37 replies to this topic

[StreaK]

I recall seeing a quote from you a while ago - a goal stated as something like "got to fill up the repo's front page with my ports" as if the point was to be the guy who has ported the most apps and games... And then falling back to the old OSS nugget of "well, you could just do that yourself you know, it's open source" when questioned as to why they just build an ARM binary rather than actually put any effort in.

This is the only reason for me to remove apps from repo. If You thinking this way that this is my real statement, and not a quote told for fun on IRC some time ago-*. If one person thinking in this way, then there might be others, and i dont want anyone to think it's true.

And other thing:
Im not really angry, just a little bit surprised that it turns into somehow Dunny's-Crusade for better ports [and it somehow focused on me]. In this way it'll never work, because every porter / developer had other points of view. My is: Its better to have 40 [different] functional apps than 1-app hyper-polished, and this it obviously different view from Dunny's view.

*- My exact quote on IRC was: "taking over the repo news page with my ports "

[sebt3]

Dunny is not after over-polished stuff. but at least correctly check to ffit the few standards we've setup between dev's and users, things like :
- Configurations files and all the other runtime generated files goes to the appdata folder.
So if the user wants to restart from scratch he dont haave to dig for a hidden folder in $HOME but just flush the appdata.
- Maps games controls to pandora's one
So the user don't have to use convulted control on the pandora but use the nicest buttons available
- Scale the game to fullscreen but dont harm the gfx for nothing
So the users can enjoy the game to it's fullest
- Do a comprehensive PXML.xml
So all the nice feature the repo provide are avail for us all.

Each of these requierement are a 5 minuts jobs at much. So all we are asking as a user is that you put these fews minuts to reach our commons standards.

[Dunny]

This is the only reason for me to remove apps from repo. If You thinking this way that this is my real statement, and not a quote told for fun on IRC some time ago-*. If one person thinking in this way, then there might be others, and i dont want anyone to think it's true.

This is a personal peeve of mine, yes - and maybe my original post(s) came across not quite as I intended - but it certainly looks that way. If someone ports something and then, before having made necessary changes to suit the Pandora (controls, correct PND categories etc) and then proceeds to the next job with nothing more than a "beta" tag and some handwaving kind of "I'll get to fixing stuff later" then it really paints quite a bad picture.

And again I'll reiterate: It's not solely targeted at you per se; there's a lot of porters in the community that do the same thing and it's just your misfortune that I used your thread as my soapbox, which I truly apologise for. Your work on ReMood was nothing short of excellent and with a little more attention it could be excellent. It's already better than the other Doom ports out there - it's the only one that does transparencies properly on my Pandora.

But all that said, it's disappointing to me that we have an excellent platform whose main strengths appear to be ignored.

And other thing:
Im not really angry, just a little bit surprised that it turns into somehow Dunny's-Crusade for better ports [and it somehow focused on me]. In this way it'll never work, because every porter / developer had other points of view. My is: Its better to have 40 [different] functional apps than 1-app hyper-polished, and this it obviously different view from Dunny's view.

*- My exact quote on IRC was: "taking over the repo news page with my ports "

I'm not talking about "hyper-polishing" apps - I'm talking about taking a little more time and effort to make sure everything works to the strengths and weaknesses of the platform. Your desktop apps work fine, I'm sure - but if they write to NAND without explicitly needing to (ie, a simple path fix under a compiler flag won't sort it) then they're actually contributing to a dwindling lifespan of the Pandora. I'm sure none of us want that. So as Sebt3 says, get the controls sorted and a proper PXML and it's all golden - and an app or game that really shows off what the Pandora can do.

D.

[skeezix]

See, what we've got is really..

When you get a .deb from a Debian repository, you don't have to ask if its Debian-ified (putting things into /etc in the Debian stancdard layout), it _is_; if it isn't, the .deb is rejected or fixed, until it does follow 'standards' or 'conventions'.

Likewise, when a user gets a 'pnd', they just assuem it is following Pandora conventions.

We could do somethign in the PXML, like..

<port-conventions>
<target device='openpandora-v1' port-style='driveby' input-map='incomplete'>
</port-conventions>

This way the system and repos coudl say 'this app works, but has the following deficienies'.

That just seems overkill

But there is a contract between the user and the developer, the assumed conventions. If they're broken by a few apps, then the user should be able to decide if they wish to use the app, or offer code patches to 'fix' the missing bits. The problem we have is the user has been unaware, and thats not right.

In IRC I just noted.. its like a 'license'; if a dev doesn't have time to do the full port (or doesnt' care to, hey, its his free time!), thats fine, nothing wrong with it; he's not a pariah, and still is owed thanks for doing the code or port at all. But he should explain to the users what the pnd is. If the description is a copy/pasta from the source website and does not define the pandora changes, or the pandora conventions broken, the documentation is 'bugged' and in error.

Thats all, no stress or drama is needed; StreaK just needs to post his 'license' for peopel to use; they shoudl know that some ports are full ports, some have a few oddities due to how far he wants to go. Fine, thats all.

--

in email dev list, I've proposed the idea that pnd-run can in turn report apps that have 'side effects' (if the home dir contents are changed during the duration of a pnd.) Pnd-run.sh could pop up a box saying 'this app has changed the homedirectory' (neither good nor bad, just a statement) and also offer the option ('dont' bug me with this info anymore').

That would help.. so users can find out apps that produce changes, and decide what to do.

--

But I don't think going much furhter is wise; no need to belabour PXML or the like .. respponsible devs will make responsible pnds.

jeff

[StreaK]

skeezix .. And Your idea is very good problem-solver.


about my quickports:
Sometimes i dont care about to use ENTER instead of [Pandora's] START key in my ports. I still think that if theres no STANDARDS for OpenPandora [for example -> from my side i miss the proper "BACK". If we have SELECT and START i think it would be nice if pandora will have "BACK"]. In this case, im not really convict'd to use pandora keys to swap with ESC key. ESC key is still better.

Edited by StreaK, 25 August 2011 - 08:05 PM.

[skeezix]

Where 'not well defined', its up to you of coruse (it always is, as a porter, but more so when its fuzzy.) If you hook up somethign to Enter or not, whatever, thats youe choice. Peopel can complain or suggest, but its not at the level of 'pandora convention', thats just 'user preference', a whole other story.

Convention is .. making users use awsd instead of d-pad, say. Just seems out of place, unless there is good reason. Likewise with appdata.. its well defined, its there, users expect it, so not doing it is considered 'bug' (and should be.)

But like we said in IRC..

Just put this single sentence in your description at the front:

'This particular pnd may not follow all Pandora conventions, as my time is limited and I might have missed one'; without saying that, the user rightly assumes pandora conventions followed. IF youre' not sure, put once sentence in, and everyone is happy.

Just because its the internetz, doesn't mean we need to make everyone angry at each other

jeff

[Dunny]

skeezix .. And Your idea is very good problem-solver.


about my quickports:
Sometimes i dont care about to use ENTER instead of [Pandora's] START key in my ports. I still think that if theres no STANDARDS for OpenPandora [for example -> from my side i miss the proper "BACK". If we have SELECT and START i think it would be nice if pandora will have "BACK"]. In this case, im not really convict'd to use pandora keys to swap with ESC key. ESC key is still better.

A fine rebuttal, so here's my 2 penn'orth on this particular issue:

The Pandora is seen by most as a gaming device. I know it's not just a gaming device, but people in my experience have always seen the D-Pad, Start/Select and ABXY buttons before they even look at the keyboard. This is in part to do with how you hold the Pandora, and also because the keyboard is very busy and hard to decipher at first glance.

Like the NDS/GBA et al, people expect therefore to have a button to select menu options (usually say, A) and one to back out of menus (X or B possibly) - the ESC key is very much non-obvious here because firstly it's hard to find (FN+Q) and secondly because it's non-standard outside of PC usage. And the Pandora, as a games machine, is not obviously a PC. We know better, but most see it as a device like the NDS or PSP, and even those that don't expect the same conventions as other handhelds; many of us own Canoes or Wiz/GP2X especially around here. None of them had a "BACK" key either.

Your decision to use ESC is up to you at the end of the day, but I will probably whine about it when you ask for feedback ;-)

D.

[Esn]

Well, as long as everything that was removed does get re-uploaded somewhere, I figure it should be okay... will your site have an RSS feed for software news, StreaK? That would make my job of keeping the wiki up to date so much easier.

Dunny is not after over-polished stuff. but at least correctly check to ffit the few standards we've setup between dev's and users, things like :
- Configurations files and all the other runtime generated files goes to the appdata folder.
So if the user wants to restart from scratch he dont haave to dig for a hidden folder in $HOME but just flush the appdata.
- Maps games controls to pandora's one
So the user don't have to use convulted control on the pandora but use the nicest buttons available
- Scale the game to fullscreen but dont harm the gfx for nothing
So the users can enjoy the game to it's fullest
- Do a comprehensive PXML.xml
So all the nice feature the repo provide are avail for us all.

Each of these requierement are a 5 minuts jobs at much. So all we are asking as a user is that you put these fews minuts to reach our commons standards.

I agree, this is a nice list of minimal requirements for Pandora software.

skeezix .. And Your idea is very good problem-solver.


about my quickports:
Sometimes i dont care about to use ENTER instead of [Pandora's] START key in my ports. I still think that if theres no STANDARDS for OpenPandora [for example -> from my side i miss the proper "BACK". If we have SELECT and START i think it would be nice if pandora will have "BACK"]. In this case, im not really convict'd to use pandora keys to swap with ESC key. ESC key is still better.

A fine rebuttal, so here's my 2 penn'orth on this particular issue:

The Pandora is seen by most as a gaming device. I know it's not just a gaming device, but people in my experience have always seen the D-Pad, Start/Select and ABXY buttons before they even look at the keyboard. This is in part to do with how you hold the Pandora, and also because the keyboard is very busy and hard to decipher at first glance.

Like the NDS/GBA et al, people expect therefore to have a button to select menu options (usually say, A) and one to back out of menus (X or B possibly) - the ESC key is very much non-obvious here because firstly it's hard to find (FN+Q) and secondly because it's non-standard outside of PC usage. And the Pandora, as a games machine, is not obviously a PC. We know better, but most see it as a device like the NDS or PSP, and even those that don't expect the same conventions as other handhelds; many of us own Canoes or Wiz/GP2X especially around here. None of them had a "BACK" key either.

Your decision to use ESC is up to you at the end of the day, but I will probably whine about it when you ask for feedback ;-)

D.

I must disagree with you on this, Dunny. Games controls should absolutely be remapped to the d-pad and game buttons, but for other software, I prefer it if the keys stay exactly as they are. For a few reasons:
1) That way any guides I find online will be accurate for the Pandora version
2) ABXY are mapped to PgUp/PgDown/Home/End; mapping something else to them may remove those functions from the software
3) The Pandora generally has enough keys in comfortable-enough spots that leaving things as they are is no trouble for the user.

Of course, I love handheld-friendly software like PepViewer and MinAmp as much as the next guy, but most ported software was just not designed for handhelds, so the least damage is done if the existing controls are kept.