Thursday, March 09, 2006

Screenshots of Winzig on Nokia 770

Winzig is a suite of PIM style applications written in Python/GTK.


It fits perfectly to the screens of small devices as the Nokia 770.

Even though, "winzig" is German for "very small", you will need Python for Maemo in order to set it up. So, you will need several MB on the device. But Python is useful for many other things as well.- Together with a xterm and a text editor, you have everything to develop and modify an application with you.

Winzig runs almost out of the box on N770, however will need some more "hildonization" as soon as I have time for it. So, the screenshots already show some additional scrollbars I've added so far.

Installation (UPDATED on 2006/03/29)

  1. Get PythonForMaemo first. The all-in-one package can simply be installed from the application installer (PyMaemo 1.1 Runtime; pymaemo-runtime_1.1-1_arm.deb)
  2. Install winzig_1.71-N770v0.1_arm.deb
  3. Have a look at /home/user/.winzig after the first start to modify the data files.

As the calendar itself is quite large, you need to use a little trick when entering a new appointment: The little Cal button on the right toggles hide/unhide for the calendar view. See the author's page for further infos: http://www.muth.org/Robert/Winzig/

Recent improvements:

  • Hildonization of the GUI: I managed to get Fullscreen and Minimization working.
  • Packaging of winzig for the Nokia770. Was a little tricky... If you are interested in my minimalistic approach to packaging, untar winzig-1.71_N770_source.tar.gz. It basically makes a packages from the files under ./usr and ./etc ready to deploy to /var/lib/install/...
  • A little startup-wrapper to place the database-files in /home/user/.winzig at startup
Todo:
  • Build a little converter script in Python to import contacts/calendar from Outlook (via .csv) or Phones (via gnokii) to the Database-Format of Winzig.

More Screenshots

I love screenshots (these ones taken with the Nokia770's load utility). Often, you can tell immediately before installing if you like a tool or not. So, here are some more screens.


Editing a contact:

There is also a calculator...

...and an ASCII-Table...

Weather forecast and Google Dictionaries available when online...

Have fun,

Michael

9 Comments:

Blogger Konttori said...

Very nice stuff. Now, could you do the start menu item integration as well and make a full .deb so that we could have a application installer package as well?

Here's some info on how to do it:
http://www.teemuharju.net/2006/02/14/coding-for-nokia-770-using-python-misc-notes/

March 23, 2006 9:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent work! Winzig looks like the perfect application for the 770. The database engine is suitable for making all kinds of custom applications, like password lists.

Some notes:
- The fullscreen and minimization would indeed be helpful, but the app is very usable in reduced mode.
- When editing appointments, the widgets for adjusting the date and time do not appear. The buttons work ok, but they are empty. Also the "down arrow" widget allowing one to choose from a drop down list does not appear in fields such as "category."
- It would be nice to be able to "cross out" completed to-do items (one can already close them, which is good.) This is a very minor point, just a personal preference.

Thanks again for all your hard work!
This looks like one of the most useful apps for the 770 so far.

March 24, 2006 4:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for your new .deb file!

However, I could not get it to work as it is. I was only able to run winzig from the tar source. For some reason ~/.winzig did not get created at all and the run script complained about it. Also, the dbus service file seemed to be missing (I still have not figured out how to make this application start from the menu!) Minimizing it does work, but I do not get the winzig icon even though I copied them to the system directory where the other icons live. There was also nothing in the Data template directory - I had to copy the default database file after setting the WINZIG_DATA_PATH environment variable.
But - perhaps my system is messed up anyway since I have been installing it by hand, who knows.

March 30, 2006 8:43 AM  
Blogger Michael said...

Hi Ari,
you were right, the DataTemplates folder was installed with the wrong permissions (due to the owner: "install:users" not "user:users", therefore we need read-permissions on group and others. I fixed it. For convenience, I just replaced the files, so please re-download.

Michael
PS: Have you tried the other new packages aswell? I just started packaging, so there might be room for improvements.

March 30, 2006 9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great work on Winzig for the 770 Michael,
I have a couple of python scripts which can import some ical and vcard data into winzig db format. They rely on a couple of extra python modules, icalendar and vobject.
http://codespeak.net/icalendar/
http://vobject.skyhouseconsulting.com/
These are pretty badly written, but I'll pass them along to anyone who will accept them via e-mail.
I have used the db's from these scripts in my 770 with winzig. My scripts will probably crash on your data, but maybe they can be adapted.
David

March 31, 2006 12:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I tried the latest deb package, and this
time things worked better! The proper
icon appears. The only part that failed for me was the initial run of the winzig.sh script. For some reason it still didn't copy over the database files into ~/.winzig. Perhaps if the script had "cp ./DataTemplates/* /home/user/.winzig" instead of the cp -r it would work? In any case the files did not appear until I manually copied them over. Also, I'm still seeing the "up/down" widgets not appearing in the calendar application when entering a new appointment - the ones that let you select a date and time. I don't know if this is a Hildon, python or a GTK issue. It's strange because practically everything else appears just as it is on my linux machine. Thanks for the extra effort though, I'm sure this will be a very useful app!

March 31, 2006 7:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmm... I also had the app cause my 770 to crash hard when clicking the "close" button on the main window! After that it no longer appears in my application menu. I ran it by hand and noticed this message: GtkWwarning : gtk_main_quit : assertion main_loop != NULL failed python 2.4[723] : GLIB WARNING ** GLib-GObject - attempt to retrieve private data for invalid type 'GtkWindow', Segmentation fault.

March 31, 2006 8:11 AM  
Blogger Manuel said...

I'm wandering over such a device, but one of the most important thing for me is PIM application (mainly for contacts).

So, my congratulations for your work! But I'd like to have import capabilities from, let's say, 'evolution'. Should vcard-format be under consideration?

June 21, 2006 5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This looks like the PIM I want (being a bit of a Python fan), but the .deb appears to be incompatible with OS 2006. Any plans to update?

September 19, 2006 2:38 PM  

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