From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <8126F5C4-87DF-4EB8-9470-FACCB5B1BEAF@gmx.de> References: <8126F5C4-87DF-4EB8-9470-FACCB5B1BEAF@gmx.de> Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:14:09 -0300 Message-ID: <32d987d50903251714reea8442i97fca2e84dc0883a@mail.gmail.com> From: "Federico G. Benavento" To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] GSOC: Drawterm for the iPhone Topicbox-Message-UUID: c5491d10-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 do we need drawterm for the iphone? is anyone going to use it? I mean, it's a tiny screen, typing on handhelds sucks, plus is not that there is killer app Plan 9 has that you _must_ run. am I forgetting something obvious? On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Andr=C3=A9 G=C3=BCnther w= rote: > > Hi dear Plan9 fellows, > > my Name is Andr=C3=A9 G=C3=BCnther. I'd like to participate in the gsoc w= ith an > implementation of a drawterm on the iPhone platform. > > In this Mail I'd like to do the following 2 things: > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A01) Say some words about me and motivation of t= his project. > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A02) Present preliminary suggestion how I would = proceed with the > project. > > I'd like to ask you to: > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A01) Discuss if this project is actually wanted. > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A02) If 1) is positive: Discuss my application. > > > Me and my Motivation: > I am 21 and an undergraduate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the > university of Freiburg. During the course of my studying i've been taking > several computer science classes. The reason I am not studying computer > science is, because I have the feeling for problem solving an autodidacti= c > method is sufficient for most cases and for which it is not I am taking > those specific classes. > I have about 8 years experience with programming C and working in unix li= ke > environments. I am working on the mac platform for about 5 years now and > aquired some ObjC skills. That means I have done Cocoa development. So I = am > familiar with apple like APIs and also the whole XCode environment. I > haven't done any iPhone development yet, but I am pretty confident, that = I > can acquire those skills with my background in no time. (I have no apple > developer license for the iPhone, but I have an iPhone and I am able to t= est > custom applications on it. I would of course apply for a license if I do = the > project) > Unfortunately I can't show you any recent work of mine, because it's all > internal university stuff I am doing for the lab, which I am not supposed= to > post anywhere. > > I've been following Plan9 shallowly for some while now. But just recently > got more into it. I am using it exclusively in a Qemu/Drawterm fashion. I= 'd > like to explore more of Plan9 in the future. > Though I don't feel confident just now messing with kernel sources or oth= er > important infrastructure, a drawterm port may just be the best thing to d= o. > My mac experiences will come in handy, too. > > Why is the port necessary? > Well Plan9 is awesome. Being able to drawterm into it with my iPhone =C2= =A0would > be totally awesome. I don't know how you guys feel about this. Please > discuss! > > How to proceed: > Because I might have just failed with the above text, I don't want to go > into much detail now. Still a small outline here: > > I think there are two parts to the question: > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A01) How does drawterm theoretically transform i= nto an iPhone > application. > =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A02) What are the technical things to deal with > > 1) is much about interface design. Clearly the iPhone doesn't have a > keyboard nor a three button mouse. > For the keyboard it might be sufficient to provide the standard onscreen > keyboard apple provides. For the mouse I haven't yet wraped my mind aroun= d > the problem. Double tapping and gestures come to my mind though. Another > possibility would be to have onscreen virtual mouse buttons, but that mig= ht > be not the best solution. > Also Bladerunner type of zooming gestures might come into handy, with suc= h a > tiny screen, which is clearly another limitation of the hardware platform= . > > 2) The drawterm code base is pretty much self contained and C based. The > iPhone OS is pretty much a stripped down OSX and should be stable enough = for > that and doesn't amount to much more than a recompile. > So the main part is providing the draw/audio and other devices. Reusing o= sx > code is not possible, because the iPhone doesn't share that particular AP= I > the code base is using. > Here a new implementation using ObjC and the iPhone API is necessary. > > > Best wishes, > Andr=C3=A9 G=C3=BCnther > --=20 Federico G. Benavento