[clug] lightweight tool for creating PDA-style Apps

[Francis James Whittle]

On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 11:48 +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
> I've looked at Symbian mobiles, Nokia smartphones and the iTouch and
> they lack the things that really made the PSION great for me:
>  - multitasking
>  - database engine
>  - scripting language (OPL) integrated with the windowing system
> 
> For a 30Mhz processor with limited memory, these gizmos did a heck of a
> lot...
> 
> With the advent of cheap/small netbooks - especially with the Google
> announcement & ARM processors - I'm thinking I can recreate what I loved
> about the PSION :-)
> 
> -----------------------------------------------
> My Question:
>  Do you know of any lightweight tools suitable for creating PDA-style
> Apps (good UI tools) on low-powered netbooks??
> -----------------------------------------------

The logical response is to suggest use of GTK+ or Qt using a supplied
binding - largely because it's pretty much a guarantee your netbook will
have at least one of these toolkits installed.  Personally I like the
GtkBuilder framework introduced with more recent version of Gtk+ which
allows you to load your UI layout from an XML file (and write
callbacks/functions in whatever language you want, really).  Both
languages provide rapid UI development through visual design tools
(Glade, ‘Qt Designer’ respectively).

Speaking of XML another option is to use XUL with Javascript
‘Storage’ (SQLite databases) on the Mozilla platform
(XULRunnner/Firefox; Prism might work too, but I've never tried it).  Of
course if you don't want to use mozilla...
Well W3C has a draft for a standard database access API but as far as I
can tell there's no working public implementations of it.

> 
> TCL/Tk could do it, but I've always found the reverse-polish style of
> TCL unintuitive.
> Haven't used Lua, but it doesn't come with UI support.
> 
> PERL/Python/Ruby - not sure...

- Perl database access is of course quite good.  UI response depending
on what you use is okay too, but the loading time for some such external
libraries can be quite lethargic in the current incarnation (D-Bus for
example, is quite slow to load).
- Python, despite my reservations about the syntax, isn't so bad for UI
programming.  Responsive callbacks, fast loading, small footprint, only
real drawback is whitespace matters...
- Both Perl and Python can load GtkBuilder XML files and link signals at
runtime.  IMO it's very efficient code-wise.

I can't comment on Ruby.

> 
> I've never been a fan of JAVA - big footprint to both develop & run.

Not sure I follow you here.  But if you're not a fan, you're not a fan.

> Maybe I need to investigate Javascript & pick up some DB libraries
> (Tridge's TDB?)
> 
> Suggestions?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of the meta-functions necessary is 2-way syncing for Scheduler,
> Contacts, (email?) ... between 'base' and the portable device.
> 
> 'rsync' is a partial solution, but only if all changes are restricted to
>  separate files in each environment.

If you're looking for PIM synchronisation...

http://www.conduit-project.org
http://www.syncevolution.org

> Perhaps I should look at Google Gears... IIRC, they solve the off-line
> sync problem.
> 
> TIA
> steve
> 
> -- 
> Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
> 
> sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin