Thursday, September 17, 2009

First steps with Maemo 5 SDK - Stardict

It looks like there is a lot of hype about new N900. I don't think I'll be able to afford one for myself but there are still people who will need a dictionary program while they are offline.

4 hours spent to get the first working binary. And there is a huge amount of work to do:

  • read Maemo 5 HIG doc
  • change the layout of potentially everything as all the buttons are HUGE now and previous useful area got shrinked.
  • work around the bug "Xephyr crashes on clicking any editable area". Hate to have compiled/make_installed thing in my system.

And, of course, a screenshot:

8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. There are exceptions to UI design that just can't be avoided. I'd say that a dictionary may fall into this category. Use your best judgment when faced with the need to shrink "useful" areas. ;)

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  3. here's how I solved the Xephyr problem:
    http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31780

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  4. Would it be more convenient if the definition of the word would be shown as a pop-up?

    Replacing the whole area with the list, possibly having multiple columns with words and popping up the definition on tapping a word could be more space-efficient than the usual layout. Of course, this may require more rewriting.

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  5. 2pv: Do you know any PC or iPhone application that uses this kind of UI? I'd like to see an example because my imagination doesn't go that far.

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  6. Dear Mece and Antimirov, do you know anything about Qstardict for the N 900?
    I have downloaded it, but cannot install any dictionary, I have tried all ways which were discussed on maemo talk, but no way.
    Maybe yoo can help any how?
    thanks alot

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  7. Yes, I know something about QStardict, I participated partially its progress.

    My Gtalk is turist AT gmail.com so just send me an auth request, let's discuss it

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