505 development.

[Bokkie]

Guys, forgive me for being dumb and way ahead of my current knowledge of the 505 but I'd like to ask something about it. As a C# developer I've done a lot of development on Windows, Mobile based PDA's and on some GPS devices (C). I'm going through Valloric's guide on changing the 505's fonts. That's got me thinking about the 505.

Can you actually develop applications that can run on the 505 or are they just scripts of some form or another? That is, nothing that can respond to button presses and other events, etc?

If there is a development environment what's available for use?

Does the 505 use a Linux-based OS or something proprietery that Sony leveraged?

[HarryT]

Like all the other eInk devices, the 505 runs Linux. I'll let others more knowledgeable than myself about the Sony answer your other questions.

[Bokkie]

Thanks Harry. You seem to pop up all over the place! I feel a bit like I'm in one of those hit-the-gopher games. You probably know it, a gopher pops it head up from a hole and you have bash it on the bonce before it goes back down. Everywhere I stick my head up, there's a HarryT!

Thanks for the heads-up on the Linux angle. Like you imply, hopefully others can lay a few bricks on the foundation for me.

[igorsk]

Download Universal Flasher and examine it. Try the "Run Script" function. Read and edit script.sh. Get an ARM Linux cross-compiling toolchain, try making some simple programs and run them from the script.
Hopefully this will be enough to start.

[Valloric]

One can write all sorts of applications for the Reader. There have been several very successful apps. See here and here for examples.

[Bokkie]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Download Universal Flasher and examine it. Try the "Run Script" function. Read and edit script.sh. Get an ARM Linux cross-compiling toolchain, try making some simple programs and run them from the script.
Hopefully this will be enough to start.

igorsk, is there an ARM compiler product you recommend? If it's like the stuff I've done before on GPS I had a compiler that could produce binaries for different processors. I don't recall it's name. There are probably freeware compilers and linkers available but the commercial product we had then was an all-in-one which had a nice IDE for editing and the outputs from it all did not require smoke-and-mirrors to be used to do the same. In other words, some freeware options can need many utilities to be run to get to the point of final assembly. I'd prefer a 'professional' package where possible. Do you know of such a beast?

[DairyKnight]

Originally Posted by Bokkie

igorsk, is there an ARM compiler product you recommend? If it's like the stuff I've done before on GPS I had a compiler that could produce binaries for different processors. I don't recall it's name. There are probably freeware compilers and linkers available but the commercial product we had then was an all-in-one which had a nice IDE for editing and the outputs from it all did not require smoke-and-mirrors to be used to do the same. In other words, some freeware options can need many utilities to be run to get to the point of final assembly. I'd prefer a 'professional' package where possible. Do you know of such a beast?

The PRS-505 runs MontaVista Linux and executables are standard ELF. Any ARM compiler could more or less do the job.
By examining the exports/imports table of the eBook Library program on PC you can have a general idea of Kinoma's Fsk framework - and the software running on 505 is an ARM port of that.

So as to say, by writing a .so plugin library to replace the counterpart on 505, you can 'hack' into the Fsk system and get direct access to Fsk APIs.