This weekend's releases: Tap Tap N950, qw.py and the IP Address Widget

Over the weekend, I've pushed out some code for your enjoyment: First up is the incomplete but maybe interesting QML source code of the Tap Tap N950 prototype. I probably won't find time to work on this, but it would be sad to let the small piece of code rot - maybe someone wants to pick up the development of it. I'll answer any questions related to the code in the thread :)

Next up is the open source release of the qw prototype "qw.py", which has been developed during the Super GameDev Weekend 2010 at the Metalab Vienna last December (the next one is at the upcoming weekend; stop by if you are in Vienna!) - nearly 1 year ago. This is not the same as qw The Game in Ovi Store, but it's an earlier version, which still contains multi-player support (4 players on one PC keyboard), and it's written in Python, so it should be easily hackable.

And last but maybe not least is the IP Address "Widget" for Harmattan. This small hack (which is inspired by the earlier Calenderr calendar icon hack) makes use of the fact that the Harmattan UX reloads the icon of an application whenever the .desktop file or the icon file itself changes. The details (and a .deb for easy installation) can be found on the website - basically it shows a way to have semi-interactive "widgets" on the app list on Harmattan. I'm sure that creative readers can come up with some cool ideas :)

New gPodder versions for your N8x0 and N9x0

It's been over two months since I've released a new stable release of gPodder. Now it's time again to catch up with some of the fixes that have landed in the "master" branch of gPodder (while we are still adding cool stuff to the "tres" branch, where the QML UI and other improvements happen). Anyway, gPodder 2.16 "Over There" should be available in Maemo Extras for both Diablo and Fremantle soon, please test the package and (in case of Fremantle / Maemo 5) also vote for it, so it can land in Extras eventually.

For the Nokia N950 (and also for the N9), there's already a very early alpha build of the QML for you to try - please note that you might have to remove your database and downloads to be compatible with any changes when the final version is out. There's a thread on forum.meego.com with instructions on how to get it and a screenshot - please also use this forum thread for feedback and any questions that you may have.

In related Maemo/MeeGo news, That Rabbit Game has been packaged for MeeGo Tablet and should be available in AppUp already. There's also a pure OpenGL ES port for webOS, although it's missing some features of the Qt version. If you haven't been following gaming news, our multi-touch game Mong (which is going to have its new name "Plonk" soon) is available for MeeGo tablets and I'll have a Harmattan package for you to try really soon! There is also the Harmattan Event Feed Library for Python which should make posting data to the event feed awesome. And if you really want to port your PySide apps to Android, try PySide for Android, which has just been released today. Yes, lots of stuff happening - expect more in the coming days/weeks :)

gPodder on the N900 MeeGo 1.2 Developer Edition

If you want to try the MeeGo N900 Developer Edition for the N900 but think that clicking through the Widgets Gallery gets boring after 45 minutes, why not try out the QML UI of gPodder on it? It's pretty easy. This post assumes that you are using the alpha release of the N900 Developer Edition from a microSD card and boot via USB.

Thankfully, Python 2.6 is already preinstalled, but you need recent PySide packages for gPodder to work (PySide exposes the Qt framework to the Python world), you can get them from PySide binaries for MeeGo. You don't need to upgrade Qt, simply installing the PySide packages is enough:

zypper addrepo http://download.meego.com/live/home:/renatofilho/Trunk/ pyside
zypper install python-pyside

What you need now is a recent Git checkout of gPodder's "tres" branch. I suggest you do that on your computer:

git clone git://repo.or.cz/gpodder.git
cd gpodder
git checkout tres

Now there are two pure Python dependencies for gPodder that you also need. As there are no packages for them in MeeGo yet, you also have to provide them manually. The first one is the Universal Feedparser. Grab a recent release from the downloads page and copy the file feedparser.py to the src/ folder in your gPodder checkout. The second dependency is mygpoclient, a client library for the gpodder.net web service. You can check out the latest version from Git:

git clone git://repo.or.cz/mygpoclient.git

In the checkout, you will find a folder called mygpoclient - copy this to src/ in your gPodder checkout. Now you have a complete, self-contained gPodder checkout on your computer. Use rsync or scp -r to copy it over to your N900 (you can use USB Networking for that).

Now that you have everything on your N900, you have to add some subscriptions manually (mostly because the QML doesn't yet have the UI required to subscribe to new feeds) - use bin/gpo to start the command-line utility, then do something like subscribe fb:linuxoutlaws to subscribe to an example podcast. Quit the command line application and start the QML UI using bin/gpodder --qml, which should - after some loading time - show gPodder/QML on your MeeGo 1.2 Developer Edition environment.

If you have made it this far, don't stop here - try out the examples from the PySide/QML Tutorial and familiarize yourself with Python development on MeeGo - it's easy and fun!

gPodder/QML status (with screenshot and video)

Ohai February. The winter term is over; time for some gPodder QML hacking. This means that gPodder gets a new UI, and the structure of the application and the usual workflows also change a bit, based on the experiences with gPodder on Maemo 5. One of the most important changes will be that content will be played inside gPodder, as this provides even more control over playback and resuming than what the MAFW integration with the Maemo Media Player can provide.

Most of this has been done in the last two days. Thanks to Python, PySide and QML, I'm able to reuse the gPodder codebase (feed parsing, downloading, etc..) and just slap a lightweight QML UI on top of it.

Andrew Zhilin (aka wazd) has helped a lot with the design and the artwork, but see for yourself (this is a screenshot, not a mock-up):

And here is a video of the current performance on a N900:

Feedback, as always, welcome :)

New tutorial: PySide/QML on MeeGo

In addition to my old PySide tutorials, there is now a proper PDF guide for PySide development on MeeGo available. Except for packaging, all steps apply to Maemo as well, and this is the document that includes the first gPodder QML UI code example (the final gPodder QML UI will be totally different and "much cooler", though).

As part of the new year's cleanup, I also dug out the old MTF UI demo of gPodder and put its source online here - for third party applications, QML is now the preferred UI over MeeGo Touch, so this might not be of much use for you now, but maybe somebody can put it to good use.

PySide/QML tutorials online, workshop next Sunday

To get myself accustomed to PySide UI development using Qt Quick (aka QML) and to check out what works already and what does not, I've experimented with creating some common elements that I'd use in an application (i.e. a QML version of gPodder - a blingy demo already exists) and decided to share my experiences and results as tutorials.

Here are all the tutorials in their current state:

• Selectable list of Python objects in QML
• Multi-selection lists in Python with QML
• Defining and using constants from PySide in QML
• Using QtWebKit and QML with PySide
• Updating QML content from Python threads
• Utilizing Qt Quick Colibri in PySide
• Filling and reading QML UI forms from Python
• Auto-generating QObject from template in PySide
• Using QtMobility sensors and QML from PySide

Screenshots are available on Flickr:

I'd like to get some feedback on whether or not the tutorials worked for you and were helpful and what else you would like to see. You can try out all the examples on your N900 today! Just install python-pyside and python-qtmobility (for the last example) from Extras-Devel and copy the examples from the Wiki. The usual disclaimers for software in Extras-Devel apply.

In related news, there will be a PySide/QML workshop at the December meeting of the Python User Group Austria, so if you happen to be in or around Vienna on Sunday, 2010-12-12, stop by at the Metalab and meet fellow Pythonistas.

gPodder running in the MeeGo Handset UX for N900

Three days ago, a new MeeGo Handset UX image has been released for the N900. I wanted to try out gPodder on it to see how far I could come without any coding...

It was quite easy to get things going: Download the image, dd it to a MicroSD card, boot the kernel (detailed instructions) and set up USB networking. After that, I could ssh into the environment (the root password is meego) and have a look around.

Instead of using apt-cache and apt-get to search for and install packages, I utilized yum to search for and install PyGTK. Then, I used rsync to copy my Git checkout of gPodder to the device. There are two additional dependencies for gPodder that aren't yet available in the MeeGo repositories, namely feedparser and mygpoclient, so I just copied the Python modules from my Laptop into the src/ folder of the gPodder checkout. Then, just switch to the MeeGo user (su - meego), make sure that the DISPLAY variable is set (export DISPLAY=:0) and start gPodder from the source folder (with bin/gpodder - it automatically loads the modules from the right path) - gPodder says hello MeeGo.

The basic functions work, it's just that the Desktop UI isn't suited for mobile devices (the MeeGo compositor/decorator also has several problems, but that seems to be a more general problem). Python bindings for Hildon aren't (yet ?) available, so I could not test the Maemo 4 or Maemo 5 UIs, but I would like to do a proper Qt/MeeGo Touch-based UI for gPodder, anyway. Let's hope the PyMaemo or PySide teams are quick to release bindings and make them available in the MeeGo repositories, so Python developers can create usable UIs for MeeGo handsets :) Oh, and two MeeGo-Python facts: It comes pre-installed in the N900 image, and the version shipped is 2.6.

In short: Apart from the UI framework, everything is already in place (and working) for Python on MeeGo. With the recent release of Qt Mobility for PySide, let's hope that MeeGo Touch bindings are not that far away.