Printing and Printer Sharing

[boomer45]

With all the discussion about the N770 I have yet to hear anybody mention how to print a document from the N770 and what about printer sharing with a network printer? I need to be able to print- screens, docs, PDFs etc.

[paden45]

I copied the statement below from the Nokia 770 FAQ. Someone else mentioned screen dumps are not possible. Perhaps some of the other members in posession of the 770 can help.


Currently Nokia 770 Internet Tablet does not support USB keyboards, USB printing or use of web-cams.


Source: Nokia

[JPB]

I have one !
You can't (yet)...
However maybe true bluetooth, but I don't have a bluetooth printer.
Testing now a bluetooth apple keyboard. Let you know

[FoulPlay]

The device does not natively support printing. I'm sure the demand for such a feature will be high enough for someone to write a program to do it (probably via bluetooth).

[JPB]

Keyboard does not work, i get a "failed to connect" message after instailling a plug in

[idevil]

Hey!
I use Frogpad Bluetooth Keyboard, it works great! No problem!

[Remote User]

If you use the 770 as a remote X terminal and are using it to serve up a display on a client application residing somewhere on the network then you have the full capabilities of the network resources, including printing, available to you.

As long as you all keep thinking of the 770 as an island you will be limited to what you can do on the island. As soon as you begin thinking of the 770 as a network device and how to use the power of all the devices on the network then you will be able to make use of all of the devices, applications, storage and versatility of the network itself, LAN and WAN.

The 770 by itself is going to continually frustrate you until you understand its role in network computing, primarily as a wireless remote display with rich user input, exceptional resolution and advanced discovery. Do yourselves and everyone a favor by thinking of the 770 less as a device and more of a state-of-the-art network display and input device. Think of it for the access to the network that it provides to you.

[=DC=]

Amen Remote User. Very well stated. :D

[meshsmooth]

Remote User, I keep hearing you talk about this ability and you are getting my hopes up so, can you explain how to setup the 770 to use it as a remote X login unit. Is it possible yet?

I am in Australia and i got my sister to order it in the UK but missed the first run so I have to wait till "late November" plus the shipping time to Australia. Cant wait!!

[Remote User]

Remote User, I keep hearing you talk about this ability and you are getting my hopes up so, can you explain how to setup the 770 to use it as a remote X login unit. Is it possible yet? I am in Australia and i got my sister to order it in the UK but missed the first run so I have to wait till "late November" plus the shipping time to Australia. Cant wait!!
First let me mention that you have an individual in Australia by the name of John Nicholls in Brisbane who is getting set to bring a very similar product to the market. His web site is thinlinx.com.

OK, now, the graphics and user input on the 770 are based, at the lowest level, on X. It's a layer as important as Linux itself. X was originally designed to make it possible for people to have access to computers without having to be in the room where the computer is. Such a display is a terminal. It isn't dumb - it's as smart as the apps it's connected to and the networks it's using. X allows your display to connect to the computer over the network, LAN or WAN. You are requesting that the application that's remote to you serve you up a display and allow you input. It does that and, to the extent that your authorized, you 'own' that remote computer, its resources, its power and all your local device has to do is to stay connected, display the graphical window that's sent over the network to you, and accept your input, which in this case includes keyboard, mouse, touchscreen. Your 770 has plenty of power to do this job. The software component that makes this work is called the X Server because it serves up your display & input devices to you. X is also multi-headed. What you see on your display, and what you're interacting with, can be taking place on two or more computers (or computing grids) simultaneously. There is no requirement that any of those remote applications are even aware of each other. The tie-in between two or more remote computers on your display only exists in the way that the GUI represents them to you. You'll automatically be in a real time, collaborating work group with everyone else who has a window open on the same remote applications (client applications) that you do. The only catch to all of this is that the remote apps have to be written to allow for the fact that there are multiple users. There aren't enough apps written this way yet because most people, (99+%) have been using X as a way to produce a nice desktop, and not to develop applications that leverage the architecture of X. This feature of X is called 'network transparency'.

Without knowing where the apps are, and there aren't many, you are limited to merely opening a remote desktop window. That's not a bad start but it means that you will be opening windows on apps that were designed without 770 users in mind. To really make the 770 useful it's going to take an explosion in the development of application-specific GUIs and a mass migration of Linux tool developers to Linux application developers. I've been attempting this in my own way for a long time and until the 770 arrived I've never had a device available to me that had everything necessary to complement what I'm trying to do. I hope to be able to give you something concrete to grab ahold of in the next few weeks. I have to first get a 770 myself and do a little fine tuning. Sorry to be so vague but it's unavoidable.

Meanwhile, check out sites like this for help
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Remote-X-Apps.html

[mika]

I'm thinking AJAX right now; there will be applications using ajax (there is allready) If e.g google makes an "office-packet" and combines that with gmail in a way that all information/applications are on gmail. All you need is thin-client, data and programs are on the web.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/Ajax.html

[meshsmooth]

a VNC viewer that uses the D pad on the 770 to navigate around a full resolution screen on your home machine would at least give you the power of your home machine any ware in the house.

I just found this

NX Client Embedded Edition
Version: 1.2.2 for Sharp Zaurus 5xxx
http://www.nomachine.com/download_product.php?Prod_Id=22

if it is made for the Zaurus the 770 should be doable for the 770. and if it works well I will buy it for my home machine.

[Remote User]

a VNC viewer that uses the D pad on the 770 to navigate around a full resolution screen on your home machine would at least give you the power of your home machine any ware in the house.

Yes, that will work, but keep in mind that VNC is designed to allow you a remote view of any desktop and it does this by reproducing the remote desktop as a static bitmap which has to be sent over the network every time the display is refreshed. VNC's protocol, RFB (remote frame buffer) only knows pixels and user input. X, however, is designed to allow you a remote view of any desktop that has X installed, and it does so by generating a remote display dynamically, using the power of the native X primitives. If you use X you will have a much better experience because X knows a lot more about the display than the pixels that compose it.

VNC is a very nice remote display tool and it has the advantage of not requiring X on the remote desktop, but when you have X on the remote computer it's a shame to ignore the inherent advantage of X as the best remote display protocol ever invented.

If things are done right, X will far outperform VNC and is far more versatile. It's what puts the graphics and user input there in the first place; it only makes sense to use X when you're using the 770 as a remote display device instead of ignoring it.

I'm not speaking of theory here - I've seen the difference and VNC can't compare to X when the remote display's job is to open a remote window to an X application. Use the right tool for the job - don't use VNC when you should be using X.

If you're doing VNC, then at least be sure to use NX. I hope somebody who knows this better than I will jump in here because the goal is for the 770 to use the right tool for the job, and for it to open up our eyes to the power of network computing which means remote display computing. And that means collaborative computing.

Nobody in the planet understands all of the issues of remote (i.e., network) computing all that well. This is a whole new beginning and a lot of things that made sense in the PC desktop world do not make sense in the network computing era. The PC desktop era will soon be seen as a the way we used computers in the brief time before 770-type devices changed everything into network computing. Everything has to be rethought. Keep your minds open, learn about X, especially as a network-transparent display protocol and refocus all your energies from merely enhancing tools to enhancing the applications. X has come back to life. There are many very talented people working on it to make it better in every way. Learn about it and you'll get far more out of your 770 than if you just treat it like it's a mere Windows Pocket PC. It's anything but that.

[UberMac]

If X is available on the 770 could somebody (remoteuser?) post a simple walkthrough of how to get X server up and running on your desktop (preferably Mac OS X, though I'm sure I could work it out from somebodys instructions for XP) and how to connect to it from the 770?

Thanks soooo mcuh if somebody can help.

Uber

[Remote User]

If X is available on the 770 could somebody (remoteuser?) post a simple walkthrough of how to get X server up and running on your desktop (preferably Mac OS X, though I'm sure I could work it out from somebodys instructions for XP) and how to connect to it from the 770?

For now, use the search engines. Words like howto, walkthrough (walkthru), "X Window System", tutorial, howto, walkthrough (walkthru), etc.. I don't have a 770 yet so I am somewhat limited. Plus, I'm not a programmer or sysadmin so that limits how much I can help. Somebody who knows this, though, should step forward. Too bad we're in the Printer Forum!

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/XWindow-User-HOWTO/

What we use here is a line like this, and it's embedded in a desktop icon with an instruction to leave the terminal window open.

ssh -X username@ipaddress /clientapplicationfilepath

SSH establishes your security. If you're doing this over the WAN you should use it, and it involves a password. On a secure Lan you wouldn't need SSH. If the remote computer is behind a firewall then you have to have port some port open (port 22 is the default for SSH but it can be any port) to poke through it. If you use another port, say 2222, then the instruction is

ssh -X -p 2222 username@ipaddress /clientapplicationfilepath

Get familiar with the concept of exporting displays, too. Yes, it's definitely time for a 770 remote X tutorial forum here! I'm ordering a 770 as soon as they're available and the apps that I've developed will be available very soon after.

[RealNitro]

ssh -X username@ipaddress /clientapplicationfilepath

The dropbear ssh app for the 770 does not support the -X flag. :(

[Remote User]

The dropbear ssh app for the 770 does not support the -X flag. :(

So how do we go about fixing that? If I were a programmer I'd jump on it.
(Permission is hereby granted.... to modify.., blah blah...)

We're running Debian here and it's supported under Debian (both KDE & Gnome). I use it all the time. What gives? Dropbear talks all about openssh on its website. What are we to make of this ?
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ssh

[aflegg]

If you want X forwarding, don't install the (small/cut-down) Dropbear SSH client/server; install OpenSSH:

http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo1.1rc6/free/o/openssh/

Not yet tested ssh -X, though.

[JPB]

I'm thinking AJAX right now; there will be applications using ajax (there is allready) If e.g google makes an "office-packet" and combines that with gmail in a way that all information/applications are on gmail. All you need is thin-client, data and programs are on the web.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/Ajax.html


At least there is somebody here who has fully understood the objective of the device and where the software is going. What is the use of installing a 280Mb software to just write a letter? Or having 2GB of mails sitting on your harddisk and backing up each day/week.
It is gonne take sometime before people gonne get away from the reflex: Can I install or run this or that?
Just do it on the web and even more efficiently.

[RealNitro]

If you want X forwarding, don't install the (small/cut-down) Dropbear SSH client/server; install OpenSSH:

http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo1.1rc6/free/o/openssh/

Not yet tested ssh -X, though.
OMFG it works! I have 'gedit', the gnome text editor, opened on my N770 right now. One big problem is that I cannot type text: if I put the focus inside the text-field, the software keyboard doesn't appear. Dialogs work, fullscreen doesn't, printing works ofcourse (I copy-pasted some text, the printer is connected to my pc.), if I minimize the gedit window, I can't get it back.

(I had to install the openssh package on the command line too.)

[Remote User]

At least there is somebody here who has fully understood the objective of the device and where the software is going. Just do it on the web and even more efficiently.

The Web is just a small part of the Internet. It has its own specific value, though, and to confine the potential of the 770 to the World Wide Web would be to severly restrict its usefulness and lower its efficiency as a network device. Remote X apps don't have to deal with the Web the same way that html pages do. To keep apps low in latency and high in remote responsiveness I would urge developers to use the Web when it suits their purposes, but not unless this is the case. In the same sense that GUIs have to be developed which totally suit the application (games, point of sale, etc.) so, too, do the ways in which we use the Internet have to be developed which totally suit the requirements of the 770 as a local and wide area network display device.

[Remote User]

OMFG it works! I have 'gedit', the gnome text editor, opened on my N770 right now.
That little glimpse of the future's pretty exciting, isn't it? Document exactly what you did for all to follow.

[RealNitro]

That little glimpse of the future's pretty exciting, isn't it? Document exactly what you did for all to follow.
I wrote a howto (http://blog.eikke.com/index.php/realnitro/2005/11/17/remote_x_sessions_on_nokia_770) on my blog. :cool: If you find some points that need more explanation, just comment, and I'll see what I can do.