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planetmobile.us up and runningPosted on September 25, 2008 by Mikko OhtamaaFiled Under mobile planetmobile.us is a blog aggregator focused on mobile software development.The purpose of the aggregator is to give all good blogs in one packet, without the need to hunt them individually. planetmobile.us was managed by Christopher Schmidt until I resurrected it few weeks ago. Please feel free to subscribe your feed to the planet! MySQL bind_address workaroundPosted on September 25, 2008 by Mikko OhtamaaFiled Under linux MySQL has an ugly design fault preventing it to listen more than one interface in its bind_address my.conf directive. Thus, you usually cannot connect to the same MySQL instance using localhost and external IP sources. Here is a workaround based on xinetd daemon. These are sample commands for Ubuntu/Debian. Go to root sudo -i Install xinetd apt-get install xinetd Add a new xinetd mapping pico /etc/xinetd.d/mysql
service mysql
{
only_from = localhost mansikki.redinnovation.com 80.75.108.108 server213-171-218-5.livedns.org.uk 213.171.218.5
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
redirect = 127.0.0.1 3306
log_on_failure += USERID
interface = 84.34.147.68
}
Restart xinetd /etc/init.d/xinetd restart To debug xinetd: /etc/init.d/xinetd stop xinetd -d xinetd only_from directive also gives an access control by allowed source IP addresses. This protects your MySQL against bots and brute force attacks. Note that iptables DNAT translation doesn’t work (easily). Localhost packets don’t travel PREROUTING and POSTROUTING chains. How to encode h264 video files for Nokia Series 60 standalone playbackPosted on September 23, 2008 by Mikko OhtamaaFiled Under linux, mobile, series 60, ubuntu Bored with Spiderman 3 which came with your Nokia N95 8 GB? This guide shortly tells how to get movies into your N95 on Ubuntu Linux using ffmpeg video encoder. The aim is to encode video suitable for playback from Nokia N-series (N95, N78, others) mobile phone memory card. We use h264 + AAC codecs which provides the best quality/compression rate for Nokia phones currently. Ubuntu does not distribute proprietary codes. First thing you need to do is to rebuild ffmpeg. Since Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron ships with ffmpeg from 2007, which is aeons old in video codec years, you need to build libx264 and ffmpeg from SVN sources. Here are detailed, valid, instructions. Note that FFMPEG trunk is not currently stable (September 2008), so you need to use revision 15261 which needs this little patch. Indeed, this is a very difficult month to start your career in the dark world of video encoders. To make it legal and support open source codec development, please pay for your codecs. Then we use this guide by Robert Swain. We have a tiny sub 2,4″ screen, we do not care about the quality and do one pass encoding. By empirical research, I have found that the following MPEG-4 profile parameters are compatible with N95 8 GB and provide the optimal result. You can vary video and audio bitrate depending on your taste. Here is a script which recursivelu encodes all detected video files suitable for mobile format: #!/bin/sh
#
# Optimal movie encoding for Nokia N-series mobile phones
#
# Copyright 2008 Red Innovation Ltd.
#
# Say hi if you find this useful.
# We do some professional mobile video publishing, so if you
# need a helping hand please call us.
#
# Usage: Run encode.sh in any folder and all video files are recursively converted to mobile phone suitable format
#
# Note: We expect all the source material be in 16:9 aspect ration
#
# Also see http://www.nseries.com/index.html#l=support,search,faq,general,video%20encoding,53848
#
VIDEO_BITRATE=300k
AUDIO_BITRATE=72k
# Assume locally build ffmpeg + x264 in /usr/local/bin
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
# Search all source AVI, MPG and WMV video files
# Place all encoded files to the same folder with the source, with added .mp4 extension
find . -iname "*.avi" -or -iname "*.wmv" -or -iname "*.mpg" | while read src ; do
srcfile=`basename "$src"`
srcfolder=`dirname "$src"`
dstfile="$srcfolder"/"$srcfile".mp4
# The magical string!
# Size and cropping is for 16:9 source material, so that 320:240 display will have black bars.
# Fex pixels off... note that h264 sizes must be multiplies of 16, use 256x144 for streaming
# N95 RealMedia player does not seem to respect MPEG-4 embedded aspect ration info.
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -y -i "$srcfile" -acodec libfaac -ab $AUDIO_BITRATE -s 320x176 -aspect 16:9 -vcodec libx264 -b $VIDEO_BITRATE -qcomp 0.6 -qmin 16 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -subq 7 -refs 6 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -sc_threshold 40 -me_range 12 -i_qfactor 0.71 -directpred 3 "$dstfile"
done
Designing a high usability Plone themePosted on September 12, 2008 by Mikko OhtamaaFiled Under Plone (old) This is my brain dump of instructions for artists how to design good Plone themes. I hope I can receive some comments, some feedback from the artists itself and then publish this as a plone.org tutorial. Often external artist is used to design a site theme. Artists might or might not have seen Plone, artists might or might not have any basic usability know how. This article should explain the elements which “must be there” to make a match between the theme and Plone easily. The basic layoutThis document describes the elements of multilingual high usability Plone theme. It is based on fluid div layout, meaning that the content stays very readable on small screens or when CSS is not loaded (screen readers). See the example layout. The layout must not break down when user is using non-default font size. E.g. all element accept two rows text, even if the default case is usually one row. Plone layoutHere we are designing a “normal” site theme where Plone is used to publish textual content for external readers. This might not always be the case – for example if Plone is used as a professional tool one might want to use all available screen space to display as much as possible action shortcuts to make the tool to quick to use. The latter is actual case I have seen in medical applications. Plone layout is formed by seven main parts.
The layout must be designed so that
Alternative layout casesThe layout must be formed from such a blocks that left or right portlets can be easily dropped without breaking the layout. Right portlets missing:
Both portlets missing (front page view):
Header elementsThe header should have the following elements
The header must scale between 780 – 1280 px. Section navigation tabs may trigger drop down menus, see http://www.jyu.fi/ Content area elementsThe content area contains
The whole portlet section can be dropped, making space for the content. PortletsPortlets are boxes on the left and right side of the content containing section specific actions. Example portlets:
The portlet consists of
See http://www.siggraph.org/ for creative use of portlets. Footer elementsThe footer has
The footer must scale between 780 – 1280 px. Complete picture
Special casesThese are often required and might shoot you into a foot
ColorsPlone uses mechanism to have color variables in CSS. See base_properties.prop to get an idea what colors there are and try to guess how they are used. IconsPlone uses generic icon mechanism to apply icons to any action available on site. Icons are 16×16, transparent with one pixel transparent border leaving 14×14 pixels for the content. The icons should preferably be suitable for dark and light backgrounds. This might be hard to achieve, though, so it is suitable to use ligh background icons, since this is the Plone default. Actions
Language flagsPlone default flags can be used
Content iconsThese reflect different Plone content types
Link iconsPlone uses Javascript to apply special icons for external links
Favorite icon
Python code management & deployment – a glance at zc.buildout and few othersPosted on September 2, 2008 by Tuukka MustonenFiled Under development tools, django, python, zope We’ve been using zc.buildout for Plone deployment and it’s working out great. A few days ago implemented a buildout recipe for Django project deployment, automatic web configuration, symlinking, media-folder structuring etc. and while I got it working, I came up with twisted feelings. Buildout is from the creators of Zope (I suppose) so you can expect a powerful project code management tool. The question is, however, whether or not it suits your needs. In my case I found out it too heavy. I mean, to add even a simple task you have to create a new “recipe” (a package) that does the tricks. Of course some recipes are generic (found from PyPi) and you can just run them with your own INI options, but in my case I had to do some custom implementation. Creating a new python package isn’t that hard for sure I found out that zc.buildout has some nice features like:
The problems?
There’s no denying zc.buildout is powerful, but I wouldn’t use it for projects which need reasonable amount of customization. It’s just plain easier and quicker to write shell scripts and while those won’t provide you with any sort of ready tools you won’t propably need them. For bringing up somewhat static environment, where you don’t need to hack things (like that for Plone) it’s quite a decent option, however. I also explored alternatives to zc.buildout. I’ve been reading about earlier virtualenv but haven’t really tried it out until now. It looks very promising and creates a more flexible environment compared to zc.buildout. Of course their goals are not exactly the same. Also, there are a few other alternatives out there, among them a new Python code management tool called Paver (just look at that cool logo.. it does remind you of Indiana Jones, does it not?). I glanced through the Paver docs and it looks like it might be the way to go (Paver also supports virtualenv), but didn’t quite get the grasp of the benefits just yet. Anyway, if you are still interested in code management and deployment, I’d recommend you to read the Paver release announcement and also Paver forewords. They should clear things up. Introducing Python for Series 60 Community EditionPosted on September 1, 2008 by Mikko OhtamaaFiled Under mobile, python, series 60, symbian This blog post will introduce Python for Series 60 Community Edition. Pythor for Series 60 Community Edition is a new open source effort to push Python for high quality mobile phone development. It aims to provide a maintained software stack for creating real mobile applications. The codebase is derived from the original Nokia’s Python for Series 60 codebase, but has been refactored for better integration with third party extensions and patches and commercial grade application deployment. MotivationBuilding and distributionIt is difficult to distribute Python for Series 60 applications to the end user with the current Nokia’s PyS60 distribution. You probably want to modify or extend PyS60 in some way. Since the build chain and deployment model is not designed for changes this would collide with the other PyS60 installations. Symbian Platform security prevents installing conflicting binaries. Thus, one can effectively have one Nokia PyS60 application in the phone once. There are other problems: Nokia PyS60 distribution has UIDs in Nokia protected range. Embedded SIS file cause extra installation dialog and an application manager uninstall entry. Trimming down Nokia PyS60 distribution is a little bit difficult. To overcome all these issues we created a build chain which spits out monolithic PyS60 distributions. We build only one DLL whose name and UID can be decided. Also the build chain is Scons for Symbian, scrapping the obscure, inflexible and difficult to understand Symbian ABLD once for all. Evolution towards higher qualityCurrently there is no centralized authority to co-ordinate PyS60 open source developers and maintain the repository of all the extension and patches. This effectively prevents the biggest benefit of open source: open innovation and gradual evolution of the product. It would be very nice having all those third party extensions, now scattered around the internet, under one maintained source – making PyS60 more functional out of the box. The community maintained repositories do not have the same restrictions as ones managed by a big public corporations. It is not a probable target of a trigger happy lawyer action and ungentlemanly competition: the discussion and plans can be public and due dilugence check of the code more relax. We started the project in the Launchpad. Launchpad provide a distributed version control system (Bazaar) which streamlines the process of integrating third party commits and patches. This should encourage contribution. The standard build system makes it easy to roll out applications and extensions from bare C++ source up to the end user distributable SIS files. It is yet to see what kind of co-operation possibilities between the community and Nokia exists. In the future, it should be possible to cherry pick patches from PyS60 community edition to Nokia’s own version. Showing the commercial potential of PyS60 in the mobile application developmentOn Python you can write native Series 60 applications with very little effort compared to hardcore C++ banging, lowering the barries to enter the mobile application development. We do not deny that we have an extrinct motivation called money. Of course we have also instrict motivations like thinking Python is the best programming language in the world and we all want to be most respectable gurus in it. Gurus need to eat still, though. We hope that our effort does not go unnoticed in the mobile application development world and good subcontract offers fill our inboxes. Also, there is the John McClane effect. Unless we had done it, no one had. Somebody has to save the world, despite the hangover. It runs on LinuxSince we are no longer dependend on .BAT/Perl/Windows hindered ABLD buildchain, we can (almost) crosscompile and build native Symbian binaries in Linux and Python applications. All good hackers use Linux – but currently there are still kinks and you need to use WINE for some parts – all sane Symbian developers are tied to Windows based tools for now and so are these instructions. PrerequisitementsYou need all this stuff to get things running. Install BazaarYou need Bazaar distributed version control client. We are not planning to have fixed releases for Python for Series 60 community edition any time soon. This is because 1) the most magic happens at a compiler level and we are providing a buildchain 2) we hope this fosters incoming patches. Why Bazaar?
Install ActiveState PerlSeries 60 SDK has ActiveState as a prerequisitement for running its installer. http://www.activestate.com/Products/activeperl/index.mhtml Install Series 60 SDKUse only Series 60 3.0 maintenance release. Other releases have SDK bugs preventing correct Python compilation. Get the Windows installer from http://forum.nokia.com. Forum Nokia Registration is required. Please use the default installation location C:\Symbian\9.1\S603rd_MR. Install Carbide.c++ expressCarbide.c++ comes with a Windows compiler to compile the emulator binaries. You need this only if you indend to develop and test your applications on Series 60 emulator. http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/dbb8841d-832c-43a6-be13-f78119a2b4cb.html Forum Nokia Registration is required. Use Software updater in Carbide.c++ to install PyDev, Python developer extensions for Eclipse. Install Python 2.5Scons build chain and our utility scripts use Python. http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5.2/ Use the installer EXE and the default installation location C:\Python25. If you want to use advanced Bluetooth shell (PUTools) you also need wxPython and pyserial packages. Install SConsPython for Series 60 build script are based on SCons. It is a build system using Python as a recipe langauge. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=30337 Install SubversionInstall Subversion client for Windows. This is needed for checking out Scons for Series 60. http://www.collab.net/downloads/subversion/ Registration to CollabNet is needed to download Windows binaries. Scons for Series 60SCons for Series 60 is available as a separate project. SCons for Symbian is a build toolchain intended as a replacement for Perl and MMP files used on regular Symbian projects. SCons for Symbian is not limited to build Python – You can use it to build any Series 60 C++ application. http://code.google.com/p/scons-for-symbian/ This is later checked out during to the environment construction, so you do not need to install it now. We have included a workaround for a problem with limited command line length on Windows. Included toolsThe following tools are included in the trunk tools folder: These tools are not licensed under Apache license. Some of them are under GPL license. However, we believe that distribution them is ok, since this falls under GPL’s mere aggregation clause. However if you indent to distribute commercial applications built from PyS60 Community codebase, make sure that you understand the set of different licenses involved. Set up build environmentEnsure that Bazaar is properly in your Windows path. Create a workspace folderFirst you need to subst (make a folder appear as a driver letter) in Windows. Open command line. Go to SDK folder. C:\Symbian\9.1>subst t: S60_3rd_MR T: mkdir workspace Now choose this folder as a workspace folder in Carbide C++ and create an Empty Symbian C++ project called ”pys60” there.
Checkout PyS60 community editionThe go to this folder T: cd workspace\pys60 bzr branch lp:pys60community cd pys60community\src Preparing the buildThis needs to be done only once. We need to pacth the existing Series 60 SDK headers which have some bugs. T: cd \epoc32\include \workspace\pys60\pys60community\src\tools\patch.exe -p1 < \workspace\pys60\pys60community\src\pys60-fix-3rded-sdk.diff EPOCROOT must be set for some Series 60 SDK tools to work. We point to T: drive root. T: cd workspace\pys60\src set EPOCROOT=\ As we still have some dependencies to the legacy system, one needs to configure the build system using PyS60 setup. This will generate some files and defines for Series 60 versio 3.0. c:\Python25\python.exe setup.py configure 30 Do not run bldmake bldfiles. You need to convert legacy MMP build files to SCons based. First we need to possibly fix up PATH, since Carbide C++ might break it. set PATH=c:\program files\bazaar;c:\program files\CSL Arm Toolchain\arm-none-symbian elf\bin;c:\program files\CSL Arm Toolchain\libexec\gcc\arm-none-symbianelf\3.4.3;C:\program files\CSL Arm Toolchain\bin;t:\epoc32\gcc\bin;t:\epoc32\tools;t:\epo c32\tools;C:\program files\CSL Arm Toolchain\bin;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symbian\Tools;C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem c:\Python25\python tools\mmp2scons.py ext\\calendar\\calendar.mmp:60:7: warning: no newline at end of file Creating recipe ext\miso\build.py Creating recipe ext\socket\build.py ... Done! Checkout SCons for Symbian. We assume it lives in src tree. "c:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion"\svn checkout http://scons-for-symbian.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ scons_symbian Running the buildNow we can execute the actual Python build script. This will create one monolithic emulator DLL which has almost all the PyS60 extensions built in – some extensions need manual building, since they rely on headers not found from standard Series 60 SDK. You might need to reset PATH to default to Carbide C++ after the previous mmp2cons step by reopening the console window. c:\Python25\Scripts\scons You should see the following output. As you can see, UIDs are being allocated dynamically as instructed in Scontruct UID_BASE argument. scons: Reading SConscript files ... EPOCROOT=\ Info: SIS creation disabled Building winscw udeb Defines [] Getting dependencies for e32socket.pyd Getting dependencies for _topwindow.pyd Getting dependencies for zlib.pyd Getting dependencies for _locationacq.pyd Getting dependencies for _location.pyd Getting dependencies for _graphics.pyd Getting dependencies for _sysinfo.pyd Getting dependencies for Python222Config.lib Getting dependencies for Python222.dll Getting dependencies for Python_appui.dll Allocated UID:0xE1000000 Getting dependencies for Python.exe Allocated UID:0xE1000001 Getting dependencies for Python_launcher.exe Allocated UID:0xE1000002 scons: done reading SConscript files. scons: Building targets ... ... scons: done building targets. Now you should be able to start a custom built Python shell in the emulator. You should see the following applications in Installation menu: helloworld, btconsole and filebrowser. Try launch helloworld and if it opens a pop up dialog the build has been succesful. Building a SIS file for mobile phonesTo build a target distribution type: scons release=urel compiler=gcce dosis=true This should yield to the result: scons: Building targets ... ensymble(["MyPythonForSymbian.sis"], []) scons: warning: no package version given, using 1.0.0 scons: warning: no certificate given, using insecure built-in one scons: done building targets. If you want to build a SIS file signed with your developer certificate: c:\python25\scripts\scons compiler=gcce release=urel dosis=true simplesis={'--privkey':'C:\\Certificates\\PrivateKeyNoPassphrase.pem','--cert':'C:\\Certificates\\MyApp.cer','--passphrase':''}
For now, installing the SIS file works only for C drive – we’ll fix this little issue soon. If you do not have a symbiansigned.com developer certificate you can sign the SIS file online for one phone (one IMEI code).
Building your own applicationThe purpose of this project is to make rolling out your PyS60 applications possible – so here we go. Currently we make a quite bad assumption that all the application live in the same source tree with PyS60 community edition due to problems with absolute file paths with Symbian build tools – we will figure out a long term solution for this later. PyS60 applications are stub Symbian executables which boostrap Python virtual machine and start the Python code execution. Executables are linked against a custom PyS60 DLL and they are restricted by capabilities given to the EXE file. PyS60 applications live in applications source tree. The source tree comes with Bluetooth console, Hello world and File browser sample applications. Scons build scripts takes as applications parameter a comma separated list which applications are included in the build. scons builtin=all applications=helloworld,filebrowser Applications consist of
See applications\helloworld folder to examine what files are needed to build an application. All application Python modules go to the private application folder (/private/myapplicationuid). Default.py must boostrap PYTHONPATH (sys.path) for this folder – PYTHONPATH defines where Python interpreter looks for the code. Application UIDs can be chosen manually or they are picked automatically by Scons for the unprotected test range. Note that Python Script Shell application is handled out of this flow due to its legacy heritage. Adding in your own extensionIf you have development an PyS60 extension you can drop in into the buildchain easily. Each extension is defined in ext subfolder. It consists of necessary CPP, H and Python files. The building structure is defined in build.py using SConstruct command PyS60Extension(). Build.py files can be automatically generated from legacy code using mmp2scons.py converter.
c:\Python25\python.exe tools\mmp2scons.py ext\calendar\calendar.mmp:60:7: warning: no newline at end of file ext\progressnotes\progressnotes.mmp:38:7: warning: no newline at end of file ext\uikludges\uikludges.mmp:37:7: warning: no newline at end of file Creating recipe ext\\socket\build.py Creating recipe ext\\glcanvas\build.py Creating recipe ext\\graphics\build.py ... ...Done!
c:\Python25\scripts\scons
>> import applicationmanager If your extension is using thread local storage (Dll::Tls()) you might need to figure out how to workaround with it. See socket module for example. You may also need to play around with the init function of the Python extension – it must be init + module name. Developing on targetIf you want to develop your application on a mobile phone, you do not need to go through the full development cycle for every little change. It is possible to update Python files on a phone without SIS installation. You can either automatically synchronize changed files from your PC to Phone (the example below) or you can edit files in-place on the Phone either using PCSuite or Series 60 SMB server. Here are short instructions how to update files using PUTools console (btconsole). PUTools is wxPython based remote Python shell which allows you to run Python console commands over a Bluetooth connection from your PC. PUTools also has a file syncrhonization feature – after editing source code on the PC changes are reflected automatically to the phone.
T:\workspace\pys60\pys60community\src\tools\putools\pcfiles>c:\python25\python.exe putools.py com5 >> import filebrowser >> filebrowser.FileBrowser.run() Release notesHere is the short summary of differences with the current PyS60 community edition and one available from Nokia. This information is also available in divergence.txt file in the source folder. 2008-08-29 Mikko Ohtamaa <mikko@redinnovation.com>
* PyS60 general
New build chain and static config generation
Migration tool for MMP -> Scons based extensions
Added several tools included in the core distribution: sisinfo, ensymble, cog, patch
Patched py2sis tool
Contains extension: applicationmanager
Contains extension: uikludges
Contains extension: progressnotes
Contains extension: miso
Contains application: Bluetooth shell
Contains example applications: filebrowser, helloworld
Changed Bluetooth console bootstrap to e:\startup.py
2008-08-15 Antti Haapala <antti@redinnovation.com>
* e32socketmodule.cpp:
socket.access_points has more information, two new
fields is given per access point: isptype and bearertype,
whose values are integers corresponding to values returned
by CApSelect::Type and CApSelect::BearerType respectively.
No symbolic constants are yet exported.
* appuifwmodule.cpp:
multi_select_list has a new argument, selected, which defaults
to None. Given a list of integers, the items with the given indices
are initially selected.
ConclusionWe hope this helps you to get started with PyS60 community edition. It’s still a bit complicated, since setting up the build environment on Windows is a such a pain. In the future, when the Linux based build system is reading settings up the development environment should be easier – all those boring steps happen automatically. This might be still too difficult for some of the readers, since a lot of prerequirement work must be done before anything useful can be done. Feel free to comment the article in this blog, but we hope that you use Answers section in Launchpad to ask help and technical questions related to PyS60 community edition. |
but there’s of course some learning curve, so the real question is should you spend time to learn it or not?
