Just my two cents about Android: 1. Yes, having a xournal port to Android would be an extremely good idea. I'd say the question of which of the existing Android devices would be good for notetaking is relevant to Bob's immediate purchase plans, but not relevant to the question of porting xournal. Even if none of the existing hardware is ideal, it will happen. In particular: high tablet accuracy would be important for taking scientific notes and other serious work, but there's usefulness in xournal even if the tablet isn't super-precise -- it can still act as a PDF reader that lets you annotate things, keeper of your grocery list or other notes you want to jot down on the fly, etc.
2. The existing xournal code is completely tied into libgnomecanvas and GTK+, which unless I'm mistaken don't run in Android. (But... how long before there is a GTK+ Android port? After all, that's how the Windows and Mac ports operate, rather than porting to the native OS. Is this a realistic prospect or am I being unrealistic? -- after all GTK+ is not too lightweight...). Andreas' code rewrite should be quite a bit better structured than my code, from what I understand, even if it is not platform-independent yet. So it's probably the place to start for a future Android port. 3. Making money in the App Store: in principle the GPL doesn't prevent it, it just says one has to keep providing source code; what one could charge for is the convenience of getting the pre-built app from the App Store instead of having to install it oneself. However, I'd personally prefer if it were kept free not just in the "free software" sense but also in the "free food" sense. 4. I have an Entourage eDGe. (Only used it for 30 minutes before realizing the power supply didn't work and I didn't care anyway.) What it uses for notetaking/annotation is a custom version of xournal. It's indeed a very underwhelming user experience, largely because they run it on an e-ink screen that I dislike very much, and haven't optimized the screen refreshes properly. (Bob, in case you remember the story about the X11 license re-release of an old version of the code in Sept 2009, that was for them. Can't say I'm too impressed with what they did to it.) The eDGe has two screens (one is e-ink, the other is a normal screen); from what I understand (I might be wrong), the e-ink screen (and xournal) runs on top of a GTK+ stack (don't know for sure what the underlying kernel is), while the LCD panel runs Android. It makes for a very schizophrenic user experience, as the two screens have equal size but the brighter and shinier one is not the one you work on. The fact that they have such a hybrid GTK+ / Android system makes me think that they didn't believe porting Xournal to Android was a viable option for them. (Or maybe Android didn't have good e-ink support? Not clear to me why they made that strange design choice. Or am I mistaken and do they run GTK+ on top of the Android stack, and have Android deal with only one display while an X server and GTK+ control the e-ink screen?? Unclear to me...). 5. Another exotic device to which Xournal has been ported (non-commercially this time) is the iRex e-reader/notetaker. Not a good user experience either from what I've heard, but I wonder how they run it (given the form factor of that gadget, I doubt they have a full-featured Linux/X11/GTK+ in there?). Of course there's also the Maemo port, but from what I understand that one had GTK+ available from the beginning. I hear the Nokia tablets are good enough for fairly serious notetaking if one doesn't mind the small screen size -- if they have hardware that's up to the task, shouldn't some of the Android tablets also be able to? Denis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you can protect your company and customers by using code signing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl _______________________________________________ Xournal-devel mailing list Xournal-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xournal-devel
