Newbie Questions


mmielke

Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2010
Messages
211
Greetings! I have a Caanoo that I am borrowing from a friend until the summer and was thinking about a couple of things.

1) Why doesn't the e-book reader support images? Someone could port an open-source PDF reader such as Sumatra PDF to the Caanoo for easy viewing of magazines.


2) How would you package Visual Basic and C++ files to run on the Caanoo? This does not mean I am able to program anything, but I am curious. I might be able to program some text-based adventure games or something if I ever have any spare time.

3) Regarding the Snes9x4c emulator: I have downloaded the December 27th edition and it doesn't run any faster. The picklelauncher shows up, and when I load a game and press the home button, it says that I have the October 10th version installed (which I do not).

4) I would like the following programs and games: DosBox, a Sega Saturn emulator (although I am aware that it will be a difficult task), some sort of horse racing, betting, and breeding game; a port of Sonic Robo Blast 2, Chromium web browser (or Opera), and a way to play the games from the Humble Indie Bundle http://www.humblebundle.com

5) How does the (supposedly) built-in flash player work? Does it play games and animations and has anyone tried it?

6) Is the WiFi dongle plug-and-play? I would like to use it at my local library and/or McDonalds in order to play http://www.kingdomofloathing.com Could someone check and see if you are able to log on and play it via the Links 2 browser? It has no animations or graphical requirements, it is primarily hyperlink-based. I have read that people were having trouble with the GP2X Caanoo's signal and such.

7)Why doesn't GP2X make their handhelds backwards compatible? I would imagine that their constant "upgrades" alienate both their customer and their programmer base.

8)What kind of Linux does the Caanoo have installed in its firmware? If an actual linux distribution was included, than there would TONS of programs, utilities, games; you name it, it will have it with something such as Puppy Linux (light-weight, low specs required) at the very least.

Thank you in advance for your response.
 
mmielke said:
1) Why doesn't the e-book reader support images? Someone could port an open-source PDF reader such as Sumatra PDF to the Caanoo for easy viewing of magazines.

I do believe there is one ported, take a look on the OpenHandheld site.... or click here. Granted, it's basic... but wait a little...


2) How would you package Visual Basic and C++ files to run on the Caanoo? This does not mean I am able to program anything, but I am curious. I might be able to program some text-based adventure games or something if I ever have any spare time.

I can't answer this one, though I was wondering if Java could work in some cruel and twisted way... or something LIKE Java's syntax, rather.

3) Regarding the Snes9x4c emulator: I have downloaded the December 27th edition and it doesn't run any faster. The picklelauncher shows up, and when I load a game and press the home button, it says that I have the October 10th version installed (which I do not).

Thing I've noticed myself is that there is no optimization yet. I'm expecting something myself soon for that... but we won't know, all depends on the developer.
4) I would like the following programs and games: DosBox, a Sega Saturn emulator (although I am aware that it will be a difficult task), some sort of horse racing, betting, and breeding game; a port of Sonic Robo Blast 2, Chromium web browser (or Opera), and a way to play the games from the Humble Indie Bundle http://www.humblebundle.com

Good luck to you on all counts. Remember, this is a handheld device with 533Mhz ARM CPU and 128mb RAM. It's no gaming PC, and won't be... I could see someone porting some of these, but Humble Indie Bundle... no luck. Same with Chromium/Opera or the Saturn emu.

5) How does the (supposedly) built-in flash player work? Does it play games and animations and has anyone tried it?

I never read anywhere it's built in... I think it's a third party app again. Haven't tested it personally, thanks to my job.

6) Is the WiFi dongle plug-and-play? I would like to use it at my local library and/or McDonalds in order to play http://www.kingdomofloathing.com Could someone check and see if you are able to log on and play it via the Links 2 browser? It has no animations or graphical requirements, it is primarily hyperlink-based. I have read that people were having trouble with the GP2X Caanoo's signal and such.

I'd assume it's plug-and-play, but you would have some setup too. Assuming Links2 is like eLinks [What I'm using on my server for a 'web browser'], it should be able to handle hyperlinks fine.

7)Why doesn't GP2X make their handhelds backwards compatible? I would imagine that their constant "upgrades" alienate both their customer and their programmer base.

Talk to GPH on that one....

8)What kind of Linux does the Caanoo have installed in its firmware? If an actual linux distribution was included, than there would TONS of programs, utilities, games; you name it, it will have it with something such as Puppy Linux (light-weight, low specs required) at the very least.

Thank you in advance for your response.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
About 7th and 8th questions:

If the hardware changes, a port is required. This would only be a false true if GPH had a better support for developers using a standard OS. (not the case, as you see for the leek of Linux OSs)
 
Back
Top