Thanks qole for your response.. I understand that this is specific to users who have a need to use SCIM or CJK input.
Any one please, on the above.. As mentioned when I invoke scim through X terminal ( Debian Chroot), I get the SCIM icon appearing in the status bar and in the drop down I only see the SCIM set up screen. There is no option to select Anthy for Japanese input.
Any inputs to get scim working on Easy debian for scim Anthy input much appreciated
Can someone who owns a n900 with Debian installed please make a youtube video of you going from Hildon to common linux applications like Iceweasel, Thunar, Audacious2, Pidgin, etc. I am just trying to get a sense of the speed to expect on this device when running FOSS desktop software. I am aware of videos on youtube, but they seem to all be of the n810. Thanks
The speed is somewhat better, but the Fremantle UI breaks many of the apps to the point where I cannot release a Fremantle version of Easy Debian until I have figured out a better UI to use. (Some other desktop environment inside a Xephyr window, I think).
I am not very familiar with how the device's software stack looks, so can you explain how things are laid out? Is the Fremantle UI a window manager running on a plain X11 server? If so, does this mean the app breakage occur because of some non standard way that the WM handles windows?
Yes, Maemo 5 has a desktop environment called Hildon that is loosely based on the GTK+ toolkit, like Gnome, but unlike Gnome (or even previous versions of Maemo), they have broken the UI in many places to the point where just about every desktop app that I have tried is unusable in at least one core area.
The most broken thing in Fremantle is the dialog box. Without using Hildon-specific widgets, most GTK+ dialogs are barely usable, and some dialogs are completely unusable. And I don't see any workarounds, like in previous versions of Maemo.
I've pretty much resigned myself to waiting for the devices to start selling before issuing a new version of Easy Debian, so I can get some help from other hackers to figure out how to work around these very difficult UI problems...
Yes, Maemo 5 has a desktop environment called Hildon that is loosely based on the GTK+ toolkit, like Gnome, but unlike Gnome (or even previous versions of Maemo), they have broken the UI in many places to the point where just about every desktop app that I have tried is unusable in at least one core area.
Does this mean that they are using some custom GUI library that replaces GTK+, but is not 100% compatible? If so, I'm sure you have considered installing Debian's own GTK libraries in a chrooted environment; why did this not work?
I also find it strange they are using GTK when Nokia is in control of QT at this point.
I am very excited for the n900 to come out. If I can get my cell carrier to subsidize the price of the device ($500+ is a bit much), I would love to join you in hacking the device.
EDIT: I think I misunderstood you on GTK. Do you mean that Hildon is not taking the dialog boxes' hints into consideration? (Something along the lines of _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE). By the way. are the Hildon sources available to the community?
I also find it strange they are using GTK when Nokia is in control of QT at this point.
Qt wasn't in Nokia's hands for long enough for such a commitment when the time of final choices came. That's why Maemo 5 is GTK and Maemo 6 will be Qt based.
Yes, they started with GTK+ and then they twisted it beyond recognition in many places. When a Debian GTK+ app is run under Maemo 5 in a chroot, it uses the standard GTK+ widgets to display, but Maemo 5 then mangles and disfigures the widgets into grotesque, unusable shapes.
Maemo also built (really nice) custom Hildon libraries on top of GTK+, but they did it in a way that ended up being the worst possible case for "standard" GTK+ apps. All the brokenness is in the standard GTK+ widgets, and all the elegant fixes for the brokenness are in the custom Hildon replacements. So, for example, there's no automatic conversion of big GTK+ dialog boxes that don't fit on the screen into the cool kinetically scrolling dialog boxes found in Hildon. The GTK+ dialog boxes just break horribly.
Another example: the standard "File Open" dialog box, under Maemo 5, is the most hideous thing you will ever see, because the OK button eats 1/4 of the space, and the file lists are tiny and unreadable with microscopic scroll bars... but most users of the N900 will never see that atrocity because all of the Maemo 5 apps have replaced it with the custom Hildon version that looks good on the device.
In Maemo 4, I was able to work around many of these problems because Hildon still displayed most of the GTK+ widgets correctly. It no longer does that in Maemo 5.
My only option is to try a secondary desktop environment, like the LXDE-in-Xephyr hack I used in the current Easy Debian. But because the screen is so small on the N900, I have to find a way to make everything in the secondary environment big and "chunky". I also need to figure out a way to get out of the secondary environment and back to Maemo, something that is proving to be quite challenging now that there is no hardware keys for toggling fullscreen mode or pulling up the task switcher.
Nokia has already announced that Maemo 6 will be QT-based. This might actually be a good thing for GTK+, because then apps using that toolkit will look "normal" again.
My only option is to try a secondary desktop environment, like the LXDE-in-Xephyr hack I used in the current Easy Debian. But because the screen is so small on the N900, I have to find a way to make everything in the secondary environment big and "chunky". I also need to figure out a way to get out of the secondary environment and back to Maemo, something that is proving to be quite challenging now that there is no hardware keys for toggling fullscreen mode or pulling up the task switcher.
In the true spirit of "release soon, release often", I ask you to make available an interim version with the default tiny widgets and texts, to start using debian on the N900 even if with enlarging goggles.
