[Angstrom-devel] Opie News Request

[Paul Eggleton]

Hi Ian,

On Friday 23 May 2008, Ian Bonham wrote:
> 1> Sync,  Is there a recommended way of using Opie with a Desktop to sync
> Contacts, Email, Notes, and so on? I've decided to try Opie as I like the
> PIM apps, and GPE was always a nightmare to try to get working, so is there
> a simple way to sync Opie with Evo2 or other Desktop app?

OpenSync (current development branch ie 3.x) would be the recommended way. 
There hasn't been much interest in it though from the user side, perhaps due 
to the development state of OpenSync itself (and the availability of Opie). 
Unfortunately it's not "simple" yet, but improvements should come with time.

Some testing would be particularly welcome here (hint ;)) I'm happy to provide 
assistance with OpenSync + Opie testing - email me directly or via the 
opensync-users mailing list.

> 2> Media, is there a plan for Opie MediaPlayer to be built? I've installed
> XMMS and Gnome-Mplayer, but neither have desktop icons, and running from
> shell results in a 'cannot open display' error. If there is one thing I'm
> desperate for it's a media player, preferably with a skin with finger sized
> buttons, so if I'm using the player in the car as an MP3 player i can hit
> buttons with quick finger hits, not scrabble for the stylus. I'm MORE than
> happy to try to try to learn how to create a skin, if someone can let me
> know if there is a target Media app.

Opie-mediaplayer2 would be my choice although it does have issues. There was 
once an XMMS embedded version that worked with Opie, haven't checked what is 
in OE recently. BTW "cannot open display" is because the programs you are 
trying to run require an X server, and Opie does not use X.

This is an area where I agree we need to do better. If we could just get an 
official Opie+Angstrom sorted (soon hopefully)...

> 3> GPS, GPSDrive is Ok, but can anyone suggest a better Navigation system?
> I've been looking at Navit which seems excellent, but again getting this
> working under Opie / Angstrom seems almost impossible. Are there any plans
> to try to add strong GPS software?

RoadMap has recently come alive again, I believe there was some work to get 
updated versions into OE as well:

http://roadmap.sourceforge.net

No plans on my end to work on this area though, I have my hands full with Opie 
as it is. If someone else wanted to, there is qpeGPS already written but 
currently languishing in an unmaintained state (AFAIK).

I'll leave your other non-Opie specific questions to someone more qualified.

Cheers,
Paul