Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

I think that's up to Nokia.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Is the new canola out already? and if not can anybody tell me when?
Sorry for being inpatient but i really have to know so i can mark my calendar.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

You should mention what kind of app Canola is. Is it an app launcher, media player, or icon editor?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

It's a media player: Link
If you'd like information on a certain application you can always search the Maemo Garage site to find the project's web page where you will find a full explanation.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi guys!

Just to keep you updated : We are on track, integrating the UI screens =) it's a lot of detailed work this time, as we really, really changed a lot of things. We are running as fast as we can to try (TRY) to delivery a REAL version this year. This is not a promise as something can go really bad, but for sure we have a lot of good friends here on the forum that are our mates to put a beta to be tested, and this beta is going to be ready sooner (end of november)

Also just to remind the more "code" oriented guys around: this time, instead of fighting managers to open source it, canola is almost all in python. As some of you also know we are the maintainers and main bind creators of python, and we are not only happy that canola is python, but also other great applications like UKMP and so on. So : you will be able to write custom plugins, and I'm not talking about basic things only. We are preparing widgets that were impossible in the next version so people will really have a good time if they need something that is not there. As I keep saying the "core" canola is still quite simple, so expect the basic v1 + almost all the request made on garage + a real nice infrastructure to new features.

The only bad thing I'm sad to say is : we tried, but unfortunately there will be no Gapless playback. What we did was to try gstreamer on the device, no way. Then the Mplayer, also we were not able to and even Xine as backend to allow that, but still a minor "gap" between the 2 songs.

Now that we've tried everything we could, what we can do is to send the nokia platform guys and see if they can help in the future version of components to allow applications do to so.

Other thing that will be out of the first version is the localization with geoclue. Our plans is to make it possible first to use it easily then really implement as a plugin in the future.

See you soon!

Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming (eg: what you really didn't like on the previous canola, what you missed, and what you would kill for =) )

Marcelo
on behalf of the canola team

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

WOW! THANKS!

Any more screenshots to show? ;-)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

My requests..

1. please use the entire screen space as touch screen.... not only the bar.
2. I could never play flash videos or for that matter any other videos mplayer could play. please make this possible.
3. Some times some of the songs just dont play at all.... i have had to select the next track and then come back again to get it play. The arrow which goes around goes on forever.
4. In slideshow mode please allow for the user to toggle between the pictures just like in windows when you press the left or right arrrow for the next picture.
5. I never had the internet radio working on canola..... some others repported that it works... please make it easier

The most important thing i would love to use is " THE OPTION TO SEARCH FOR A PARTICULAR SONG USING THE KEYBOARD DEPENDING ON THE FIRST LETTERS LIKE THE WINDOWS SEARCH FEATURE IN VISTA"

i dont know if that is impossible..... but i would love to have that function.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

@Marcelo Great news! Can't wait! Btw: Any news on that horizontal scrolling bug on the n800 due to the lack of vsync ? (just wondering cause i'm having that same problem with my own stuff on the n800)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

don't worry about this =) now we have a very nice, widescreen ui =) you can touch everything =)


As we talked, that was not a "canola" problem, as we tried to use the maemo software components. Once we saw that it was not enough for all of your needs, we decided to create our own, so now we are not only able to play using mplayer but for example we tried also with Xine and so on. So now we have our own player (not osso media engine) that supports multiple players bellow and also is plugged into our download management for podcasts.

This could be a lot of things, but mainly the osso media engine going crazy. this tings should be gone now!


You can do that already can't you? or are you talking about the hardware buttons?
But for sure this will be on next version.



The whole URL + RSS feeds sucks because you need to get something in the browser than copy to canola (old configuration). We wanted actually to use mime types to alow a rss / pls click to go straight to canola, but I don't know if we will be able to do that on opera browser. Now that the configuration is inside canola I'm really worried about how the clipboard will work on this. but for sure one thing is going to happen : we are going to release with a good selection of radios configured.



Yes, that was impossible in the first version because we had no keyboard. Now we are running to have the keyboard, and to be able not only to do that but also other things inside canola.


Unfortunately yes. It still happens, and things seems to be a little slower in the chinook. This is actually making me worried a little bit, but not more than I was when I saw the tearing in the horizontal scroll.

Our strategy? to avoid horizontal scrolls (so no scroll is need on the home anymore) we have now "fluid" layouts on most of the screen. Sadly it's a little bit more "economic" on animations to prevent the user from facing the tearing. Sad. Sad. I really thought that Nokia would release a fix for that.. but in the end never happened.

amigokin: No screenshots for now =) as we are doing the final graphics, and we are REALLY excited about them, we are going to keep them to the release =)
Excited : because I personally think canola has improved in all areas but the graphics now seems a lot like... Canola =) I think personality will be nice in the version =)

Keep suggestions coming =) before we freeze everything =)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

my canola refuses to read my id3 tags can anyone help?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Please allow for simple 90 degrees rotation when viewing pictures!! The new Canola does have a picture viewer, doesn't it? Can't wait for the new release ...

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Gammer,

We actually placed that in the old canola (click on the corner) was ahidden feature because we didn't have plans to add it. But now you will have rotation buttons available in the picture view. It's coming quite nicely. The only drawback as always is that in the thumbnail view you will face a lot of tearing.

keep suggestion coming =) of course now we are almost on freezing phase to focus on finishing it as fast as possible, so some small cool things can be out of the first release, but we will work hard to enable a lot of things promised =)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi Handful. Will the new Canola be compatible with 2006OS? Thanks.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Marcelo, Thanks for the updates this is easily my most anticipated application for my N800.
I currently use Canola, UKMP, gPodder, Video Center, Rhapsody and the Internet radio applet virtually every day for my media and it sounds like the new version Canola will be able to replace all but Rhapsody. I love the utility of the N800 but after using an iPhone all weekend (borrowed one of my friends 2 unlocked ones) the best feature of the iphone is how easy it is to switch between applications. The n800 is capable of much, much more but I am hoping that the new Canola really seamlessly ties the multimedia capabilities of the N800 together.
I am actually setting up a MythTV box in the next few weeks specifically for use with the Canola :D
Cheers and if you need any testers you know where to look.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Thanks for the kind words! and we are not only work to make it really worth it but also I have a confident thinking that you guys are going to really like canola. Of course a lot of things will need some improvements after the first round of real feedback, but we tried to fix so much mistakes from the 1.0 and make easy to expand the new version that we now that is not going to be great , but will allow not only us but the other developers to make it fetch your needs.

Well, actually even with small "management" things (like being able to delete videos for example, I think we will be able to really look after the features you said apart from the raphsody. For music we have 2 great album art based views, and one is really going to be canola exclusive, not copied from anywhere else.

I really understand you, and totally agree. Along with other small hidden things this is also one of the real great things about the iphone. Multitasking is "simple" and you don't need to learn. the applications record the state and you are presented with what you left when you come back. We didn't needed that in canola 1.0 but for the new one that was a real requirement, so not only we will try to implement this right, but also give the user a dedicated task switch button.

because like you we also believe that: " The n800 is capable of much, much more but I am hoping that the new Canola really seamlessly ties the multimedia capabilities of the N800 together."

So let's see if we can get it right.
I am actually setting up a MythTV box in the next few weeks specifically for use with the Canola
Cheers and if you need any testers you know where to look.[/QUOTE]


"Hi Handful. Will the new Canola be compatible with 2006OS? Thanks."

Well, actually the new canola is quite a lot of python, and we have the releases for all platforms versions. I cannot assure that, because if things gets really delayed for some reasons the 770 version is the first to drop, but we have a kind of a "personal" (team) goal to make canola 2.0 run fast and beautiful on the 770 just to show some Evas speed off =) (kidding) So, I will not promised anything in behalf of the team, but I can at least say that we are in a good position to at least make it available for it, and maybe its a little bit slower, but it would be a real killer if it was quite fast on that device running 2006 software also.

Cheers from Brazil!

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

I've been meaning to add this to the Canola garage tracker. I still can do, but I thought I'd mention it here.

It's a boring tagging enhancement request. The problem I have with the current version is to do with multi-disc albums (i.e. albums with more than one disc). They are treated as a single album, but the ordering of the tracks is wrong. I guessing that's because Canola doesn't support the disc number/part of set (TPOS) ID3 tag.

For example, I have the MP3s for both discs in a single folder, tagged with the same album name (TALB) and artist (TPE1). The track numbers (TRCK) go from "1" - "10" (for example) on the first disc, "1" - "9" on the second. The filenames for these are "1.1.mp3" - "1.10.mp3" and "1.1.mp3" - "1.9.mp3", respectivly. The first disc is tagged with disc number (TPOS) "1" and the second disk number "2". The order, when played, of tracks in the album is all track "1"s, followed by all track "2"s, and so on.

The desired behaviour is to have "disc 1, track 1", followed by "disc 1, track 2" all the way through to the end of disc 1, followed by disc 2 in the same way. That is, like it is on the original CD.

If it’s best to add a feature request on the tracker, then please let me know.

Thanks,
Nigel.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

request: Direct play of Flash .FLV files.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hei guys, I tried posting about the last 2 suggestions and here it goes again:

I think we will be able to direct play flash .flv files through rss feeds. (Maybe a youtube dedicated thing, but this is not sure.. BUT it will be easier for someone to code it on python)

Nigel: I communicated this personally today, one of the guys said that will make sure this is implemmented =)

Thanks for the suggestion /

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

I hope you can provide the option to connect to Apple's Quicktime movie list to access the movie trailers - ala FrontRow. It should be able to play them since the 2008 OS support h.264 natively right?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

But what about FLV files saved to the device? That's where my problem exists.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Textrat : I will talk to the guys to see if this can be "read" by the scanner. I think there's no problem. Let's just make sure things go "transparent" there.

@reggie : if there's a public / open way to do so, and the device (internal or mplayer) can handle it.. why not?

Br

Marcelo

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Reggie, does this means that we will be able to view videos from sites which are actually "Quicktime only" like freecaster.tv?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Thanks - that's very kind.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

I don't know if you froze this yet, but I'd like to second "playing FLV files directly off of the device." *insert letter here*-tube videos are the perfect size for the N800. It's a bit of a drag to have your beautiful app for playing music, but for music videos I have to mess around with MPlayer. (Not that there's anything wrong with MPlayer, I just want everything in Canola)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi Clicker,

The mplayer is being used as backend for video. So it will be quite easy even if we are not able to put this on release date, to release a plugin that gets RSS from youtube, present them and play them when needed on canola. Let's see if we manage to do that on time, but of course first things first

BR

Marcelo

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Freecaster does not work ... Quicktime 7 required. :(

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Ouch! I read somewhere on their FAQs that there should be a "download" button somewhere on the player, but couldn't find it, so either the support to h.264 will work will, there will be no way to download the files onto the N800.. :mad:

Oh, thanks for the test, anyway

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi guys,

I have a great news for you. although we don't know how everything is going to flow on this baby, we are going to have a release for the 770. =)

Actually we were really not testing on it, but as the new Canola is pretty "independent" from most of the updates, and we depend more on the python our tests ran ok on the 770, and there's no reason to not make a Hacker Edition install =)

I hope this makes the 770 owners out there a little bit happy =)

Br

Marcelo
on behalf of the Canola Dev team, here in the
OpenBossaLab, INDT.

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

any timing on when we might see the next release of Canola?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

any update on this?

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi, I expect to be more "precise" in a couple of weeks,
but canola is coming in second half of december =) so it will be a christma's gift =) Hope people like it.

The bad part is that some small "veeeery" nice features are for sure not to be polished enough for release, but but but...
we will send versions to most of you (as most of you are testing the beta earlier with us) and we already have plans to release
a new plugin (at least 1) but the plan is to release at least 3 features in january and more in february.

We are working non stop, but very excited because when we saw running on the 770 we though "damn, it's fast even on this guy" of course, I shall remember every time, the tearing sometimes brings the felling of "crap animation" but I think is better to do the animations with tearing than not doing it at all!

I'm preparing release material, "solid" news next week!

*ps: now we are really frozen to suggestion =) but I guess we have taken more than we actually capable.

*ps 2: I think I already said that, but the custom keyboard is going to be out of this one. We don't have time to make all the internacionalization / auto complete features, but the work on will go on. It's just a little bit more demanding to get it right.

Br

So for now, Canola 2.0 release date is 15th of December =)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

I'd like to just say two things:
1st, awesome job on Canola, it is exactly how apps should be made to take advantage of the input-output for the device.

2nd, Your enthusiasm is contagious, to hear you talk about Canola in such a positive way makes me want to use it even more.

On my N800 my divx files (Naruto and Bleach fansubs, in divx-esque format) run too slow in Canola. I'm not saying it is Canola's fault, just that I can't switch to watching them on the N800 (from our dedicated fansub laptop). With the boost that the 2008OS has, and the improvements that you guys are making I will totally revisit that. (thanks!)

I am a UI guy by trade, and I've got to say that you folks working on Canola have hit the nail on the head, awesome UI, great interaction design. Once the videos work well, you really have made a home run for the n*xx series (and N770?) to be a portable media player (and the $230 is worth that alone for many folks), and a home media player served by a NAS.

Thanks and congrats, because hitting that sweet spot is not easy to do!

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi Peblanc!

Thanks for the nice Words. The excitement is really due to that fact that it improved so much (interaction design wise, code wise) that every one is crazy to release it asap. It's funny to see a small group of coders working like crazy just because they are really "eager" to see that nice thing out there and get the first bunch of bug reports. Also we are dying to see what people will come up with the plugins (pure python, plain easy) this is the only reason we are going to make it happen this year.

I please ask you to take a look once it's out, and see the work behind it:
there was work from january-june purely to make Evas (EFL libraries) run fast on the device, and in july a lot of bindings to python, the core rewrite restarted and fortunately some other guys joined to help.

This other guys are actually the ones that matters to you =)

The video part was clearly bad, in all points of view. For example we know that people really into video is using mplayer. We did release a late plugin for mplayer but was a hack. This time is done right. We replaced the calls for the media engine (that also gave you and us a lot of small problems) to a small media engine of our own,( we do not intend to keep it to run against nokia's) it's just to be there while Nokia fix the other (they're are doing, but they have the whole platform to work on). So now, using our "atabake" engine, you can actually fully use mplayer, or the maemo media engine and we even did experiments with libxine. Why?

I really wanted to make sure gapless playblack would be in the next canola. But then the problems appeared. It's just not possible today with the current gstreamer there. And still a small gap between the music happening. LibXine showed that it could be done with it, but unfortunately it's a huge lib, and it will take more time to "make it fit" in maemo. So for now, only mplayer and media engine backends for Canola. But this improves a lot the video playback from the past, and of course, bring canola back to the fight, as the great guys behind UKMP and Kagu did a lot of stuff that Canola 1.0 didn't, and really needed. that's was the whole point, we don't think competition, and we decided to drop the old version that could not scale to create a really "scalable" application.

I really wanted to have a infra that gave me the chance to play around with media like the UI in the iphone does with video and music :
- scale video in realtime (I know it's eye candy only, but it just fit's better to see you video smoothly scaling than the screen blinking and blanking looking like something has gone wrong just to take you to fullscreen)
- Draw the buttons (components) on top of the video screen : so you don't need to leave fullscreen to control the playback, but again not possible due to some components :/

So, instead of waiting, we are actually going to go for it =) But please forgive us that takes a lot more time because the team is rather small, and while we do Canola, we do paralell projects to pay salaries =)

to close: I really share you thoughts, and I really believe a nice ui can make the difference, and 2.0 is going to be a huge step, but still far from where we want to go. I know some people will complaining about scrolling on horizontal on pictures and album arts (tearing and chronology), but we are just focusing on our devices (horizontal screens) and trying to not copy the apple guys, but actually trying to give ITT users a made for ITT application, that really makes you to use it more.

For the opensource part of the talk: We need to make money =) but don't worry we are not going to charge in the future for Canola, and we focus on other projects to make the money, but using the new Canola infra, so we have a huge time saver. That's why it's closed. And now, we did what I think is right: all the real, heavy, and time demanding work is opensourced, and available for any project (on EFL) the 16 bit EVAS version, python bindings for everything on EFL, the UPNP part(Brisa), the possibility of using plugins to extend (really) the features, and the most important : most of the work is python, so you get the point =)

Now I really want to see what you, the power, ITT users will think of it =) let's run for the first "complete" version so we can send to you.

I kindly ask here the help on that: if you are interested, in testing canola, and has the following requirements :

- a regular camera, to shot a video
- are not shy to talk (can be behind the video)
- a small amount of time to send us (the lots of bugs, suggestions)

I would like to request an email (handful dot lists AT gmail dot com ) , so once we have the complete version (will be unstable ) I will send to you, and if you can record the first use (from installation - to really digging thought media) even without testing if you media works (just pick a card with all kinds of media) It would be great.

hope to get some emails!

Marcelo
on behalf of the team =)

Re: Canola Improvements Coming
 

Hi Guys,

Just to let you know that I have posted some design decisions on my blog, and also the main menu video (from kenneth) with the Carman feature. While this is not too much, it's a nice glimpse at the real thing running on the N800. You can see how smooth it is. =)

Here the post


See you soon!