Pankaj Nathani's Forum Nokia Blog

Contribute to the Python Wiki Book

2009-07-02T08:17:52+03:00

We (me and my fellow champion Bogdan Galiceanu) are working with the guys at Symbian Foundation to come up with a new book for Python enthusiastics. We already have great PyS60 community and it can only get better

I hereby take the oppurtunity of inviting folks interested in PyS60 to get involved with the development of this book.

As of now, we have a table of contents on the Symbian Wiki. You can contribute to the development of this wiki book by,

Suggesting changes to the contents of the book
Writing one or more of the sections they propose
Reviewing sections of the book as it takes shape.

Once the Wiki book is ready in good shape, we would submit it as a manuscript for copy editing and typeset. The book would then be released as an eBook (like the Demand Paging title). The wiki copy will live on so that updates can be made and transferred into the eBook regularly.

If you are interested to contribute or review some topics (or just give some feedback), drop me an email at pankaj.nathani(AT)croozeus.com - please do mention the topics that you are interested in and what content you wish to contribute. Writing will commence very shortly!

For more information and updates on Symbian’s books, read the post on the Symbian Blog by Satu McNabb, editor in the Symbian Technical Communications team.

PyS60 1.9.4 is now here!

2009-04-24T21:57:28+03:00

As predicted here, PyS60 team releases one more PyS60 dot release in the series of 1.9.x releases.

Some additions as below, and as said earlier, baby steps are always good.

New features with PyS60 1.9.4

A single Nokia signed runtime package which can be installed on all S60 3rd ED and above devices is available.(size with dependencies=2.8MB, actual size if runtime ~1MB)
Improved Application Packager: The PyS60 application packager now scans the Python application being packaged and picks up the missing Python modules on which the application is dependent and packages them along with the application files.
Easier runtime deployment: Python runtime and its dependent components can be installed by just running any Python application packaged using 1.9.4 application packager. (Only available from S60 3rd edition FP2 devices onwards with latest firmware)
Two new APIs added to the socket module - access_points() and set_default_access_point() which have similar functionality to the APIs present in btsocket module.
Two new APIs added to e32 module - get_capabilities() and has_capabilities(). The former can be used to get the capabilities, the application has been signed with, and the latter to check if a given list of capabilities is granted to the application or not.
New mode to appuifw.app.screen - 'full_max' which can be used to achieve fullscreen on devices that don't have Left Soft Key and Right Soft Key(e.g.: Nokia 5800).

May be few more dot releases should lead to a final product - PyS60 2.0 - pretty soon!

You can download the release from maemo garage
garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=854

PyS60 1.9.3 is now here with Touch!

2009-03-24T20:27:19+02:00

Finally, PyS60 1.9.3 - now updated to Python core 2.5.4, one of the dot releases in the 1.9.x series has been announced less than an hour ago!

Here is the list of improvements and what a list!

Good news, the newer version now supports touch interfaces on the appuifw Canvas. An API has been added to the existing appuifw and the function - touch_enabled() is used for checking if the device supports touch input.
Also a sample application - scribble - is provided with the installation.
New module - sciptext makes PyS60 more poweful enabling/extending use of services like Application Manager, Calendar, Contacts, Landmarks, Location, Logging, Messaging, Media Management, Sensors and Sys Info.
Easier installation - now only one file needs to be installed - PyS60 Script Shell (available from S60 3rd FP2 onwards).This should support all ensymble packaged applications in future releases.
Enabled SSL support for socket.

I believe that the above concrete list of enhancement in the PyS60 version is a Big leap forward towards 2.0

Long live PyS60!

Download the latest release at garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=854

Happy Birthday to PyS60!

2008-12-26T14:04:06+02:00

Boxing day, and PyS60 has just completed 4 years today

History of PyS60:

* 1.0 STABLE release (26.12.2004)
* 1.0.1 (a minor update 02.04.2005)
* alpha 1.1.0 (03.06.2005)
* alpha 1.1.3 (17.06.2005)
* alpha 1.1.5 (30.06.2005)
* alpha 1.1.6 (26.07.2005)
* 1.2 STABLE release (22.10.2005)
* 1.3.1 (27.01.2006)
* 1.3.8 (07.07.2006)
* 1.3.11 (10.10.2006)
* 1.3.12 (24.10.2006)
* 1.3.13 (10.11.2006)
* 1.3.14 (20.11.2006)
* 1.3.15 (05.12.2006)
* 1.3.16 internal release
* 1.3.17 (11.01.2007)
* 1.3.18 (13.02.2007)
* 1.3.19 (12.03.2007)
* 1.3.20 (26.03.2007)
* 1.3.21 (24.04.2007)
* 1.3.22 (01.06.2007)
* 1.3.23 (24.06.2007)
* 1.4.0 RC1 (02.7.07)
* 1.4.0 STABLE release (06.07.07)
* 1.4.1 STABLE release (16.10.07)
* 1.4.2 STABLE release (21.01.08)
* 1.4.3 STABLE release (05.05.08)
* 1.4.4 STABLE release (27.06.08)
* 1.4.5 STABLE release (03.12.08)
* 1.9.0 (24.12.08)

It started on 26 December in 2004 with vesion 1.0 stable release of PyS60. In October 22, 2005 updated to 1.2, Python for Series 60 1.2,with lots of improvements: camera, calendar, audio(play & record), telephone & contacts, and graphics and available also for N70, N90!

In February 2006 - PyS60 becomes OPEN SOURCE ! However, unofficially there were PyS60 packages available till PyS60 1.4.0. Officially with version 1.3.1 - support for the 1st edition devices was abandoned. After a series of version 1.3 releases and a release candinate on July 6, 2007 - Python for S60 1.4.0 FINAL was released. This release was officially Nokia signed. The capabilities for the PythonForS60 component were "ALL -TCB -DRM -AllFiles", so the DLLs are usable with almost all applications as is and thus there is no longer a need for a separate unsigned-freedevcert version of this package. Lots of bug fixes and new additions, till 1.4.0 Final.

Moving on - Just before the smartphone show on October 16, 2007, Python for S60 1.4.1 FINAL was released. Improved telephone and position modules; autostart support added; sensor module added for N95 and 5500; video camera support added to camera module was added.

In the year 2008, January 21 Python for S60 1.4.2 FINAL was released. This release came with a new Logs module - phone's log module added : SMS , received calls etc. and 13 bug fixes. Following in quick succession on May 5, 2008 PyS60 1.4.3 FINAL was released. 3 new feature additions one of which included - Increased the maximum length of the message that can be sent using messaging.sms_send()to 39015 characters and some bug fixes.

Next, PyS60 1.4.4 FINAL came out with a new module globalui for displaying notes and queries from background applications; Added functionality to mark SMS's in the inbox as read or unread and added support for S60 SDK 3.1. In the beginning of this month- 3 December 2008, PyS60 1.4.5 was found embedded in the latest Mobile Web Server release by our own Cyke64, before it was officially made public and announced. This was just a mantaince release probably specially for MWS ;)

Finally this X'mas eve Santa gave us PyS60 1.9.0 which was based on new Python 2.5.1 core. A GUI version of Ensymble for packaging scripts into sis files and more extensive documentation in the form of HTML documents are now made available. Thus packaging is made more easier. Unfortunately, S60 2nd Edition no longer supported with this new release.

Let us wish PyS60 a very happy birthday. Also credits go to PyS60 Team for working hard and providing us with desired results.

Long live PyS60 !

Anticipating PyS60 1.9.0

2008-12-17T10:24:59+02:00

Christmas approaching, and its time for gifts

Originally Posted by jplauril View Post Ye olde 1.4.x modules are (mostly) ported. The first rough developer release of the new 2.5 codebase - PyS60 1.9.0 - will be out soon. Stay tuned.

At present the latest PyS60 release was 1.4.5 which was released few weeks ago, just another maintenance release. As quoted above by Jukka Laurilla, there is some thing good to come very soon. Yes, the all new PyS60 1.9.0, which would be based on Python 2.5, seems to be underway to be released soon.

This would be the biggest change in the hierachy of PyS60 releases, even if it would be a rough developer version initially. Again Jukka says, in another post of his, that the touch support would not be present in the 1.9.0 version, but only in the next 2.0 stable release. Well, just thinking about time between 1.9.0 and 2.0....

I sense that they are all ready with the PyS60 1.9.0 and would be releasing it in the next few days - Best X'mas gift to the PyS60 developers. And we are all ready to test the new release... Bring it on !

What else are you expecting in the new release? Would like to hear your comments- but be sure to punch them in before the release announced

Next 5 Featured Applications on croozeus.com!

2008-12-04T04:30:20+02:00

At croozeus.com we have a section where we feature a PyS60 Application every 10 days.

The prominent aim of the PyS60 Applications section is to help the developers of PyS60 build standalone applications on PyS60. Also the source code of the featured application is made available so that other developers can learn from it or modify it according to their needs.

You can find the first 5 featured PyS60 Applications here. Yesterday, we just completed next 5 featured applications, which are summarized in this post. Visit here to find the list of all the Featured PyS60 Applications.

Featured PyS60 Application #6 is PyCalc by Bogdan Galiceanu

PyCalc is a PyS60 Calculator with a similar approach, for S60 devices. PyCalc is a calculator with two modes : Basic and Scientific.

The basic mode has most frequently used options like - add, substract, multiply, divide, square, square root, etc. The Scientific mode has advanced options in addition to basic functions, includind - trigonometric functions like sine, consine, tan and logarithmic and exponential functions as well. The basic and scientific modes can be toggled according to the usage. Both modes are shown in the above screenshot.

Source code of PyCal (Zip format)

Presentation for PyCalc

Featured PyS60 Application #7: Unity by Jouni Miettunen

Unity was originally invented in Japan 1985 as “Chain Shot!” by Kuniaki Moribe. After that it has spread all over the world with names such as SameGame, TumeGame, KomeGame, MameGame,
DebaGame, TileFall, Cabeem, MaciGame, GD-BMD etc.

The idea is to clear the whole playing area by removing tiles in groups. The more tiles you remove at the same time, the more points you get !

Currently, there have been updates to this game. Sensor support and difficulty levels have been added. Find more info on the updates on the Python Dibo.

Twin Featured Application #8: BH BlueJack and BH Text-to-Speech by Christian Shtarkov

BH BlueJack an open-source bluejacking application for S60 3rd edition devices, while BH Text-to- speech - as the name suggests is text-to-speech application for 3rd Editon devices. Read more about the features of the twin applications here.

Source code for BH BlueJack

Source code for BH Text-to-speech

Featured PyS60 Application #9: NShaver by Jacksonproductions.net and wook

Do you like to make fun? Have you ever wanted to shave off, your friends hair?

Wanna now someones reaction, when he/she thinks his/her hair is shaved off?

This is your chance. Use nshaver and have fun.

Watch video demonstration of Nshaver

Download Nshaver here

Source code for Nshaver

Featured PyS60 Application #10: Genius by Rafael Tavares

Genius is a copy of the famous “Simon Says” game, now done in Python for S60. The name Genius was used because there was a toy with this name and it was a copy of Simon Says too. This toy was very popular in Brazil in the 80’s.

Download Genius.

Download Genius source code.

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Congratulations to all the authors of the Featured applications!

Click here to read in detail about above Featured PyS60 Applications

The featured application section continues to feature new PyS60 applications, so if you have anything interesting let us know about it. You can find our contact info here.

Python workshop at Rio de Janeiro!

2008-10-23T17:04:41+03:00

Yesterday, Python for S60 witnessed one more worksop at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil !

Below is the experience of one of my friend - Rafael Tavares, who is also the author of featured application #1 at croozeus.com

Hey, guys!

As Pankaj told me he would like to have a description of the Code Camp and I was there, I'll share with you this great experience.

Most of the participants got there 1 hour before the presentations begin. Due this, we could talk with Daniel, who was going to do the Camps about Python, and some other participants like Lauro and Luis, who are Forum Nokia Champions! We talked a little bit and had the oportunity to get our hands on a N96 and on a Nokia Tube (5800 XpressMusic).

After a while, Daniel Rocha and Daniel Arroyo did a presentation, getting a overview on the plataforms used by Nokia. Then, the sessions were divided. One room for Python for S60 and another room for WIdgets. I was on the PyS60 room. There, Daniel Rocha did another presentation for the people who didn't knew Python for S60. After that, we started to code. We could get Daniel's support anytime. He helped all the participants and I was really surprised with the final results. Most of the people there didn't knew anything about Python for S60 and they made really impressive things in 5 hours! We got some Bluetooth Chat with the option to send pictures and voice records, some image moving according to the accelerometer sensor and much more.

Merit to Lauro and Luis, who won the Camps. They made I great application, that was a visual contact list: you could pass the photos with your contacts face, and call them, all this using the accelerometer! So, that's it, congratulations for Luis and Lauro and let's wait for the next Code Camp :D

Congratulations to Luis and Lauro who won the code camps !

PyS60 Talks #3 : Conclusion

2008-09-23T07:36:02+03:00

We had the third session of PyS60 Talks yesterday.

For those who are not aware about the PyS60 Talks, please check it out here !

The discussion agenda for PyS60 Talks #3 was PyS60 Community Edition , Appuifw2 Extension and Featured PyS60 Apps.

The virtual event was a great success with quality audience joining in the discussion. I have to say we had a variety of audience, PyS60 developers, Enthusiastic Students, Extension developers, C++ guys and even Hackers !

The main discussions yesterday, pertained about PyS60 Community Edition. Mikko Ohtamaa from Red Innovation was present with his comrade Antti Haapala, and took pleasure in answering queries about the community release and its future prospects. A future the goal is to improve appuifw(2) and integrate more UI related modules to make the PyS60 distribution versatile. Now that is some good news...

The talks also provided networking oppurtunity for the developers to get in touch with each other and contribute cumilatively on projects. Btw, I had a smell that many PM were flying around too

Mark Hurenkamp, author of Tracker.py, got chance to discuss couple of addable features to the tracker. And we hope we have some of them in the next release.

As always, some people missed the talks (Hope developers come up with a good scheduling app). But nevermind, we have another talks coming soon - where you can join in. For details and announcements regarding next talks - simply stay tuned !

Untill next time - valete !

Why should I learn PyS60 ?

2008-09-19T08:34:05+03:00

This post is for PyS60 developers as well as non-developers. If this question has ever occurred to you there are 2 ways you can get a great answer to this question....

1) Read the following post,

Which technology should I use? Round 3: Python by Daniel Rocha, Forum Nokia Expert !

2) Watch the video below where our good old PyS60 buddy has something to say on MobiToss, and the question above.

So what are you waiting for ? Get Started with PyS60 !

If you still have the question unanswered... let me know here

Cheers,

Croozeus

First 5 Featured PyS60 Applications on croozeus.com !

2008-09-07T18:22:28+03:00

At croozeus.com we have a section where we feature a PyS60 Application every 10 days.

Last week we completed 5 featured applications. So I post the summary of those 5 applications here.

Featured #1 : EQUATIONS by Rafael Tavares of Brazil

The first application was a simple one by a brazilian student. EQUATIONS is a simple PyS60 application that helps to solve 2nd order mathematical equations !

Presentation for Equations

Source code for Equations

Featured #2 : Mobile Web Server by Nokia

Mobile Web Server consists of a Web server powered by Apache technology and a connectivity solution providing a mobile device with a global URL and HTTP access to it. Many of you might be surprised to know that all mymobilesite.net applications like - Camera, Blog, Logs, Contact, Calender, Chat, etc are developed using Python.

In fact, Mobile Web Server (MWS) is one of the main customers for the PyS60 team in Nokia and they always have the latest PyS60 version embedded in MSW distribution !

The open source version of MSW is available at http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/Mobile_Web_Server

Featured #3 : Niime by Asier Arranz

NiiMe is a software programmed in Python that use the accelerometers built in Nokia devices such as N95, Nokia 5500, etc.

Using the orientation of the mobile device : You can control your PC ! - using it as a mouse!

Watch it for yourself. Below is the video of Niime Projects :

Source Code for NiiMe, (in a zip format)

Featured #4 : Sensor Sample by Jouni Mienttunen

This is a sample application for PyS60 (Python for S60) . It’s purpose is to demonstrate how to use the built-in Sensor API in python applications.

Please note that Sensor API is available only in some devices, not in all. Currently known Sensor API devices are Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia 5500 and Nokia N82. For more complete device list, please refer to Forum Nokia pages: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Sensor_API

Source code for Sensor Sample

Documentation for Sensor Sample

Featured #5 : Tracker by Mark Hurenkamp and PyCamera by Bogdan Galiceanu

This time we had twin applications (2 applications) as Featured #5.

Tracker is a GPS mapping application aimed at helping hikers that want to track their position on a digitized map. The main purpose of Tracker.py, is to support this goal as much as possible. [Read more]

Download Tracker

User Manual for Tracker

Source Code for Tracker

The second application is PyCamera. PyCamera is an example of a camera PyS60 application similar to the camera of the Nokia 2nd Edition devices. The PyCamera is capable of capturing images as well as video. The program starts in photo mode by default, and the default image quality is 100 (best).

Source Code for PyCamera

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Click here to read in detail about above Featured PyS60 Applications

The featured application section continues to feature new PyS60 applications, so if you have anything interesting let us know about it.

[email = first name dot last name at the rate of croozeus dot com]