Re: New fplan release is out ....

[John Peterson <jaypee netcom com>]

On Wed, May 12, 1999 at 08:45:21PM -0400, Michael K. Johnson wrote:
>
>[moved to fplan-list from private email]
>John Peterson writes:
>>When you get the urge, take a look at the latest version of the "TODO"
>>file. The design concept has started to fall into place more, but other
>>opinions are always good...
>
>One suggestion for the interactive pre-flight mode design: without
>worrying too much about how functionality will be supported on the
>back end, use glade to create a front end.

   Oh dear, *where* does the time go? Sorry for the belated reply, I got
engulfed in another brush fire at work. Anyhow, I did get a chance to
play around with glade a little. It looks quite mature, very usable
at any rate. I'll probably go one step further, and play around with
a design on 3x5 note cards, which is even easier than using glade. :^)

> Use libglade to load the
>user interface.  This makes all the chrome user-configurable via
>XML, and should cut way down on the interface chores.

   Haven't played with this yet, but I guess I understand how it works
and it sounds like I wont need to worry about it until I have the
interface design mostly worked out.

>For in-flight design, I don't know if GNOME is the right way to do
>it.  Certainly, it would have to be a very limited version.  I think
>that defining a compact data format that can describe an entire flight
>plan is more important -- I'd rather use a real PalmOS application on
>my palmpilot than GNOME ported to PalmOS if I'm going to run this on
>my pilot.  (For one thing, I only have a Palm Personal with 512K RAM...)
>[...]

   These issues seem to be one of the few topics of interest over on
the linux-aviation list. I own a Plam III myself, and I'm very skeptical
of it's utility as an *in-flight* computing device. Mainly because stylus
input could become difficult even in light turbulence, its hard enough
on dry ground. Programming for PalmOS looks like a bit of a pain too.

   I think a reasonable approach might be to work in small steps, perhaps
targeting something like a PC-104 based system running genuine linux
first. (As an example, there are some pretty nifty units available from
http://www.emjembedded.com/.  By the time we get there, these sorts of
units could be just as cheap as the low end 3Com Palm devices and they
are already *much* more capable in terms of CPU and memory resources.
Only drawback I see is the power consumption, one of the real advantages
of the 3Com devices).

   I haven't had a chance to dig into the new 2.2 kernel much (although
I'm running RH 6 at work). Can you give us an idea of how useful the
new frame buffer video interface might be? How far off is Gnome support
for this (frame buffer)?

Later, John

-- 
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