Release PNDstore

[Christoph.Krn]

Oh my god I created a monster :blink:
Please, I beg you, please don't do this, this exactly describes my horror vision of a gui destroing any last remnant of usability by including fancy styles, graphics and a lot of unused space. [...] GTK was ment/developed to create applications which are intended to help people in their "real" work, not fancy livestyle apps.

Oh wow, you got me totally wrong. Never ever would I create something that mitigates usability and/or usefulness for something as artificial as "lifestyle" (I even hate that word. Industrial all the way.). If a feature (or any change) can't be tailored to be at least as usable and useful as its more common and familiar equivalent, it stays out.

I do not want any real "shopping experience". I simply want a list of available pnds with a little more information than just the title - hence the idea of having two lines per list item -> title, and the first x characters of the description.

Which is the kind of introductory information that can also be displayed via screenshots (see "Guidelines for content developers" behind the spoiler in [1]). I imagine you might probably soon find yourself wanting fewer truncated descriptions that at the same time contain more information about the PND. Otherwise they may not add much benefit compared to a plain list in many cases, unless developers artificially kept the descriptions of their PNDs short in the first place. Which would not be an ideal solution since the developers would have to know about this weakness of PNDstore. Also, this would artificially limit the length of descriptions for every potential other PND management software that offered the same PNDs. It would be better if we could introduce a separate short description.

a) This will be really, really hard to realize unless tempel switches to another gui - framework. GTK was ment/developed to create applications which are intended to help people in their "real" work, not fancy livestyle apps.

Aside from the fact that despite its name beauty-get is not a "lifestyle" software, you got that right. Tempel had already commented on this.

B) The possibility that most of the users will have a slow connection to the repo is very high for various reasons (3G Connection, the currently not so performant built in WLAN, lousy internet connection in general, etc.), so tempel has to deal with high loading times, and cacheing mechanisms to reduce that.

See "Thoughts on loading" and "Server-side(?)" behind the spoiler in [1].


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Also, have a look at the key concepts ("key ideas") of the beauty-get concept.


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[1] http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50747-appstore-look/page__st__270__p__793248&#entry793248

 

[thatgui]

Oh wow, you got me totally wrong. Never ever would I create something that mitigates usability and/or usefulness for something as artificial as "lifestyle" (I even hate that word. Industrial all the way.). If a feature (or any change) can't be tailored to be at least as usable and useful as its more common and familiar equivalent, it stays out.

Unfortunatly I don't think so. You do prefer fancy graphics and waste a lot of space - getting nothing out of it except for pure uselessness. I'd like to see you browse a list of 100+ entry with your design. This would surely work out well on a device with a bigger screen, and a faster and more reliable network connection - but even then I'd like to stick with the purist list.

Which is the kind of introductory information that can also be displayed via screenshots (see "Guidelines for content developers" behind the spoiler in [1]). I imagine you might probably soon find yourself wanting fewer truncated descriptions that at the same time contain more information about the PND. Otherwise they may not add much benefit compared to a plain list in many cases, unless developers artificially kept the descriptions of their PNDs short in the first place. Which would not be an ideal solution since the developers would have to know about this weakness of PNDstore. Also, this would artificially limit the length of descriptions for every potential other PND management software that offered the same PNDs. It would be better if we could introduce a separate short description.

Bringing up a short description is also something I came up with. Through personal experience I can savely say, that even when people get paid (not specifically for this task) to fill out a short and a normal description they tend to write the text for one field and then copy it (or at least a part of it) to the other, producing more or less usefull result. Writing pxml - files is something that many devs probably don't like, so lengthening this unwanted task won't do any good.

See "Thoughts on loading" and "Server-side(?)" behind the spoiler in [1].

Yes I did, these are nice thoughts, but they won't solve the problem, that the connection can still be slow - they can ease the pain to certain extend, but thats it. And these ideas have to be implemented which won't be as easy writing them down.


All, in all I will cease this discussion with this entry, because where having to many fundamental differences to get to any conclusion. I don't want to say that I am right and You are wrong (experience teached me that I'm often on the wrong side when it comes to GUI design), just that it won't help anybody if we continue this.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Doesn't work for me. When I load the PND, nothing happens.

 

[Tempel]

Anything in /tmp/pndrun_pndstore.out? If you're using sebt3's beta pnd_run.sh, make sure you have the latest version of it.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Ah, I should check. I'll post any results later.

 

[milkshake]

u do realise that u hsve to wait several minutes apon first boot right? works fine for me

 

[Blue Protoman]

I do? But I see no SD card activity!

 

[Tempel]

u do realise that u hsve to wait several minutes apon first boot right? works fine for me

Really?! I had no idea it would do that.


And Alerino, you're not even getting an output file appearing? Should be /tmp/pndrun_pndstore0.2.2.0.out, or something like that.

 

[milkshake]

it took about a minute it might have been the sheere amount of pnds that made it take some time though

 

[Tempel]

milkshake: It doesn't detect PNDs at startup, only when you tell it to. I don't know why the first run would take so much longer than other runs. Out of curiosity, could you tell me what files and folders (if any) are in the appdata directory? It's named "pndstore".


Alerino: No additional packages are necessary. It does use Python, but only the packages that are included in the default firmware (I'm assuming you didn't remove them). Did you flash to HF5? All I can recommend is to try redownloading PNDstore and, failing that, reflashing again.

 

[milkshake]

sure

pndstore.cfg

app_database.sqlite

 

[delicator]

Hello


I'v recieve my pandora today and try this app.


But i'v one trouble, when I choose an app, i'v the windows to choose the location of copying the pnd, but, i can't change it.


it's /usr/pandora/apps and, if i understand right, pnd exist to be installed on sd and not on nand


So, what i miss ?


thanks


Edit: solution in the wiki, do an directory in the SD /pandora/apps and I can now choose it

 

[PokeParadox]

just create the folders on your SD card:

SDCARD/pandora/apps

SDCARD/pandora/desktop

SDCARD/pandora/menu

Then you should be able to install to those locations too!

 

[delicator]

Just suggestion :


an icon state for network connection, to view if pandora is on the web or not

 

[Polossatik]

more suggestion:


* indicate the size of the pnd


* add the short description in a line below the title of the pnd


but in any case: Thank you! very usefull

 

[peelie]

pndstore not liking chrome-dev whenupdating list


see attached screenshot

 

[NoeleyC]

pndstore not liking chrome-dev whenupdating list


see attached screenshot

I've the same problem on mine, I've deleted the PND from my SD card, and reinstalled it throguh PND Store, but the same error message persists

 

[milkshake]

pndstore not liking chrome-dev whenupdating list


see attached screenshot

I've the same problem on mine, I've deleted the PND from my SD card, and reinstalled it throguh PND Store, but the same error message persists

it sounds like an error in the PXML which PNDstore doesnt like, looks like there might be an issue with the version etrribute "type" can only be alpha, beta, release it can be removed all together but not left blank as for as the schema goes I belive, i havent looked at the actual PXML file though so not sure.

 

[milkshake]

I was speaking with cloudef on IRC and about how the JSON works and hows its implemented... as a result I had an idea about saving more bandwidth with the repo spec, maybe If when my site checks the timestamp from the cached ETAG it only sends the new/updated apps in the JSON which UR app then merges with the existing JSON?


let me know.

 

[Tempel]

pndstore not liking chrome-dev whenupdating list


see attached screenshot

Thanks for reporting, peelie. There's a mistake in the PXML; I'll try to concoct an appropriate workaround.


milkshake, take note: the PXML spec says that the package block must contain a title block, which contains title elements; the package block cannot contain title elements directly. That is allowed in application blocks, but only for backwards-compatibility. It'd be nice if your site could reject that; after all, your site is the only real way to enforce the PXML spec. EDIT: Chromium-Dev also has an osversion element inside the package block; that should also not be there.


PS: I finished my degree two days ago, and now I have some free time again! A couple feature updates should be appearing soon.