Mobile development

FLUID

2009-09-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Flexible User Interface Development (JSR 290) is Java language XML UI Markup integration. It supports XHTML Basic 1.1, ECMAScript CP, CSS MP 2.0, SVG tiny 1.2, XHR, DOM and many more. I hope more supporting device will be released soon. But with browseME, it may be possible to support HTML5 or XUL like Fennec.

Ugly little browser in JavaME

2009-08-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

Unlike XML, HTML is difficult to parse. But its usage forced me to think about building an ugly little browser which can recognize some of the HTML Tags. By no means it will be able to display any standard web page properly in mobile. It is for internal purpose which may be helpful in the future. Once the project is in workable condition I may open source that. Till then have fun with Opera Mini.

Comparison between AWT and LWUIT

2009-03-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

LWUIT is inspired by Swing. At the API level it is almost identical to AWT. It allows to reuse the AWT code generated from Netbeans at LWUIT. I created a simple AWT form with just TextField and Label. The code is almost same that I can use the initComponent with minor adjustment. One issue is add function. At LWUIT there is not add function instead it has addComponent. So what I did is that a form is extended and add function is created with does nothing but call the addComponent.

public void add(Component component){
addComponent(component);
}

Now the initComponent function can be used directly in a LWUIT application.

Visual Mobile Designer

2009-02-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

I have started to work on mobile platform after some delay. From now on, I would be developing mobile application extensively. Since my early days of building UI using LCDUI has been replaced by new and more rich UI libraries. As always I am digging in to find out the similarities and possible convertion among different library.
The most productive path would be using the visual mobile designer from netbeans mobility pach. It creates an vmd file alone with class file. It is basically and XML file similar to the form file used in Matisse. Mostly populated with Component and Property tag. I am mainly interested in C#DisplayablesCategory, Cjavax.microedition.lcdui.Form, Cjavax.microedition.lcdui.TextField and
Cjavax.microedition.lcdui.ChoiceGroup

I don't know why there is a prefix C in typeID and in case of Property value a prefix V. It looks ugly! Also noticed some missing choiceType. There is V1 for EXCLUSIVE, V2 for MULTIPLE and V4 for POPUP. I wonder what V3 is for!
Anyway, I created a simple converter which takes vmd file and creates similar html form.

Released HanoiME at sourceforge

2009-01-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

It has been quite some time since I opened Open-source project HanoiME at sourceforge.net
Today I released the code at the subversion.

Internationalization and localization in Mobile

2008-06-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

Internationalization is an important part of any software. Now all the modern software supports multiple languages. Recently I am playing with some language features for bangla. It is great that java has built in support for unicode with \u prefix notation. LWUIT has the support for bitmapped font in its resource editor.

When I use these tools to load font, the Sutonny font rendered nicely. But it doesn't display any unicode character. Some other true type unicode fonts also displayed with box at the preview and failed to display at the emulator. Although it is possible to display any bangla text in mobile without using canvas or custom rendering, I still have to figure out how to display the unicoded text properly. It may open-up localization projects in bangla.

Netbeans templating features

2008-05-15T16:12:00.000-07:00

While working for Code Editor I am observing how netbeans handle its features. It is quite a powerful tool and I started to discover many new things which I didn't used before. I guess all netbeans lover are already accustomed with it.

As I need to handle those features and implement them from scratch I had to look into more details. Netbeans stores its configurations at Documents and Settings/<user>/.netbeans/<version>/config for windows XP.

The modified templates codes can be found at Templates sub directory. The Code Template is at
Editors/text/<language>/Code Templates/

Need to implement those features. I shall also create some utility to convert code templates of various editors.

UI world

2008-05-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

Recently at javaOne another new UI library is introduced. It is Light Weight User Interface Toolkit (LWUIT). Well, there is already quite a few UI that each developer may be dealing with. The frustrating thing is that most of them has some short comings with their unique features. I wish there is a Universal API for all platform level UI development.

I have started to fill the missing parts. The idea is to use similar API (if not same) to the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT). I have added Menu related classes using the LWUIT. Interesting tweaking to use tab as Menu and List as MenuItem.

At the CDC stack the awt is already supported. Here I am extending to add more features. For example, the AbsoluteLayout from netbeans works fine at CDC without any modification. After integration there is more flexibility now.
Next is to implement a FileDialog.

Yet Another Opensource project

2008-04-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

:D

Things are moving fast for me with the opensource projects. Latest inclusion is ACodeEditor. Hey there is already a project CodeEditor. Well this new project has nothing to do with mobile. Infact this is a web based online code editing software. My vision is to create a similar development environment across all platforms. This is another initiative of that.

A preview can be viewed from here.

Another Opensource Project HanoiME

2008-04-18T03:12:00.000-07:00

Pleased to inform that another opensource project has been accepted. This time it is at sourceforge.net. HanoiME is a popular game "Tower of Hanoi" for mobile (javaME).

Open source project

2008-04-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

A new open source project has been created at java.net
CodeEditor for mobile is the software to be developed. Currently the initial code of CLDC is uploaded. Possible CDC implementation can be completed later.

Understanding Collada

2008-03-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

After lots of digging finally I came across an article which allows me to understand Collada clearly.
Here are the main portion

To study how meshes are retrieved, I will use a cube created using 3ds Max 8. Five facesare red and one face is yellow.28/74Figure 11. Just a cube.This cube in COLLADA generates these lines:

<library_geometries>

    <geometry id="Box01-mesh" name="Box01">

        <mesh>

            <source id="Box01-mesh-positions">

                <float_array id="Box01-mesh-positions-array" count="24">

                    -8.353 -9.42876 0 8.353 -9.42876 0 -8.353 9.42876 08.353 9.42876 0 -8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 -8.353 9.42876 8.78867 8.353 9.428768.78867

                </float_array>

                <technique_common>

                    <accessor source="#Box01-mesh-positions-array" count="8" stride="3">

                        <param name="X" type="float"/>

                        <param name="Y" type="float"/>

                        <param name="Z" type="float"/>

                    </accessor>

                </technique_common>

            </source>

            <source id="Box01-mesh-normals">

                <float_array id="Box01-mesh-normals-array" count="72">

                    0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 -1 00 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0

                </float_array>

                <technique_common>

                    <accessor source="#Box01-mesh-normals-array" count="24" stride="3"><param name="X" type="float"/>

                        <param name="Y" type="float"/>

                        <param name="Z" type="float"/>

                    </accessor>

                </technique_common>

            </source>

            <source id="Box01-mesh-map-channel1">

                <float_array id="Box01-mesh-map-channel1-array" count="36">

                    0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 00 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0

                </float_array>

                <technique_common>

                    <accessor source="#Box01-mesh-map-channel1-array" count="12" stride="3">

                        <param name="S" type="float"/>

                        <param name="T" type="float"/>

                        <param name="P" type="float"/>

                    </accessor>

                    29/74

                </technique_common>

            </source>

            <vertices id="Box01-mesh-vertices">

                <input semantic="POSITION" source="#Box01-mesh-positions"/>

            </vertices>

            <triangles material="red" count="10">

                <input semantic="VERTEX" source="#Box01-mesh-vertices" offset="0"/>

                <input semantic="NORMAL" source="#Box01-mesh-normals" offset="1"/>

                <input semantic="TEXCOORD" source="#Box01-mesh-map-channel1" offset="2" set="1"/>

                <p>0 0 9 2 1 11 3 2 10 3 2 10 1 3 8 0 0 9 0 8 4 1 9 5 5 10 7 5 10 7 4 11 6 0 8 4 1 12 0 3 13 1 7 14 3 7 14 3 5 15 21 12 0 3 16 4 2 17 5 6 18 7 6 18 7 7 19 6 3 16 4 2 20 0 0 21 1 4 22 3 4 22 3 6 23 2 2 20 0</p>

            </triangles>

            <triangles material="yellow" count="2">

                <input semantic="VERTEX" source="#Box01-mesh-vertices" offset="0"/>

                <input semantic="NORMAL" source="#Box01-mesh-normals" offset="1"/>

                <input semantic="TEXCOORD" source="#Box01-mesh-map-channel1" offset="2" set="1"/>

                <p>4 4 8 5 5 9 7 6 11 7 6 11 6 7 10 4 4 8</p>

            </triangles>

        </mesh>

    </geometry>

</library_geometries>

This cube is made of sets of polygons, one of them has an associated red material and theother one is a yellow material. The key to retrieve the triangles, the vertices and the texturecoordinates is the indices. The following code is the indices to five red faces:

<p>0 0 9 2 1 11 3 2 10 3 2 10 1 3 8 0 0 9 0 8 4 1 9 5 5 10 7 5 10 7 4 11 6 0 8 4 1 12 0 3 13 1 7 14 3 7 14 3 515 2 1 12 0 3 16 4 2 17 5 6 18 7 6 18 7 7 19 6 3 16 4 2 20 0 0 21 1 4 22 3 4 22 3 6 23 2 2 20 0</p>

And this is the code of the yellow face:

<triangles material="yellow" count="2"><input semantic="VERTEX" source="#Box01-mesh-vertices" offset="0"/><input semantic="NORMAL" source="#Box01-mesh-normals" offset="1"/><input semantic="TEXCOORD" source="#Box01-mesh-map-channel1" offset="2" set="1"/><p>4 4 8 5 5 9 7 6 11 7 6 11 6 7 10 4 4 8</p></triangles>

The yellow face is built using two triangles, and each triangle is composed of threevertices, due to that, the yellow face has six vertices (some of them are duplicated). Andone vertex has three coordinates (x, y and z).The vertices are here:

<float_array id="Box01-mesh-positions-array" count="24">-8.353 -9.42876 0 8.353 -9.42876 0 -8.3539.42876 0 8.353 9.42876 0 -8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 -8.353 9.42876 8.78867 8.3539.42876 8.78867</float_array>

We can retrieve the vertices which form triangles, and draw them using OpenGL. Theindices point out to the data which is stored is three lists, VERTEX, NORMAL andTEXCOORD.For instance, the vertex and triangles of the yellow face are:

vertex 0-8.3529997 -> 4*3=12

and the float in the 12th position is

-8.352999730/74-9.4287596 -> 5*3=158.7886696 -> 7*3=21

The numbers 4, 5 and 7 are from here:

<p>4 4 8 5 5 9 7 6 11 7 6 11 6 7 10 4 4 8</p>

And the floats from here:

<float_array id="Box01-mesh-positions-array" count="24">
-8.353 -9.42876 0 8.353 -9.42876 0 -8.3539.42876 0 8.353 9.42876 0 -8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 8.353 -9.42876 8.78867 -8.353 9.42876 8.78867 8.3539.42876 8.78867
</float_array>

vertex 1 8.3529997-9.42875968.7886696
vertex 2 8.35299979.42875968.7886696
vertex 3 8.35299979.42875968.7886696
vertex 4 -8.35299979.42875968.7886696
vertex 5 -8.3529997-9.42875968.7886696

At the beginning this process is very strange and it takes a while to understand it. Toretrieve normals and textures coordinates we do a similar process.

Source: Project Work.pdf

Working with CDC

2008-03-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

I recently bought Sony Ericsson P990i with the intension to work on CDC. After the initial setup with the netbeans, I concentrate on building a code editor. It would have quick text facility like notepad++.

With the initiative of porting phoneME advance on Android and iphone, the CDC will cover great ground as a mobile platform.

Google's entry into the mobile ecosystem.

2007-11-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

With GPhone annoucement google in entering into the mobile ecosystem. There are lots of predistion as always with the impact of this. gOS, gPay, MobileAd are some of the Hot topics. Well GPhone does not have any operating system developed by Google. Instead it will be using a customized version of Linux. gPay and MobileAd are the area where google is specialized on and will be benefitted by them. As developers point of view it is Open. So a great news. Not like iPhone :P.

Open Handset Alliance (Android™) is yet another new platform to be released on November 12. I will look closely into that. Also there is Java support, so another good news. Interesting times ahead!

Light weight scripting language

2007-05-08T04:57:00.001-07:00

Yet another new script language called JavaFX Script or JavaFX mobile introduced at JavaOne conference. With the boom of web2 and ajax based web application it seems every body is reinventing to meet these changes. Adobe's apollo, flex, flash, microsoft's expression studio, silverlight, openlanszlo are all similar initiative to deliver rich interactive web application. Ajax should win this race. I haven't use JavaFX yet but I guess it is similar to javascript. I wonder why every body reinvent already existing technology. Sun claim that JavaFX mobile make developing application for mobile easy and also help to make a common platform which is already fragmented. If it is true then sun may regain some ground where applet failed.

Mobile web 2

2007-04-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

The concept of web 2 is still new. The original definition of web 2 is defined from O' Reilly.
In the context of mobile, an attempt of defining mobile web 2 can be found at http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/04/of_web_20_mobil.html

Mobile defragment

2007-04-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult aspect that developers and now even users face is, various types of mobile phones in the market. Each new handset has a list of features. The handset manufacturers highlight them to attract customers and the customer search for them to get the most features model in the market. As different manufactures build their own unique feature that cannot be found in other devices the fragmentation increases.
Screen size, mega pixel camera, supported flash cards and so mush more that are listed in the feature list of a specific model.
Developer face the challenge to support all these fragmented handsets. So often we find that same application has different versions for specific handsets.
Thankfully there are some tools that address these needs. WURFL is one of the most popular open source initiative to create XML based capabilities of specific models.
Another swing based java application which use WURFL is mDevInf.
These tools allow developer to get all the information needed for different mobile phones.

Dual core CPU in mobile phone

2007-04-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

Intel now producing core2duo processor for PC after the generation of Pentium reach its ending. Now we are listening about 80 core in a single processor which is under development. Intel's view to move to parallel processing is getting new momentum.
But what about fast advancing mobile phone's processor. We don't heard a lot about them. To the best of my knowledge, most of the processor used in mobile phones are probably 16 bit. (javaME cldc midp needs 16 bit processor). Some of the advanced mobile phone is now shipping with 32 bit processor. (cdc require 32 bit processor).
Believe it or not, Nokia and Symbian is shipping dual core processor for its mobile phones. For example E90, N77, N95 has dual core processors.
It is really amazing how fast the mobile technology in advancing.

User Interface of handheld device

2007-03-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

With the shrinking size of all featured devices, there are various user interfaces are come up to squeeze with the device. Touch screen, two thumb keyboard, sliding keyboard, pen, ink, two sets of keyboard (1 for simplicity and other for complete typing) and so on. The screen size is also a key factor alone with battery life for handheld devices. With this respect I guess the touch screen will be the ultimate choice because it address two need (High resolution and complex keyboard). Apple's iphone design is really cool.

Hello world

2007-03-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my blog. I just leave some links for you to explore.