java-Application would only have to be written once, it could run on
IT2005/2006/2007 and future editions, independent from the used
hardware.</font></font></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">A
lot of already existing software can be used.</font></font></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Java
may help Maemo to appear on the radar of commercial software
companies. (I consider this as good, because you still would have
the choice).</font></font></p></li><li>Because I would try to keep the code as portable as possible I
would also like to add support for GPE - so two linux embedded
platforms could benefit from one project.<br></li></ul>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><u>Java
for <b>Games</b>:</u></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Thousands
of so-called midlets are available for free (and many more if you pay
for of course ;) ). These small Java-Applications are written for
small mobile devices in mind (mobile phones and to some degree also
handhelds).</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Most
of those midlets are games but also a lot of serious applications
exist like google-mail for mobile.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Unfourtunetly
the Java implementations which are designed to run midlets are based
on a different standard so some glue is needed to bring both worlds
together.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">I
plan to archive midlet compatibility using MicroEmulator's
sourcecode.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">MicroEmulator
is a MIDP/CLDC implementation on top of Java-SE (the desktop
eddition) and tune it as far as possible to allow most midlets to run
at full speed on the Nokia770/N800.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><b>Sub-Projects</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<ol><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Compile
phoneME–MR2 on Maemo in scratchbox</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Adopt
the existing AWT-GTK peers to be compatible with the
Personal-Profile-1.1 standard used. (They are currently broken
because they only implement Personal-Profile-1.0) – or adopt
X11-only based peers which would be even more lightweight and adopt
a java-only AWT toolkit.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Best
would be of course both and let the user choose ;)</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Add
support for maemo-specialities like the touchscreen-keybord, maemo
look-and-feel and add some APIs to AWT which allow some access to
Maemo.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Implement
an Application Manager which is able to:</font></font></p>
</li></ol>
<ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Create
startmenu-entries for Java-Handheld-Applications</font></font></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Install/Remove
Mobile Phone Java-Applications</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>
</li></ul>
<ol start="5"><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">Add
support for Midlets (mobile phone java applications) by adopting
MicroEmulator. Tune graphic-output to statisfy the needs of even
advanced Midlets by using techniques as e.g. pixel doubling and SDL.</font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p>
</li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3">If
there's still time left I would enjoy to port and package
Gnu-Classpath based Java implementations to Maemo. Currently they
require GTK-2.10 and can therefor not be compiled.</font></font></p>
</li></ol>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><b>Links</b></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><a href="https://phoneme.dev.java.net/">https://phoneme.dev.java.net/</a></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans, sans-serif"><font size="3"><a href="http://www.microemu.org/">http://www.microemu.org/</a></font></font></p>
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</p>
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