52 replies to this topic

[God Ginrai]

A perfect program install is one that is contained solely in one folder, not scattered throughout the hard drive.

Two folders -- application and saved data.
You should have the option to keep your saved data if you upgrade/uninstall, and you should be able to delete your saved data without breaking the application. Exactly what the pnd format provides!

I would like that also, keeping all saved game data of every game/emulator in one folder would be nice. I also like the idea of a central rom folder, this way browsing your rom collection would be easier and there would never be any guessing where to put roms.

This is different, actually. The way the PND format does it, is that each separate application would have it's own settings (or saved data) folder. There are way too many errors that could crop up by putting them all in the same folder. (such as save files for 2 different emulators requiring the same name)

-God Ginrai

[second exodous]

A perfect program install is one that is contained solely in one folder, not scattered throughout the hard drive.

Two folders -- application and saved data.
You should have the option to keep your saved data if you upgrade/uninstall, and you should be able to delete your saved data without breaking the application. Exactly what the pnd format provides!

I would like that also, keeping all saved game data of every game/emulator in one folder would be nice. I also like the idea of a central rom folder, this way browsing your rom collection would be easier and there would never be any guessing where to put roms.

This is different, actually. The way the PND format does it, is that each separate application would have it's own settings (or saved data) folder. There are way too many errors that could crop up by putting them all in the same folder. (such as save files for 2 different emulators requiring the same name)

-God Ginrai

I meant a sub folder in a save folder, say /saved games/Snes9x/zelda.sav for SNES and /saved games/pico drive/sonic.sav for Sega or something to that effect. So if you throw away the program for a time you can still install it later and have all your saved data in the saved games folder but separated from all the other .sav files(or whatever the extension is). This way it would still be easy to get rid of saves from a particular program even if they were in save folder.

Did I make sense? I sometimes have trouble explaining things.

Edited by second exodous, 11 November 2009 - 08:08 AM.

[God Ginrai]

A perfect program install is one that is contained solely in one folder, not scattered throughout the hard drive.

Two folders -- application and saved data.
You should have the option to keep your saved data if you upgrade/uninstall, and you should be able to delete your saved data without breaking the application. Exactly what the pnd format provides!

I would like that also, keeping all saved game data of every game/emulator in one folder would be nice. I also like the idea of a central rom folder, this way browsing your rom collection would be easier and there would never be any guessing where to put roms.

This is different, actually. The way the PND format does it, is that each separate application would have it's own settings (or saved data) folder. There are way too many errors that could crop up by putting them all in the same folder. (such as save files for 2 different emulators requiring the same name)

-God Ginrai

I meant a sub folder in a save folder, say /saved games/Snes9x/zelda.sav for SNES and /saved games/pico drive/sonic.sav for Sega or something to that effect. So if you throw away the program for a time you can still install it later and have all your saved data in the saved games folder but separated from all the other .sav files(or whatever the extension is).

Did I make sense? I sometimes have trouble explaining things.

Yes, I understand you now.

-God Ginrai

[Tripmonkey_uk]

Looking good and working great.
Bet it seems amazing to actually use it, compared to the way that you have to install software on other computers

[B-ZaR]

About the "executable directories" (a directory containing a pxml)... I'd just like a little clarification. Say I'm developing something for the pandora and have an svn repository to host my code. If I have a pxml file in the svn trunk, it gets recognized as an executable directory? So basically to use the svn version I'd just need to checkout the repository to an sd card? It shows up in the menu just like any pnd? Of course the makefile would have something like "make pnd", but this sounds great for development. Yes I know cross-compiling is the way to go most of the time. Think something like python development.

I'm really liking this.

(sorry for the incoherent post, I'm a bit tired )

[sverm]

This is excellent design. Apps as plug-ins! Who'd-a-thunkit? My personal favorite part is:

FAQ: IF you want to make files visible to the apps, do you have to modify the pnd?
No. When apps write back to themselves, the writes go to their /pandora/appdata on the SD that houses them. The next time the app reads a file in its directory, the OS will ensure they get the newer file, which is the one in the appdata.

Likewise, you can just drop a file into the appdata and the app will see it.

The app doesn't know about appdata and its pnd file.. the OS and libpnd take care of all the magic.. the app sees one directory, but the reality is there is magic merging going on behind the scenes.

[Yoyobuae]

FAQ: IF you want to make files visible to the apps, do you have to modify the pnd?
No. When apps write back to themselves, the writes go to their /pandora/appdata on the SD that houses them. The next time the app reads a file in its directory, the OS will ensure they get the newer file, which is the one in the appdata.

Likewise, you can just drop a file into the appdata and the app will see it.

The app doesn't know about appdata and its pnd file.. the OS and libpnd take care of all the magic.. the app sees one directory, but the reality is there is magic merging going on behind the scenes.

Interesting... May I ask if the "magic" is done using FUSE or something similar?

[borgqueenx]

how many preasure did you put your thumb on while pressing the screen?
in the video it seemed like its really easy to press.

[Aninhumer]

how deeply is it integrated in xfce? will pnd'd apps also show up in the proper xfce-menu (or a replacement plugin) categories?

Would be cool to have something like a "desktop"-tag that specifies if an app should be displayed on the desktop or just in the menu.

As far as I know the libraries are set up to create standard .desktop files, so I think it would be pretty easy to write something to integrate them into the system menu too.

[Vimacs]

FAQ: IF you want to make files visible to the apps, do you have to modify the pnd?
No. When apps write back to themselves, the writes go to their /pandora/appdata on the SD that houses them. The next time the app reads a file in its directory, the OS will ensure they get the newer file, which is the one in the appdata.

Likewise, you can just drop a file into the appdata and the app will see it.

The app doesn't know about appdata and its pnd file.. the OS and libpnd take care of all the magic.. the app sees one directory, but the reality is there is magic merging going on behind the scenes.

Interesting... May I ask if the "magic" is done using FUSE or something similar?

part of the "magic" is aufs http://aufs.sourceforge.net/

how many preasure did you put your thumb on while pressing the screen?
in the video it seemed like its really easy to press.

You barely need to touch it actually.

[borgqueenx]

[quote name='borgqueenx' date='11 November 2009 - 07:14 PM' timestamp='1257963255' post='772017']
how many preasure did you put your thumb on while pressing the screen?
in the video it seemed like its really easy to press.
[/quote]
You barely need to touch it actually.
[/quote]
good news!
someone campared the touch screen with a nintendo DS, but sometimes i have the feeling im pressing a button instead of touching the screen on my DS.

[Kagato]

There's a lot of griping about perceived security issues over on Pandorapress.

Wouldn't most potential security concerns be covered by only allowing a .pnd to write to (and even read from) its /pandora/appdata/<appid> directory? (not sure if this is already the case)

In that case, an app can only mess with its own files and can't affect other apps or data.

The worst a malicious .pnd could do would be to spoof the ID of another app to try and break that one app's data, but even that might not be totally successful as there are probably other problems caused by an ID collision (such as the archive's loopback mapping). Maybe pndnotifyd can issue an alert if duplicate IDs are detected.

If an app needs access to external files (such as a ROM collection), you can symlink the external directory under its appdata directory. This would sensibly be done after you've tested the app, so in effect you're manually granting permission to a specific file location. I'd argue that's more secure than blanket password or executable-bit access.

Edited by Kagato, 12 November 2009 - 11:09 PM.

[Gruso]

It certainly got a little OTT over there (or was that ADD?)

[Na-Noo]

I've not read the comments on Pandorapress, but how are PND's inherently less secure than other Linux packages?
I would have thought at worse it's no better, and considering the product and users, anything bad would be picked up pretty quickly. Then the PND will be removed or repackaged.
If really need the security blankee, then could have a centralised list of black listed PND profiles that can be used like a virus checker.
And if even that's not enough for these people, they don't need to use PND's at all.
I know it's been brought up a couple times, so I'll not be reading the comments. As on a personal level I'm not to worried....

[WizardStan]

The argument is basically that "automatically setting something to be executable is bad" with the suggestion that the PND should ask for a password, at least the first time, before it executes. The reason it is bad is that someone could get a malicious PND file onto your card somehow. The argument is that adding this password feature will somehow make it more secure, but the proponents of this suggestion can seem to explain *how* it makes it more secure. The examples given are all easily thwarted by simply saying "if you are going to run something and have no idea what it is, a password will only delay the inevitable"
Rest assured, from what I've seen, PNDs are about as secure as they need to be, which is to say no less secure than any other binary you download off the internet. So long as you get them from a reputable source, of course. If you download some random PND from a questionable website, you're taking a risk, and should be aware of the steps needed to minimize that risk.