Moving along

OK, Things went smoother than I thought. I have finished the API wrappers between the packages. I still have to do the final code to set up the feature memory function pointer so that I can lookup loaded modules for the associated function. It should not be that slow because I do a small string lookup for the package name and then the function is by index. Also its easy to set up for new modules which was important to me. Hopefully the performance wont be too bad.

I hope to soon restore the demo as it was before hand so that I can continue spicing up the demo.

Hard to connect the dots

Screens is not doomed yet, however I am working on a very non UI issue which is the package/module interconnection. I have no problem loading a module. The problem is linking between the API calls which I am doing in a mostly platform independent layer which makes it hard to get it working but once its working, it will be easy for me to write new modules and connect the modules together.

I also need to make some changes in the UI component that it cannot use globals. The new file structure is stored per package with a consistent folder hierarchy. Its going to look like not much is happening but the truth is once I finish this major part of Screens, I can go straight to more exciting UI stuff. This is where I wish I had developers working for me but I guess if I want it to be perfect (my way) then I need to do it myself.

Please bare with me, I am working as hard as I can to get this module stuff finished as clean and fast as possible. I want to get the alpha demo done much more than all of you put together.

Update

Hi, Sorry for the lack of updates...  I have been working hard on the module side of Screens. The kernel is more or less usable and now I need to start working finally on the UI Shell module. I still need to figure out the model model in all its glory details, this really feels like the final 'big problem' in front of Screens to stop the demo from being released. The loading of modules is more or less coded. The problem is the API side of things. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Update

Sorry for the lack of posts and updates this week. I have had to put some more time in my full time job which did not leave me much time when I got home to work on Screens. However I have still had to plan the next components which is the shell itself. I have a new graphical layout which I hope to test soon in code.

I have had some SVN activity and I still need to upload some more changes in the way I update the screen. Screens now supports 320x480 resolutions and landscape support as well. I need to fix some bugs on this issue and then I will upload a video.

Fast enough! (SVN 0.57)

Here is the latest version of Screens running on my LifeDrive without crashing and with a good enough frame rate.

I decided that I would try optimizing my code first and only if all efforts fail go towards ARM. Well, It looks to me like its fast enough at the moment to continue on this path without ARM. First of all, this is the 'release' (not 'debug') compilation which improves the frame rate. Also the bitmap component allows for platform specific storage so in PalmOS I just store the bitmaps as normal PalmOS bitmaps. The only thing which is custom blitted is the fonts which is probably what is slowing it down.

If you want to run the full demo on your handheld, just send me an email to zhamilton1@yahoo.co.uk and I will send you a zip file containing all the files you need to put in \Xec folder in your internal/external storage card.

I am amazed how far I have come in such a short time span. Five years of research and suddenly I am cranking out releases on a nearly daily release. I guess innovative projects require time and patience.

So far... So Good...

Video on LifeDrive (SVN 0.54d)

Here is a video of Screens running on my PalmOS LifeDrive:

You can see that it is very slow and its because I am doing blitting without ARM code which seems to be the way I need to go if I want Screens to have more than 1 frame per second. I hoped I would not need to go in the ARM direction but I guess I have not much of a choice at the moment.

Screens still crashes on exit but what's strange is that it is after my application dies which is weird. What's even more weird is that if I don't let it go through the VFS stuff (no bitmaps/fonts/XML usage) then it exits fine, must find a way to debug that.