iLiad Nice little "make people curious" message!

[Aenea]

Hi!

A picture says more than a 1000 words....

Aenea

[yokos]

Curious yet? YES!

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by yokos

Curious yet? YES!

No questions? hehe, what do YOU see in those pictures?

Aenea

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aenea

No questions? hehe, what do YOU see in those pictures?

Aenea

An iLiad emulator?

[yokos]

Originally Posted by Aenea

No questions? hehe, what do YOU see in those pictures?

Aenea

I see: the amount of Qt apps for iLiad will increase in near future.
The only Qt app we have right now is KeePassX.

First the included examples [fontsampler] included in qtopia core, then one of the dozens of Qt apps which are waiting to port.

Qt is pretty popular for Linux based embedded systems like Zaurus.

[Adam B.]

Very cool!

How'd you get around the libc issues?

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Very cool!

How'd you get around the libc issues?

hehehe, I didn't, I repeat, DIDN'T port Qt 4, I ported Qtopia 4!

Qtopia is, basically, Qt 4 for embedded devices and instead of running on top of an X server (which on the iLiad is XFBdev, an X server on top of the framebuffer device), Qtopia runs straight on the framebuffer...

This means -> faster GUI -> faster startup times

And this is not all, I hacked around, well basically, added a ton of ARM features to qemu-arm which is now capable of running ARM compiled (with the 'official' iRex OE gcc compiler) applications ON x86 LINUX

So, is it an emulator? Kinda!!!

What you see is:
1) an uname -a of the actual (virtual) machine (i686)
2) in /opt/iliad I have a complete copy of the iliad filesystem and I just ran uname -a again from the command-line (with binfmt_misc you can set a magic sequence so it can identify ARM compiled code and happily runs /usr/bin/qemu-arm which runs the iLiad code unchanged!)
3) I started the Qt4 X11 application qvfb (tweaked for the iliad, just the iliad dimensions and depth (4 bits) as default)... QVfb is a virtual framebuffer for use with Qtopia applications...
4) you see that I run the fontselector example with the runqt script (which just passes a few default parameters so it uses the QVfb framebuffer instead of /dev/fb) and the program shows it's output in the QVfb application. BTW. this and all the other (have tested most of them) examples are actually ARM executables as well....

Where is this leading?
1) An easy to use development environment (Trolltech just released plugins for Eclipse for C++/Java/Qt4/Qtopia/Jambi) without the need to move the programs to the iLiad for testing and debugging the ARM code
- For even faster development you can initially develop your program with a native (for me x86_64) compiled QVfb *and* native compiled Qtopia Core 4 + native app you're writing which performs a lot faster since It doesn't need vmware (needed a 2.4.19 x86 kernel for qemu-arm to work), doesn't need qemu-arm and doesn't use the slowness of it all
- When the app is ready for debugging you start using the qemu-arm + vmware environment
2) Easy and fast GUI applications for the iLiad. I'm actually planning to replace the whole lot, well, I skip the X server and all that stuff and will write my own, better (well, according to my taste), content-lister. My own document plugins (which should render faster), etc., etc.
3) I hope to add Qt Jambi (should be trivial, but you never know) support so we can also use Java as a development language which automatically has the same look and feel as the C++ applications. Oww and yes, I also have a working JVM...

Oww, I almost forgot, the thing with Qtopia is, you can write your own screen driver plugin. I just extended the framebuffer one and actually implemented the dirty rectangle routines which are neatly available in the screen driver interface (which call the iLiad's special update routines) -> no need for patched Xlibs and adding update routines all over the place...

Drawbacks?
- No more stock X apps, but since I prefer KDE over Gnome and since KDE uses Qt as its base I don't see real problems... (just like porting a gnome app to KDE...)

Well, that's it!

Aenea

PS. And to just piss of Mobipocket even more, one of the document plugins will be secure mobipocket in C++. According to Dutch law no-one can prevent me from writing an app which does the same as theirs (I'm allowed to write a DRM circumvention program, but not distribute it, but a viewer contains no circumvention, if the laywers say it is then the original Mobipocket viewer is also prohibited...) only, hehe, faster startup times and faster rendering and, ohh, did you see that font selector demo?

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Very cool!

How'd you get around the libc issues?

Simple: re-compiled lots and lots of packages! (in case anyone wondered what I've been up to the past weeks! )

Aenea

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Aenea

And to just piss of Mobipocket even more, one of the document plugins will be secure mobipocket in C++. According to Dutch law no-one can prevent me from writing an app which does the same as theirs (I'm allowed to write a DRM circumvention program, but not distribute it, but a viewer contains no circumvention, if the laywers say it is then the original Mobipocket viewer is also prohibited...)

I agree that there is the world of difference between a viewer, which requires a valid MobiPocket ID to work, and a "DRM circumvention program" which creates a DRM-free document. So in a rational world you would be correct, but I suggest getting legal advice anyway - because laws are not rational.

[delphidb96]

Aenea,

Please, please, PLEASE tell me you have access to a Sony PRS-500, Hanlin or Bookeen Cybook Gen3 to see if the same can be done on one of them! (Hint. Hint.)

Derek

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

... because laws are not rational.

And lawyers even less so.

[DeGodefroi]

No way! Aenea, first finish all the work for the Iliad. :-)
I am selfish. Yep egoistisch. Dutch first!
But does this mean you can make an OS for the Iliad and since we can boot from CF, it could skip the old Iliad software completely.
I am not a unix et all expert, so I need icons and clickeys and such.
Oh yes I could learn, but I do not have the time to do everything. I still need time to breathe. :-)

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Please, please, PLEASE tell me you have access to a Sony PRS-500, Hanlin or Bookeen Cybook Gen3 to see if the same can be done on one of them! (Hint. Hint.)

If you can install software on them and they run linux it could, but eh, one reader at a time okay?

Aenea

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I agree that there is the world of difference between a viewer, which requires a valid MobiPocket ID to work, and a "DRM circumvention program" which creates a DRM-free document. So in a rational world you would be correct, but I suggest getting legal advice anyway - because laws are not rational.

Mwah, this is just one tiny part of the whole project and there's enough work to be done. In the mean time I can also see what happens with that 'old' program of mine and that law firm

Aenea

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by DeGodefroi

No way! Aenea, first finish all the work for the Iliad. :-)
I am selfish. Yep egoistisch. Dutch first!
But does this mean you can make an OS for the Iliad and since we can boot from CF, it could skip the old Iliad software completely.
I am not a unix et all expert, so I need icons and clickeys and such.
Oh yes I could learn, but I do not have the time to do everything. I still need time to breathe. :-)

Well, I'm gonna change a huge part of it yes, but it off-course will still be linux, but it just will look and function quite different!

Aenea