My ideas for changes to the way apps work.

[hakmanplayer]

Contrary, I think ease of use is the biggest issue here.

the Pandora IS easy to use, if you mean how to get emulators to work etc that is not really related to ease of use as they work in an almost identical fashion on a pc, plus Craig doesn't write the emulators the community do so how does Craig make them easy to use?

Well little do you realize not everyone has experience using emulators on a pc or dealing with linux for that matter.


Nobody has said he writes the emulators or he alone is responsible to make them more user friendly.

 

[WizardStan]

or he alone is responsible to make them more user friendly.

Craig seems to think he can singlehandedly make emulators more user friendly. If he pulls it off then I truly will tip my hat to his prowess.

 

[Esn]

Well, I must say this played out about as I expected.


Bootstrappiness versus communism!


Battlestations!!!

 

[milkshake]

Well little do you realize not everyone has experience using emulators on a pc or dealing with linux for that matter.


Nobody has said he writes the emulators or he alone is responsible to make them more user friendly.

this is a niche console, yes it does what a pc does, pc's and macs/linux distros also dont make it any easier for emulators so why would the Pandora need to be any different?


you cannot say the pandora is not user friendly if the only real reason for that is not being able to get the gist of setting emulators up (being new to emulators and all this is to be expected).

 

[Esn]

I see the way this goes. Craig goes the way he has blamed GPH to go.

Hmm, maybe. Well, we've been dealing with parent companies with tin ears since the GP32 days, I'm sure we'll manage if it comes to that.


I think Craig just isn't very good at communication and listening, and therefore prefers to avoid other people as much as possible and do everything himself, or at least it seems that way.


If one's weakness is inter-personal skills, one prefers competition over collaboration.

 

[skeezix]

Some of his ideas are not bad; they make me a little odd, but hey --


Lets look on the bright side of it.


Example; detect SNES roms in root of SD and move them into the right place.


Theres a lot of odd that is in there .. 'the right palce' varies by emulator, and stuff like MAME roms are .zip so not easily detected. But if he wants to go and hard define a standard rom path ("/roms/snes" and "/roms/mame"), then.. its a little unconventional, but not really a bad idea; and you know what, as an experiment.. if the emu authors did start following those conventions universally, it _would_ make things easier. But depends how far you go .. and sometiems there are different competing romsets, or user wants 3 different MAME builds that uses different romsets.. shoudl be an interesting challenge.


But a lot of pnd builders or packagers _are_ lazy, and include no documentation; their runscripts dont' tell the user what the problem is when it fails to run.. they coudl pop up a box saying 'no bios, put it here' or the like, but most do not. Or the default config doesn't work at all and the emu needs tweaking befoer its useful at all. Easy stuff to fix.. but we've got a lot of quick ports that don't. Such is life.


If Craig standardizes some things, maybe those ports will get switched over, and it might just work.


... or maybe Craig will have to hack the ports himself.


... or maybe its just not workable due to problems I've mentioned and others I didn't bother to mention


Still .. you know, its worth experimenting.


--


Building it all from scratch is the hard way, but hell, if he has fun, why not?


Now, I'd do it differently, but he's not me And he's right .. in about 2-3 months, I'm going to be pretty vanished for a few months with babies; I'm usually ultra dependable, but if he wants massive mmenu changes 2 months from now, I'm not the man for it (mmenu is open source, btw.)


--


I still think Craig needs to dump 'lets work towards this' ideas on the firmware mailing list, to help provide guidelines; so far the goals he has (which may well be awesome) are all hidden; the problems.. unknown. But if he wants to get knee deep, well, why not? Coding is fun.


jeff

 

[WizardStan]

It's pretty trivial to add options to the start of each emulator saying "you need file ABC.XYZ. Can you locate it?" and then copy it to the correct place in the appdata directory. That's what I do with jzintv: it needs grom.bin and exec.bin to run. If it can't find those when run, it informs the user they are needed and brings up a file select dialog which lets them search for these files, and then copies them into the appdata directory.

 

[thatgui]

i choose to believe that something good will come. Pandoras and iControlPads are reality.


And we still have the community trying to improve Pandora in all aspects. I don't think this is vanishing.


For myself, the tv-out cable, a new kernel and suspend to ram will definitely put Pandora to an upper level. I see great things in the near future. Ease of use is OK, but far from being the biggest pandora issue.

Contrary, I think ease of use is the biggest issue here.

I dare to deny this, there are a lot of flaws hardware - wise/related that should be fixed first / where Craig should put more energy on.


Even if Craigs approach will be the big thing he and some others think it will be, and new users have a very low learning curve to use this device. What's the answer to newbie questions like:


- why do I have to change my routers config for the pandora to work while other devices work instantly


- why is my connection so slow, other device having better connection speeds


- why do I have to change from craigs super gui to this ugly xfce thing just to get my wlan connection working


- why is there no real standby mode


- why is my Display not staying in my choosen position anymore


- why do I have to hassle with the battery that much


- why is quality control still an issue, although the product is out for months


- ... I can go on with this for "ages"


There are so many construction sites still open, and craig just opens another one. This hasn't to be bad, but people here have already built the cellar and started to build the ground floor - but craig needs to start digging the cellar pit again, while others houses still don't even have roof.


I can just simply (and completely) agree with wizardstan - go ahead craig do your own thing, and waste your time and energy with this instead of bringing the pandora really a step forward.


My only hope is that ED will be unwaveringly and will persist on not making this the default ui.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, I have no idea what exactly Craig will do how, but I'll wait and see.


Don't worry though, whatever happens, his GUI will be included the same way MiniMenu and XFCE are included: You switch them.


I'm also puzzled about the ROM mover.


Sure, a default rompath would be a nice idea, though this wouldn't need a new GUI. We'd have to ask the emulator devs to include a default rom search path (like /roms/snes).


This has to be done anyways, because even if Craigs GUI would move the roms there, the emulator has to know about it.


And then again, if the user copies his roms onto the card, would it be a big difference for him to copy them to /roms/snes himself instead of to the root?


Personally, I would never have the idea of copying roms onto the root of my SD card...


And give a user copies 10000 compressed roms into the root, the GUI would have to look into each one of the archive for roms to figure out what's in there and then move them.


It also needed some way to find out what system that rom is. Multiple emulators use .bin as filename, for example. Could be a PSX ISO, could also be an A2600 game...


I'm not sure how Craig will accomplish all that, but he told me he's got an idea, so I'll wait and see and be baffled when it works.


Whatever he does, even a new, kinetic fingerfriendly GUI would be a nice addition to the current OS.


Anyways, at the same time Craig works on his idea, we will continue with our ideas


skeezix already added the root of the SD card (without subdirectories) to the search path for PNDs.


So unless you don't have thousands of files there, it will not slow down, but if a user copies a PND there not knowing where to put it, it will work.


I will add a small tutorial and some documentation to the OS as well as work with Tempel to include the PNDStore (and improve it).


So whatever happens, we'll have multiple solutions in best case and one working solution on worst case and everyone can choose what he wants to use.

 

[Caine]

Well, I have no idea what exactly Craig will do how, but I'll wait and see.

This is actually the only point that really bothers me. Craig is disqualifying the work of the community on improving software installation and management as being non user-friendly. This says to me he has a very clear image of how to improve matters in his head and should be able to state some very specific requirements of what should change.


For some reason though, the only way he wants to share this is in the form of software which is to be developed only by himself and is to be released some time in the (far?) future. He could also share his requirements and thus work with the community. This would not prevent him from developing his own version either, most people here agree that choice is good.


Let's just await whatever Craig will build. If there are good ideas in there then we can always copy them.

 

[Mr_Loon]

@ED : Many thanks as always for being the voice of reason. Great to hear that PNDStore will be included with hotfix 6. This will be a huge leap forward in the user friendliness of the Pandora.


@Craig : Good luck with your quest to improve the Pandora, if you manage to achieve your vision then that can only be a good thing. However it could be a much better thing if you find it in your heart to adhere to the existing standards such as the Repo Spec. Without understanding what you are going to do it's hard to know whether this is a reasonable suggestion, but if you can avoid fragmentation of the already fairly narrow userbase then that can only be good for the project. Please listen to the various gurus & devs who seem to think that with fairly minimal work on your side the official app store could be made to work with the Repo Spec. A little concession along these lines would go a long way.


My little suggestion for improving the Pandora experience for new users would be to have a prominent dedicated page on the official website that explained things to newbies. Stuff like : How to setup your SD card, the Pandora cannot be switched off whilst charging, change screen brightness if presented with a black screen, remove battery if the unit freezes whilst overclocking. All the main things that you are asked during tech support requests. This could of course be also stickied in the Support section on the boards.


Another area you should perhaps look at for improving the Pandora experience for new users would be to overhaul the ordering page on the official website, things like having the main picture of a real Pandora rather than a render, having all prices with or without VAT and clearly stating that case, correcting obvious errors such as you get a DPad with the Pandora case + parts etc.

 

[Valpskott]

I welcome a third choice... I'd really like to see some new GUI, more flashy and more animated. Controlled only with the D-pad and ABXY buttons. Was it the Canoe(spelling) that had that scrolling weel thingie? I wan't something like that. Cause Minimenu just doesn't look to fancy, and XFCE as an app launcher is either a icon cluttered desktop or a hard to navigate Start-menu(moving the mouse cursor isn't user friendly on such a small place) with tons of spare screen reelestate.

 

[Esn]

I welcome a third choice... I'd really like to see some new GUI, more flashy and more animated. Controlled only with the D-pad and ABXY buttons. Was it the Canoe(spelling) that had that scrolling weel thingie? I wan't something like that. Cause Minimenu just doesn't look to fancy, and XFCE as an app launcher is either a icon cluttered desktop or a hard to navigate Start-menu(moving the mouse cursor isn't user friendly on such a small place) with tons of spare screen reelestate.

Sounds like you might like Panorama, which after a long break is under rapid development again.


The current alpha version up on the Repo isn't that "flashy", but check some of the old videos; it's easy to change how it looks in any way you want... well, this post explains it.

 

[double7]

Sure, a default rompath would be a nice idea, though this wouldn't need a new GUI. We'd have to ask the emulator devs to include a default rom search path (like /roms/snes).


This has to be done anyways, because even if Craigs GUI would move the roms there, the emulator has to know about it.

If you are going to ask devs for support of default paths, could you imagine to ask for a default external configuration file?
There are many different preferences out there, why can't there be one emulator configuration file for all of them?


If we configure the key for the emulator menu to START+SELECT, then every emulator will use this one to enter the menu. No longer messing around with different keys for the same functions in different emulators.


The emulators could then look for the default emulator.conf first, read out the user preferrences via the keywords in that config, and contiune with their internal emulator specific configuration files.


Such an emulator.conf file could also include a default path to the rom directory.


I know this could be growing a little bit complicated, if you mix simple inputs of dpad+6 buttons emulators with advanced dpad+10 buttons and dual analog nubs. But if you are going to have default rom paths it could be a good stage to keep such other defaults in mind.

 

[craigix]

I won't be supporting the repo spec because I wrote and made a spec for updates over a year ago with Pandora apps. That's the one I'll be using as it's solid and works.


Almost all the messages in this thread are writting from a dev point of view. Take the dev hat off. Casual games don't care about your repo spec, they just want a way to download apps and have them work, ideally from a SINGLE repo, Pandora apps, which has been online and working for over a year.


Now I believe they need a beautiful apple-style GUI which does everything for them, and thus the Pandora 'just works'.


This may mean hacks to emulators and such, but I'm quite confident it can all be done neat and tidy.


Of course you're free to use whatever you like, and since the people reading this thread are mostly developers you will probably never need my GUI anyway, but I'm not thinking about you, I'm thinking about the people who are now returning their $500 Pandora consoles because they 'can't make it work'.


That, to me, tells me things have to change. No compromises, huge changes.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, I have no idea what exactly Craig will do how, but I'll wait and see.

This is actually the only point that really bothers me. Craig is disqualifying the work of the community on improving software installation and management as being non user-friendly. This says to me he has a very clear image of how to improve matters in his head and should be able to state some very specific requirements of what should change.

Not really bothering. I cannot code, so most things some devs do is something where I have absolutely no idea how it will work


But I've always waited, and have been positively surprised a couple of times.

 

[sebt3]

I won't be supporting the repo spec because I wrote and made a spec for updates over a year ago with Pandora apps. That's the one I'll be using as it's solid and works.

We probably would be supporting your specs... if they were public 1 year ago...

 

[hakmanplayer]

Well little do you realize not everyone has experience using emulators on a pc or dealing with linux for that matter.


Nobody has said he writes the emulators or he alone is responsible to make them more user friendly.

this is a niche console, yes it does what a pc does, pc's and macs/linux distros also dont make it any easier for emulators so why would the Pandora need to be any different?


you cannot say the pandora is not user friendly if the only real reason for that is not being able to get the gist of setting emulators up (being new to emulators and all this is to be expected).

The Pandora is primarily a gaming console. Not all gamers [at least un the USA] know or even have herd of emulation,ROMS, etc.,. The Pandora is 'user friendly' for tech savoy people like yourself.


The problem is people like you cannot see past their ball sacks to see the other half ; the not so tech savoy.

 

[milkshake]

I won't be supporting the repo spec because I wrote and made a spec for updates over a year ago with Pandora apps. That's the one I'll be using as it's solid and works.

Im sorry to say that i do not belive that you had any specs written a year ago, no one even had a pandora a year ago, and if you did im sure you wouldnt keep them to youself would you?

 

[double7]

I won't be supporting the repo spec because I wrote and made a spec for updates over a year ago with Pandora apps. That's the one I'll be using as it's solid and works.


Almost all the messages in this thread are writting from a dev point of view. Take the dev hat off. Casual games don't care about your repo spec, they just want a way to download apps and have them work, ideally from a SINGLE repo, Pandora apps, which has been online and working for over a year.


Now I believe they need a beautiful apple-style GUI which does everything for them, and thus the Pandora 'just works'.


This may mean hacks to emulators and such, but I'm quite confident it can all be done neat and tidy.


Of course you're free to use whatever you like, and since the people reading this thread are mostly developers you will probably never need my GUI anyway, but I'm not thinking about you, I'm thinking about the people who are now returning their $500 Pandora consoles because they 'can't make it work'.


That, to me, tells me things have to change. No compromises, huge changes.

Ups. Yes, there are.


ED, could you refund my donation please?