Re: Find the entrance

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi Ni,

Jie Ni sybase com wrote:
> This is an embedded engineer, who is new to this community. I’ve been
> working at the embedded fields for years, both on software and firmware.
> I just found the interesting project: gnome mobile, but couldn't find
> the right entrance to it (Still don't have a very clear picture on what
> is this project, what functions it will provide, how it would become a
> solution to the customers. ). Anyone could give any indications?

One platform based on GNOME Mobile which has generated lots of useful,
general material is maemo.

Some examples of material introducing the platform, and how to develop
with it, can be found here:

Platform overview (mostly relevant to GNOME Mobile):
http://maemo.org/maemo_training_material/maemo4.x/html/maemo_Technology_Overview/index.html

Application development (much general GTK+, GNOME Mobile and autotools
material):
http://maemo.org/maemo_training_material/maemo4.x/html/maemo_Application_Development/index.html

Platform development (includes lots of useful information on gconf and
DBus among others):
http://maemo.org/maemo_training_material/maemo4.x/html/maemo_Platform_Development/index.html

I'm not aware of other platform vendors who have put this effort into
GNOME Mobile-related training material, but perhaps there are other
sources of information out there?

As for elaborating the value proposition of GNOME Mobile (the second
part of your question), the short answer is that GNOME Mobile is a
foot-up to platform vendors, a means of getting to market quickly with a
reliable software stack that allows them to innovate and add their value
to the user interface.

Functions provided (as you can see in the diagram at
http://gnome.org/mobile) are core infrastructure, GUI toolkit, and
libraries for system configuration, service discovery, multimedia,
Bluetooth, contacts & calendar management, messaging and presence, and
file access. All of this functionality is available in a number of
programming languages, thanks to high quality language bindings of our
libraries.

Other components of the free software stack are in common use, and are
being considered for the upcoming GNOME Mobile release, including
geolocation software, hardware abstraction, a web browser component, and
a new drawing canvas called Clutter.

I hope this is the kind of information you're looking for!

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org