Maybe We Should Have A Pys60 Game Engine

[all2happy]

Thank you very much Hamish for that update. There were so many questions that ran through my mind for a while especially in wanting to know what were the limitations like what you've made a mention of. I do really enjoy having to code in Python, although quite frustrated with myself at first which is as if playing a video game even away from it. Oh well... as my luck would have it, the same happened with PocketC for the PalmOS at the moment where I felt to have started quite the progression. A friend of mine had just recently offered to sell me her Nokia 500 for $100... so, I will do an information search for which to find the most affordable... or free... "easy-yet-robust" developer kit.

[hamishwillee]

You're welcome. You can check out the technical specs for the Nokia 500 here: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devic...fications/500/ - and from there you can get to specs for all the other devices.

This phone is based on Symbian and is relatively recent. You can develop on it using Qt, Java, Python, Symbian C++. One thing you need to consider is that Nokia's main platforms are Series 40 and Windows Phone, so this is where we'll be investing going forward. For Windows Phone you can develop in XAML/C#/C++/HTML5 and for Series 40 you can develop Java or Series 40 web apps.

The best target depends on why you're doing it and how many of your skills you want to reuse - if its just for fun then any platform is OK but if you want to make money then you're better off looking at our current platforms.

[marcelobarrosalmeida]

Hello all2happy


Big directions now are Nokia OS or Windows Phone. Of course you can use Qt, Python, etc but if you are planning to release new products for upcoming phones, stick to theses options.
As a Python´s orphan, I am now using Java/J2ME for S40 Phones (Nokia OS). New S40 phones are great and capable. And you have a lot of documentation. The interface was revamped, dragging elements from Maemo and S60, and I enjoyed it (after my learning degree in J2ME of course).
I like WP phones as well and I am always studing when I have time but the challenge of being small is more seductive for me.
I hope you continue 2happy after these news. I survived.

Marcelo Barros

[all2happy]

Hello Marcelo and again to Hamish, I certainly do appreciate both of your messages. Had been quite worried that is was over for Pythonic coding the Nokia mobiles... although rather recently curious about how much more dynamic HTML5 is and if it's far easier to learn. Speaking of which, seen an awesome Nokia interactive slide show that I believe YouTube should adopt this feature so that tutorials can look way more professional and load up a whole lot quicker... at least for mobiles. Tried to find a few on how to make a standalone or SISX a long time ago, but got no actual results.

Went about to download QT, then saw somebody post that the full commercial version was 1'500 USD per year, which will take me way too long to save up for, especially to soon start in college...to discover if mobile programming should be my pursuit, but I'm still not sure being unable to complete my personal samples of every code and other challenges like direct pixel allotments to provide fast enough image overlap color transitions of maybe 32 bytes in an selective ASCII format --

ASCZ = r'0123456789abc...'
RGBZ = red01,red02,red03,red04,red05...]
Explosion = [r'...',r'...',r'...'...]
Bkgrnd = [r'...',r'...',r'...',r'...'...]
def fade(x,y,topobj,btmobj):
...

Read that Qt will no longer be the future of Nokia and wonder which will compile python codes. Is there a list of quality YouTube videos I can look at to comparitively see which direction I should go?

[hamishwillee]

Hi all2happy

Qt can be licensed for free under LPGL. The full commercial license does cost 1500 but that really isn't needed by almost anyone. You do need windows to run the SDK though (remote compiling is no longer supported). It is a great platform for Symbian and N9 devices, and also for desktop. I've heard it can also be used on Android, but not tried it. It is however true that this is not a future platform for Nokia (at least at this point) because it does not run on Windows Phone or Series 40, which are our main platforms. Neither of these support Python either.

In terms of recommendations, it depends on where you want to go.
* Series 40 supports Java, which is not too dissimilar to C# or the programming framework used on WP (and Android if you were to move away from Nokia). It also has "Web Apps" - which rely on your HTML and CSS skills, but this is very much intended for accessing existing web based services and is not ideal for high performance graphical software.
* Windows Phone allows development in C# and HTML, and with WP8 also C++ (a windows flavour of APIs though) and HTML5.

As a developer I think you need to accept that you will need to be multi-lingual. If I was starting right now I'd learn the web technologies first to get the greatest "breadth" of where I could program - ie this works with minor mods on most platforms. I'd then probably learn Java ME as this has the next greatest market penetration and is better for games etc than web technologies currently. Everyone will have their own opinion on this though!

Good luck

H

[all2happy]

Understood and thank you. Had to really weigh it all out... well... everything I was able to find... and saw that the only courses available in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for college are HTML5 focused in which should be more than enough to start my very own rather unique online business venture along with a few other fascinating projects in mind. I really want to be a part of the Nokia's huge "Surprise Uprise" as there seems much the potential... so I've really challenged myself to learn a whole lot, but it's difficult to tell if my progression is adequate enough as to why I thought to post nearly every type of valuable snippet I can muster... mostly hoping to get further guidance while sharing it altogether.

Just began writing a code 2 months ago to have a pythonicized swipe keyboard of my very own and discovered how an application that looks really simple is actually has 2 and a half very difficult hurdles. The half... since I sort of came up with a solution... the dragging event lags a bit too much, so I created an list array to record after each different loop then do a loop segment of the distances of 40 pixels to read what's in between... however, I imagine a quick redirection of swiping will put off the accuracy. Then there's trying to figure out how to write an algorithm to truncate my personalized "listofwords.txt". Anyhow, I can now probably say the next troublesome task "was" trying to screen capture the canvased keyboard and text screen simultaneously in a way to avoid poor flickering by learning how to buffer/thread images, until I realized that maybe touching near the top section of the screen should switch the mode from graphic to text... and the "Exit" button to switch back. Anyhow, in my earlier attempt to create a graphic text wrap module... I came up with this conjured from a mix of examples that took me too long to customize...

# text2fit.py

from appuifw import *
from graphics import *
import e32

app.directional_pad=False
app.screen='large'
lock=e32.Ao_lock()
app.body=canvas=Canvas()
app.exit_key_handler=lock.signal
img=Image.new(canvas.size) # create an image
width=canvas.size[0]-20
img.clear(0x555555ff)

setfont=(u"dense",30,None)

txtEntry=[u'This is a "measure_text" wrap method example whereas...']
words=[u'blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah',
		u'should',u'appear',u'segmented',u'to',u'stay',u'within',u'the',u'given',u'boundary.']

def text_wrap(txtEntry=None):
	global linewrap
	w2=word[:]
	try:
		if linewrap:
			pass
	except:
		linewrap=[u'']
		try:
			txtEntry=''.join(txtEntry)
			txtEntry=txtEntry.split() # needed to be converted to a string
			for line in txtEntry:
				active=linewrap[0]+line
				fits=canvas.measure_text(active,font=setfont)[1]
				if fits > width:
					while 1:
						fits=canvas.measure_text(line,font=setfont)[1]
						kb=canvas.measure_text(line,font=setfont,maxwidth=width)[2]
						if fits > width:
							linewrap.insert(0,line[:kb])
							line=line[kb:]
						else:
							break
					linewrap.insert(0,line+' ')
				else: # fits entire entry
					linewrap[0]+=line+' '
		except:
			pass

	active=linewrap[0]+w2
	fits=canvas.measure_text(active,font=setfont)[1]
	if fits > width:
		while 1:
			fits=canvas.measure_text(w2,font=setfont)[1]
			kb=canvas.measure_text(w2,font=setfont,maxwidth=width)[2]
			if fits > width:
				linewrap.insert(0,w2[:kb])
				w2=w2[kb:]
			else:
				break
		linewrap.insert(0,w2+' ')
	else: # fits entire entry
		linewrap[0]+=w2+' '

	y=40
	LnWr=linewrap[:]
	LnWr.reverse()
	img.clear(0x555555ff)
	for line in LnWr:						
		img.text((10,y),line,font=setfont,fill=0xffffff) # text on blue img
		y += 36
 
### demo

for word in words:
	text_wrap(txtEntry)
	canvas.blit(img)
canvas.blit(img)

lock.wait()