Home to PyS60 Developers

First, a few words about PySide. It allows developers to call Qt APIs using Python. Sound interesting? It should, especially for those who are not to keen on programming in C++. A great many features are available, even Qt Mobility APIs if you use PySide Mobility.

It turns out that PySide and the Qt Simulator get along well. Anderson Lizardo explains how PySide applications can be run on the Qt Simulator in his blog post. Very interesting stuff.

The folks at Symban Foundation are calling for Python enthusiastics at SEE 2010!

If there are enough number of people expressing interest in Python, there might be a Python workshop or BOF session at SEE this time.

I’m polling for interest in attending a Birds-of-a-feather session or workshop on Python on Symbian (PyS60) at SEE.

As you may know, we’ll have got a printed version of http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/in…hon_on_Symbian by then, and I think it would be a good opportunity to talk about developer experiences with PyS60, what they like/don’t like, what needs to be done to improve it further as a commercial option. And of course to see who would like to help.

If there is sufficient interest, we could even have a brief workshop covering some aspect of Python on Symbian - something a bit more challenging than helloworld.

Register your interest by posting in this discussion thread.

About SEE (Symbian Exchange and Exposition)

Just as Symbian has broadened its mission to driving innovation throughout the mobile space, we are also redefining the landscape of our annual event to engage and inspire the brightest and most enthusiastic minds in the industry. SEE 2010 is not a tradeshow—it is a place for the wider community to come together, make cross-industry connections, conduct conversation, share ideas, educate each other and realize some of the vast possibilities that exist in the market.

Register for SEE 2010

My publishing title Chompgames, has been doing quite well at the Ovi store. There are totally four applications under Chompgames umbrella.

• Deep Days - For S40 handsets
• Wallet Watch - For S60 and S40 handsets
• Bollywoodie - For S60 and S40 handsets
• King Khan - For S60 and S40 handsets

Bollywoodie is only 1 week old and has got enormous attention at the store. Thanks to the fanatic Indian cinema lovers. It got a total of 1200 downloads the first 2 days and has been (unexpectedly) downloaded most by Turkey, Mexico and Italy and then India. Does this attest that Indian movies have a greater market abroad ?

King Khan is an application to follow the Indian superstar ShahRukh Khan from your mobile. You can read news about him and follow his tweets

This is an article that I have always had in my mind. It is a tutorial on how to use and detect LongPress on touch based phones. In this article, I talk about the design issues, UI considerations and challenges associated with the longPress gesture.

A simple Flash Lite 2.0 code example has also been attached.

The last few months have been very tight schedules for me and left quite a few announcements unrelayed. Nokia launched its first Symbian 3 phone N8. Boasting as the first 12 Megapixel camera embedded, multi-touch supporting device, I think it is one more step forward in bringing greater digital experiences to the hand.

Quite in the same time, Adobe launched CS5 toolkit. This release is viewed as an important leap-ahead in creating homogeneous multi-platform experiences. CS5 facilitates the publishing of Flash content in Flash Player 10.1 versions and in Flash Lite 4. This means AS3 is a viable programming platform for the smartphones. In addition, Device Central CS5 provides ways to emulate physical changes like orientation and provides API to access accelerometer, location etc.

The Nokia N8 is the first Nokia devices to be shipped with Flash Lite 4.0 (Read more). And hence, coming to look of it, Flash developers in the Nokia circuit have new waters to test, experiment and develop with.

Thoughts -

• With all the buzz surrounding Flash Player 10.1 on devices, Adobe has not quite spoken on Flash Lite 4.
• Since we haven’t seen much on Nokia N8, Flash Lite 4’s performance is still unknown on it.
• Earlier S60 phones like 5800, N97 etc had troubles accessing the lower device features like Accelerometer and other sensors. Though external packages were available, they were not found to be stable.
• Will AIR come (at any delayed point in time) for Symbian devices (though very much in the roadmap) ? Since Flash Lite 4 has been ported for the Symbian 3 device, an AIR runtime shouldn’t take a long time is my personal opinion.

I recently published a desi web-app called Bollywoodie that fetches news, gossips and happenings in Bollywood. Also included are tweets from several superstars of Bollywood.

Some days ago I was asked about a PyS60 application that should support several bodies but without using tabs. The idea was to create a dynamic menu with an option called “Switch to” from which the user could choose the desired body.

After some frustrated experiences I wrote the following code for this special “Window Manager”. It is very compact and Pythonic (at least in my opinion) and I decided to share it with our readers.

"""
Simple window manager for PyS60
Marcelo Barros de Almeida <marcelobarrosalmeida@gmail.com>
License: GPL3
"""
 
from appuifw import *
import e32
import copy
 
class Window(object):
    __lock = e32.Ao_lock()
    __windows = []
 
    def __init__(self,**kargs):
        self.__dict__.update(kargs)
        Window.__windows.append(self)
 
    def run():
        Window.__windows[0].switch()
        Window.__lock.wait()
    run = staticmethod(run)
 
    def switch(self):
        op = []
        for s in Window.__windows:
            if s != self:
                op.append((s.title,s.switch))
        cm = [(u"Switch to",tuple(op))]
        cm.append((u"Exit",Window.exit))                
        app.menu = self.menu + cm
        app.body = self.body
        app.title = self.title
 
    def exit():
        Window.__lock.signal()
    exit = staticmethod(exit)

The core of this window manager is the function switch, responsible to recreate the menu and to list all other bodies (except the current one). Using a static list of bodies and a test based on self, it is simple to do this task. Exit option is added at the end.

Each body is constructed just calling Window with, at least, body, title and menu parameters. It was used a nice trick based on dictionary updating (self.__dict__.update(kargs)) in order to add all parameters to the current object, avoiding additional tests or definitions. Of course you need to be careful when creating new bodies. Moreover, run and exit are static methods since they can be called from any place of your code.

Usage and screenshots:

# Example    
a = Window(title=u"Text editor",
           body=Text(u"Type here"),
           menu=[(u"Text 1",lambda:None),
                 (u"Text 2",lambda:None),
                 (u"Text 3",lambda:None)])
b = Window(title=u"Single list",
           body=Listbox([u"item"]),
           menu=[(u"Slist 1",lambda:None),
                 (u"Slist 2",lambda:None),
                 (u"Slist 3",lambda:None)])
c = Window(title=u"Dual list",
           body=Listbox([(u"item",u"item")]),
           menu=[(u"Dlist 1",lambda:None),
                 (u"Dlist 2",lambda:None),
                 (u"Dlist 3",lambda:None)])
 
Window.run()

My game, Deep Days from Chompgames is now out on the Ovi Store as a free Flash game. Currently, the game is released in NFL format targeting the S40 phones. You can download the game from the Ovi Store, here.

Yesterday Forum Nokia released it’s roadmap document on its prospective work in 2010. This document is important to all developers who are aiming to make impression in the Nokia landscape of mobile devices. Insights in the document include -

1. The different Nokia platforms today - S60, Series 40 and the Maemo ( moving to Meego ).

2. Market share of different OS in mobile phones today ; Symbian continues to hold nearly 45% of the space.

3. Introduction to the Meego platform. And many more..

Quoted from the document - “ Series 40 supports Adobe Flash Lite 3.1;Symbian also offers Java ME, Flash Lite 3.1 and Microsoft Silverlight; Maemo offers support for Adobe Flash 9.4. We also expect to move to full Adobe Flash support on Symbian. Series 40 supports Adobe Flash Lite 3.1;Symbian also offers Java ME, Flash Lite 3.1 and Microsoft Silverlight; Maemo offers support for Adobe Flash9.4. We also expect to move to full Adobe Flash supporton Symbian. ”

It is really nice to note that Nokia is considering Flash to be an uncompromisable platform in its future for delivering rich content to its users; despite huge speculation about HTML5’s entry and how it can affect Flash’s market share.

Nixie Watch is a software emulation of cool wristwatch seen in wrist of Steve “Woz” Wozniak, made using analog numerical tubes. Wish I had one, but had to settle for this… Looks good on my N97 mini - and as a bonus it also shows current time!

http://jouni.miettunen.googlepages.com/nixiewatch

Version 1.30, 2010-02-25

* New: Support PyS60 2.0.0
* New: Support S60 5th ed screen-size
* New: Manual screen rotation
* Tested with N97 mini and PyS60 2.0.0

* Support touch-only screen
* Red, Green and Blue nixie tubes
* http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/04…s-things-done/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_Wozniak.jpg

Enjoy,
–jouni