Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Dave_G]

[jpeps]

[Dave_G]

Aha, great stuff, thank you.

[sunburnt]

jpeps; I like the idea of what you`ve said.
But isn`t Puppy as a mouse driven interface not really suited for a touch screen?
So much is small buttons and lists and menus to select from.
Unless the tablet was equipped with a stylus Puppy doesn`t seem compatible.

Wouldn`t a rework of Puppy`s GUIs be in order to make this a reality?
And then there`s still the Linux apps. themselves... More rework?

[jpeps]

Yes, there's a lot to consider, both for the OS working with the hardware and the software adapting to it. Android programming keeps moving activities off and on the stack as different screen layouts take immediate focus. The programmer includes a number of activities (only one can be active at a time), each with their own layout (the user interface). There's also the issue of screen sizes, where the programmer uses a "fragment" class to arrange widgets based on the available screen space.

Ubuntu has an overlay that rides on top of android, but doesn't use the device's hardware. That might be the closest you'll get to running puppy on an android device.

edit: Found this regarding touchscreen support:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchscreen

[NeroVance]

[jpeps]

[jpeps]

Amazing...there's an android AIDE app, which is basically a complete android development environment. You can write apps right on the device itself....and it works.

[jpeps]

[jpeps]

Getting simpler all the time!

http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/

[jpeps]

This is some code that exports a database file to DropBox using its SyncAPI.
You obtain an appKey & secret from DropBox, and import a jar into your lib directory. This worked to export a Library Database, so I can integrate it into all my devices.There's also some standard permission codes for the Manifest file that is well documented.

TextView and Button are user widgets; the OnClickListener is connected to the buttons, and tells the program what to do when the user clicks on it. Basically, it creates a link with Dropbox, and then performs the file writing function with the doDropBoxTest function. If the file doesn't already exist, it creates it first. Existing files didn't want to be overwritten, so needed to be deleted prior to updating. The mTestOutput.setText code is simply info that shows up on the user screen (the TextView widget).

The FindViewById code in the beginning just links a handle to widgets in the layout.xml file so you can tell them what to do.

note: The link button only shows up once to connect the app with dropbox for a particular device. The app will maintain the link even after exiting, so after that the button remains hidden (see showLinkedView) and automatically updates the file.

[jpeps]

This example exports a file by clicking on a menu item from within the app. First, connect the menu click to a function that checks whether there's a linked account. Generally, it only needs to do this once. It then connects to the export function itself.

bug fix: safer not to run the export function on the same menu click with establishing an initial connection.

[jpeps]

Helpful tutorial on moving around data between activities (via UI widgets) and storing.

Contains videos, step by step instructions, and source code that can be imported (into Eclipse).

http://www.mybringback.com/series/android-intermediate/

[jpeps]

Example: Save and restore data internally and externally


Saving widget and variable internally with Shared Preferences:

// Save data (KEY, string)
SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
Editor editor = sharedPreferences.edit();

editor.putString("total", String.valueOf(total));
editor.putString("date", dateString );
editor.putString("activity", activity );


editor.commit();





// Get Saved Data (KEY, default value)

SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);

// Load to EditText widget:

sumText.setText(sharedPreferences.getString("total", "0"));
// Restore variables

oldDate = sharedPreferences.getString("date", null);
activity = sharedPreferences.getString("activity", "");



Save data to external file:

// Create directory on SD storage

root = android.os.Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();

dir = new File(root.getAbsolutePath() + "/clickData");
if(! dir.exists())

dir.mkdir();

// Create file

File file = new File(dir, "myRecord.txt");


// Print data to file

try {
FileOutputStream f = new FileOutputStream(file,true); // boolean "true" means append file
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(f, true);

pw.println(dataString + " " + activity);

pw.flush();
pw.close();
f.close();

// Optional: Toast gives an onscreen info message
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "File written to "+file, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();



} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "File Not Found!" , Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "IO Exception Error!" , Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();
e.printStackTrace();
}


Read from External File:

// writes file to EditText widget (reportText)


try {
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
String line;

while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {

reportText.append(line + "\n");
}


} catch (FileNotFoundException e1) {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "No Report on file", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();
e1.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "IO Exception Error!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
toast.show();
e.printStackTrace();
}

[afifio]

Android is the future, no doubt. But its still far, I'll give it 5 or 10 years more for it to become truly mainstream. During that, we will still have "common pc" <----- common!

I did try to wet my feet with ADT, but at 400MB API and who knows whats there, it might burn my pc to crisp. Even running eclipse is trivial for me....plus...I sux at java and its damn slow.

jpeps, checkout the Actionbar Sherlock, another thing to boot up your dev is the https://f-droid.org/‎ . I do envy the android community, they make it seems like easy and I got sleepy reading even the intro to android apps,

The problem with android is - not much apps to develop, its because of its limited screen and the windowing capability (probably more apps will use the ICS windowing after this)

As I said, if you could develop for android - what will you develop ? Almost all is there already and downloadable from the market and yes, AIDE rocks! - no need 400MB download!