Re: UIs and being platform-independent

From: Jan Rychter (jan_at_rychter.com)
Date: 12/13/03 

Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 01:12:04 -0800

>>>>> "Pascal" == Pascal Bourguignon <spam@thalassa.informatimago.com> writes:
 Pascal> Pascal Costanza <costanza@web.de> writes:
[...]
>> This means that you cannot solve UI issues in a strictly
>> platform-independent way. (At least AFAIK.)

 Pascal> But then there are more considerations. For example, my first
 Pascal> PDA is a 64 MB RAM 400 MHz machine. I DO expect it to be able
 Pascal> to multitask (and don't get it) and while I don't expect to
 Pascal> move and resize windows on its 320x320 screen most problems
 Pascal> come from applications that don't expect such a BIG real estate
 Pascal> (and the increased resolution). Note that there are PDAs with
 Pascal> 320x480 screen that come quite close to the 512x342 of the
 Pascal> original Macintosh.
[...]

Tell me about it. I use a Sharp Zaurus SL-C760, which has a 640x480
screen. Most older applications written for the older Zaurus models do
not expect this screen resolution. What's worse, even though it is
really VGA resolution, you don't get VGA monitor screen size, which
means you really have to design carefully, taking DPI into account. You
don't want to paint tiny UI controls that no one can use.

Just to try to keep this thread a bit on-topic: I am dreaming of the day
when I'll be able to program my GUI applications on a PDA such as this
one using Common Lisp. Mind you, the hardware should be fully
sufficient: it's a 400MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, 128MB of built-in
flash plus SD expansion cards. I run xemacs on it, and I have tried
using CLISP, that someone compiled for it.

I am somehow convinced that a well-designed framework in CL could even
be more efficient memory-wise than the crazy C++ shared library world of
Qtopia on Linux (which is what the Sharp Zaurus PDAs use).

--J.

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