Open Source Symbian. PLECO possibilities?

driftwork

秀才
I don't know if anyone has spoken about this elsewhere, but I'm wondering since the announcement that the Symbian OS has gone open source, is there now a possibility that a version of the PLECO Dict will be developed for Symbian.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Unfortunately if anything this makes a Symbian port less likely, since it suggests that Nokia's losing interest in it - Symbian is much too arcane to attract significant numbers of open-source developers (particularly as the developers who'd be interested in that are already working on mobile Linux, a project which already has an enormous and very-active developer community), but by open-sourcing it Nokia greatly reduces its own obligations in terms of upgrades/maintenance/etc - companies that want to keep using it can make whatever changes they need with the open-source version but Nokia can pretty much wash their hands of it. Given the long slow decline of Palm (latest rumors are that the supposedly-out-in-09 new version of Palm OS isn't even running yet) the last thing Pleco needs is to put resources towards another platform with an uncertain future.

At this point the most likely next three platforms for Pleco are iPhone, desktops (Windows + Mac with some effort made to have the Windows version be fairly WINE-friendly for the sake of Linux users), and a Java port which would support some combination of Android and BlackBerry. Our enthusiasm about that Java port is going to depend a lot on what we can actually do on iPhone - worst-case scenario the iPhone version may be more like "Pleco Lite" (there are some aspects to Apple's store policies that make it really hard for us to bring over a lot of the content/features we'd like to, though the fact that they're letting eReader distribute a free application and then sell content for it through their own store is certainly promising) and in that case we'd really want to get a more-complete version of Pleco out for some other platform for the sake of people who can't stand Palm/WM. But unfortunately it's tough to make the case for Symbian as that other platform at this point.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Sorry I didn't notice this post before.

A Palm OS emulator on Android specifically would be tricky, because development on that is Java-only and even with the various tricks they've used to make Java faster it would still be extremely difficult to get it running fast enough to make a usable Palm emulator - for that you really need to be working at as low a level as possible.

There actually is a Palm OS emulator available for Nokia's N800 series Linux internet tablets, though - see this page for that. The latest beta of Pleco 2.0 fixes one of the major problems that was preventing Pleco from working well on those tablets (namely the use of a shared library for handwriting recognition), so while we haven't tried it out yet you might have pretty good luck with the Basic version at least.

StyleTap was supposedly developing a version of their Palm OS emulator for Symbian for a while, but that seems to have disappeared now - the only thing other than WM that their website seems to mention is iPhone, which regrettably it doesn't look like Apple's going to let them offer through AppStore but which they do seem to be making steady progress on as a jailbreak application.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I spent about two hours trying to get Pleco working in StyleTap on a P1i and gave up in frustration after that when the PDBs/PRCs consistently refused to install. That may not be StyleTap's fault, though - the Symbian user interface is somewhat less-than-intuitive and I might have been doing something else wrong in terms of my device setup / use of StyleTap's transfer application. (or may have run out of memory - I didn't have a mini-Memory Stick around with which to try expanding it)
 

Azabu

举人
Too bad Mike. Hopefully you (or someone else) with a Symbian device might have better success another time.
 

Azabu

举人
I bought a Nokia 5800 today, installed the StyleTap trial and also the PlecoDict 1.0 trial. It works!

Of course, the display doesn't take full advantage of the 5800 screen size. And I can't find a way to search or input pinyin (i.e. to bring up the 5800's software keyboard) but the HWR seems to work (though I can't get results since its only a trial).
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting - perhaps when StyleTap for Symbian is out of beta we can try to come up with some official instructions / compatibility info for using 1.0 on it.
 

Azabu

举人
I managed to bring up the software keyboard once or twice but I can't seem to make it input anything into the Plecodict application. Then I couldn't get the keyboard up again. Will try to ask the StyleTap people about it.

Plecodict seems to be able to run off the memory card.

Can't get Plecodict 2 to install on the device as it runs out of memory. If I try to install it on the memory card, it won't load properly. StyleTap itself either installs in device memory or the card but doesn't seem to be able to split files between the two in order to run its emulation.

Mmm. Will focus on getting Plecodict working first.
 

Azabu

举人
OK, worked out how to bring up the virtual keyboard reliably. It requires you to select keyboard input from the drop down menus each time you are in a text field with a long tap, otherwise it doesn't seem to register. But still no text input. In any case it should automatically come up in any text field rather than having to be selected.

StyleTap says its a problem with the new firmware on the Nokia 5800 (worked on the old firmware) and they are looking at it.
 

Azabu

举人
Small update. StyleTap says they've worked out the problem with the virtual keyboard on the 5800 and should be fixed with the next release of their Symbian beta (whenever that is).
 

Azabu

举人
Styletap update arrived - virtual keyboard input works now (but you can't actually see what you type though when in keyboard entry mode) but the entry is there when you drop back into Plecodict 1.0. Not great but better than before - Plecodict 1.0 via Styletap would probably work for a S60 device with a real keyboard.

*** Still can't see input in the virtual keyboard input box but you can see the results if you are using mini QWERTY and handwriting mode. More usable now.
 

Mi ke

Member
I have a Nokia C6 (with small slide keyboard), I installed styletap Palm Os emulator for Symbian. Installed Pleco 1.0 and it works. The keybord works only partly. The top line only gives numbers instead of the letters. When typing capital letters, it does work tough. I tried to install Pleco 2.0 but also ran out of memory. When installing the Pleco 1.0, the only difficulty i encoutered was the installation of the subfulders, like dictionaries, fonts,... i also dropped the content of all subfolders in styletap and then it worked... I'm still not sure if i'll keep using it. The copy-paste does not work, the keyboard does not work very good, and it doesn't look as good as it would without emulator. But still pleco is good...
 
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