why not?
-it's quite expensive. 700$ for the SL-C860
-and heavy (compared to a Palm) – ¼ KG isn’t as convinient to put in your pocket. but it’s OK
-battery life is 6-8 hours on continuous work. not so bad for a laptop. for an alarm clock and PIM, i'd buy a B&W palm.
-the low audio volume isn’t enough for out-door-in-bag situations. i hardly hear it while driving in a vehicle.
-no built-in WIFI or LAN. just a feeble infra red (at least you can beam to/from a Palm Pilot.)
how to
play mp3
install MAD or some other mp3 player.
you might want to run the command “nice” to give it priority as the default “nice”ness is to be nice to other programs which run concurrently.
or just overclock with cacko’s overclock app.
play videos
with kino. (the default sharp player plays only very specifically encoded MPEGs). and don’t forget to overclock.
replace rom
I won’t even mention it here – the instructions seem awkward for a PC user, but they are very simple – just remember to NAND backup, and save it on your PC first :-)
english
don’t even bother to tweak the english on your original sharp rom – put the cacko ROM as soon as possible. it contains bug fixes, more control, no 30MB japanese dictionary, new versions of stuff etc.
hebrew עברית על זאורוס
the easiest thing is to install X server (e.g. pdaXrom); then have AbiWord read/write hebrew fluently. [write? that’s on my todo :-) ]
I’m still struggling with Dillo, though it must be easy.
On the default Qtopia, it’s very hard. that’s what I could do – you can use it as point :
- get Unifont. It contains the hebrew letters for unicode.
- I wrote a hebrew keyboard layout for cacko ROM (for the on-screen keyboard applet, cyrillica). the input isn’t RTL.
- I wrote a 1 line program in PHP (you don’t need to install browser or anything - just the PHP binary) with only one function “hebrevc()” which reverese the hebrew text in a file. very simple.
- to convert cp1255/windows-hebrew/iso-8859-8 encoding to UTF-8 use iconv (libiconv), or LV.
- UTF-8 runs natively on the console, and with Qconsole you can change the font to unifont – and simply “cat” files.
- QT3 library does RTL hebrew automatically. you can write apps to use the QT3 widgets (say, a simple text box that lets you view and display files). there’s pyqt binaries for zaurus. btw, the QT3 lib is 8mb(!)
hebrew onscreen keyboardm while debugging php wierd missing function entry points
programming
I’m a python fan. there is an abundance of python packages, each is suitable for different rom/libc.
there’s a guy who had put into a 10mb CRAMFS a full python installation.
you can leave it on the SD/CF card,
and add entry in your fstab to mount it automatically,
and add sym-links in /usr/bin and /usr/lib
I prefered to copy the files to /usr/… for independence from the card or runlevel (as I depend on some python scripts to do my job at any point of system init)
python GUI can be achieved with pyQT (with qt-based roms), gtk2 (with pdaXrom) or on web-browser… eg. SPYCE inline html +python code… something like
<html><body> [[ import os,sys,re for knight in range(10): print “Ni! <BR>” , knight ]] </html>
PHP , which works great too, had hard time for me, as I couldn’t (yet) use it’s embedded SQLITE functions. shit – that’s the only feature I require!!
apache 1 and apache2 runs flawlessly, each with a bit unusual installation directory requirements. for apache2 on cacko rom, I needed to remount RW the / to be able to install it on /opt. oh, well…
there are java compilers, C++ compilers, perl, ruby, … even Basic (yes, the old microsoft, non visual, goto-enabled BASic.)
bash & python usually do anything from GUI to web-server, from text manipulation to interactive dictionary (see on my python page in this website).
PIM
I’m still in doubt.
my needs are demanding – to be able to use the same database on ANY computer, in the WORLD.
usually Excel files fits my needs for todo, phonebook, and all kinds of notes.
but the hancome-mobile-shit, is just a piece of crap.
-it works well if your XLS files don’t exceed 100k, or certain amount of cells – otherwise it will be slow, and maybe even destroy data in extreme situations.
-it can’t copy paste cells to / from other apps (each version of hancommobilesheet has adifferent bug: the c860 ROM’s version 1.5 just won’t copy more than one cell. 1.6 won’;t copy cells larger than 300 bytes),
-it don’t remembers “freeze panes”, and messing up files saved while the automatic filter is in action!
-I don’t call it a working tool.
I examine other spreadsheet/database engines regularly, and write small apps to ease my pains
my ideal PIM application,
-would use SQLITE for backend db. sqlite has cross-platform compiled binaries, with very easy to use binary utility.
-filter fields (like Excel auto-filter) on the fly
-export/import csv/tab/txt files with no fuss,
-let me edit/delete/insert/update records quickly and quietly – in only one application window – no milllion dialog boxes are needed for a simple list
-sort without a fuss
-be quick and handle/display 1mb data files without complaing
-have calendar in simple tabular interface, with automatic cron or at commands reminders that activate WAV files in the specified date –
who wants to join me in my quest? python/php/worksheet – it won’t be a big deal to implement.
I tried Portabase.
for my needs, it isn’t there yet. no reasonable import/export,
crashes, cumbersome featureless interface – hey: why don’t you use SQLITE instead of re-inventing the wheel ?!
so today I’m using the provided calendar, and woring with tab-separated text files, until I find a solution.
contact me?
I’m makorepolaazazel in yahoo. I check this account once in a long while, so don’t expect miracles.
shula