Mono development in openmoko

[Schmidt András]

Hi, Juan!

Juan Luis Prieto Martinez wrote:
> Hello Schmidt,
Actually in hungarian we write our last name first :-). So my first name 
is András. I shoud have written it in english as András Schmidt. I just 
mentioned it because I found this combination funny :-).
> For me it is not a problem to use Java in stead of Mono, I use to 
> develop in Java but my curiosity for Mono is only to learn it, just that.
>
> About what I want to develop I am not sure at all, may be I should 
> start joining an existent project at least to learn how to develop for 
> this device. Actually I am usign the emulator because I don´t have a 
> neo either.
When developing in Java or .NET there is not much difference between a 
PC or a PDA. You have to design your UI to be usable on a small touch 
screen without a stylus. You also have to restrict yourself to use less 
resources of course. The APIs are the same as on PC (the only difference 
I know is the .NET binding for mokoui) and also the same binaries should 
work. So I am just testing the application on my PC. And as testers have 
experienced it just works on the phone.

The project I have initiated is a map viewer application for the 
OpenMoko platform. Currently I am developing it alone. If you find it 
interesting you could join the project. There are many nice features 
that can be implemented if you like. You can also compile the OSM map of 
your area or even a Garmin map. I would be very happy if you found it 
interesting :-).
Check it! http://yamamap.wiki.sourceforge.net/ and 
http://sf.net/projects/yamamap - The source code can be checked out from 
the sourceforge SVN and there is a working demo (with a piece of OSM 
map) on sourceforge's download. There are not many howto's for map 
compilation and development environment setup (they are Eclipse projects 
on SVN and they depend on apache command line parser jar) yet. But I am 
plannig to create them (next week if you are interested).

For the Mono-Java question: In my opinion the .NET language is a little 
bit better (structures and maybe ) than Java. But Java has a great open 
source community and many tools available. Working with Eclipse and with 
Monodevelop is chalk and cheese. That's why I prefer Java to .NET.

I have no OpenMoko phone yet and wanted to see my program working with a 
real GPS. That's why I have ported the application to Mono. But it is 
too much work (but it works! I can send you instructions if you have a 
PDA with GPS a recent WinME) to maintain two versions of the code that's 
why I will abandone the Mono version even if that means it will not work 
on Windows PDA's.

If you do something different in mono and you have a Windows based PDA 
you can compile it on Linux too. If you are interested in this there is 
some instruction here: 
(http://yamamap.sourceforge.net/documentation-html.html#SECTION00542000000000000000).

Anyway next week you can contact me on jabber (asch at jabbim.cz - can 
contact with gtalk) or MSN (asch at freemail.hu) if you like. I will not be 
online until then.


Happy hacking!
András Schmidt