iRex Forum

[Karel]

Hello All,

Here at iRex we are playing with the idea to set up and facilitate an open community development platform. Something similar as the Maemo project: http://maemo.org/ .

We would support this project and provide all the necessary tools and websites (website, forum, blog, wiki, subversion...) and could offer additional resources and services (e.g. development samples, developer discounts, bounty system, unreleased source codes, etc ...). However the whole project will be run and moderated by the community for the community.

The goal of this project would be to make the community development open, accessible and useful to all developers that want to extend the possibilities of our Linux based e-readers.

So far the development efforts have been split across several community developers on different locations. In order to make it more accessible for everybody we believe there is a need for such a project and we would be more than willing to support such a project.

Of course the most important aspect of such a project would be the community it self, and without the support of the community the project doesn't make any sense, therefor we would like to hear what you guys think about it and start a discussion around this.

So let us know what you think and if you might have suggestions?

Let the discussion begin

[tribble]

I would greatly appreciate such a project. This would be a great help to many developers and could get a few newbies to try for themselves. All information gathered in a single source would be good aswell.

Even better if some of the developers could gain access to sources, that hinder them to develop properly at the moment.

So you have my vote
+1
_________________

www.justread.de - Die neue Art zu lesen
offizieller iRex Reseller in Deutschland

[Adam B.]

I think this is a great idea. The iLiad really needs to get a larger developer community in order to really achieve it's full potential.

I would be more than willing to help moderate, administer, and organize the new developer community.

I can think of a pretty large list of things that would help facilitate this.

In no particular order:

• An easier way for the average user to find and download 3rd party applications. Perhaps an ipkg repository with a nice gui front end.
  
• Sources, sources, sources! At the bare minimum, we need sources for the common gui elements of the contentlister and settings app. This way we can create applications that keep a consistent look and feel of the iLiad. It would be nice to get all of the conentlister source, along with as many of the other currently closed source apps (and drivers) that you're willing to give.
  
• A central place to discuss ongoing projects. Because of the active (and mostly positive) community there, most developers call MobileRead their home, but come here when we need help from iRex. A few new owners are only on the iRex forums, but those are few and far between. I, for one, shy away from these forums because it seems to be mostly filled with the unhappy few owners who spread their dislike and unhappiness along many threads without moderator intervention.
  
• Documentation. Mostly what we know about the iLiad (and specifically screen refreshes), we've found through looking through source code and a few random posts by developers. It's not organized, or standardized. Everyone handles it in a slightly different way, so getting a single answer on how to do it is pretty difficult. Tutorials, documentation, full sources, etc, would greatly help this out.
  

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure I'll have more later.
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Openiliad.com - Your source for iLiad Software and Documentation

[Blue]

[cmetz]

As a heavy Nokia N800 user (non-developer) I've found maemo.org (as well as the community in general, ie internettablettalk.com and others) to be of huge value in not only making the most of the N800 for me, but certainly from a marketing standpoint in general, making me comfortable and passionate enough to recommend it to business associates and friends. I think maemo helps blend the best of opensource and business models so that each complements and energizes the other. As a non-iRex user at this point, but someone who is investigating e-ink readers for his personal use, such a community from your standpoint would only help iRex and the ebook community in general I would suspect. And I was rather impressed with your gracious November 30th comment concerning Kindle. Anyway, no help on the developer end here but certainly a sympathetic business user and writer who is watching the scene. Best wishes as you chart your course.

[kapoira]

great news, first of all a place for all of the developments of the iliad is great

1 think if we put a ipkg method to install, we have to solve a "little" detail

All the users can get these packages, all that can run the .sh, or only a group of beta-testers.

sorry for my english but i'm trying to say if we have to do a stable/unstable version of the ipkg or ALL assume that the running of .sh is unstable

OFFtopic: waiting for spareparts in my iliad, and now this new, i WANT my iliad here...

[tristan]

As a new Iliad user (one week) and a bit of a geek it would be great to have a common resource for development and community developed tools and programs.

[brianfcox]

Absolutely, as a N770 and N800 owner I was realy surprised by the weakness of the iRex support. I've seen a lot of good work from developers for the iRex, but it is a painful task of hunting and gathering to try and pull together all the resources.
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brian

[squid9]

I'm very interested in this. The platform has huge potential, and I for one am very keen to start developing for it. Lack of information (how to start) has been a small barrier to entry for me, (but also - as a new iliad owner - uncertainty over how much warranty rights I would be signing away upon getting the developer package...)

A site with the troika of documentation, tutorials and source repository would be a huge step forwards (IMHO)

[alanine]

I'd suggest a set of tutorials to get people started on the development scene. Most developers come with good knowledge about programming and perhaps Linux systems, but to jump in they have to start somewhere.

Just to name a few things these tutorials can cover:

1. initial setup of toolchain, preparation of iliad (developer package and SSH etc), cross-compile a HelloWorld and make it run on iLiad.
2. explanation of directory structure and manifest, example of using shell script to accompilish tasks (with possible visual feedbacks through manifest.xml, which is shown in the contentlister).
3. a simple GTK GUI example, and show how to do proper screen update, and get user input (button and stylus).
4. an example of porting a small application over to iliad, things to note and system differences, etc.

If you guys can do a good job to start this tutorial serie, I'm sure developers will help to finish all the rest.

I also suggest a wiki-like structure to maintain all relevant resources.

Personally, I'm most interested in either porting (or building from scratch) an anti-aliased, vector based, note taking application to be used with ipdf (or without). But without knowing the proper screen update technique, I'm reluctant to start.

[tribble]

oh, if you set up an SVN it would be great if you could get a trac running along. They play really nice together and it would be a good team for bug and feature tracking.
_________________

www.justread.de - Die neue Art zu lesen
offizieller iRex Reseller in Deutschland

[Vagabond]

I'd be interested in this too. I haven't done any hacking with my iliad (just used it a lot) but there's a couple things I'd like to play around with if I had the time. I already have to deal with enough reverse engineering on other projects as it is though, so more openness on the iliad would be a big plus.

Andrew

[yokos]

I would greatly appreciate such a project, too.
I would be cool to get more developers involved.
I got wet feet by doing some ports [all my ports live at mobileread].
It would be cool to find several persons who could start a porting project together.
For example it's not so easy to find the optimal right places in src to start a full refresh of screen, this is boring/tedious work & not much fun to do it all alone.

[PhilT]

Yes this would be great. I've been a developer for ten years although mostly not on Linux but given the right resources to help people like me get started would really help.

There are many ideas I see floating around the iRex and Mobileread forums. It would be good to pool everyone to help get some of these ideas turned into features.

Searching and enhanced contentlister are the two that always seem to come up.

SVN + Trac is certainly the way to go too.

I'd also like to hear from iRex developers about what they are working on and where they see things going in terms of the software etc.

Also, does your codebase have any unit or functional tests? What language(s)? I guessing I'll have to dust off the old C++ books!

[thetechnobear]

+1

as a developer, things that would make life easier for me would be:
- toolchain
- single svn repository
- wiki on each project to know whats going on, where help is needed

in particular for fresh new apps i need to know
- which frameworks are preferred (again toolchain)
- more info on iLiad specific apps e.g. contentlister

and, last but not least can you release the source for content lister, and other parts (e.g. ids) -

and you will really push development forward, if you let java developers in on the act too!!! (im ok, with c/c++ but others may not be)

good news , i hope you come up with something soon