DS Application: PIM Software Suite (Damn Computer x.x)

[Sentama Lin]

Untitled PIM Software Suite

I've been a loyal user of DragonMinded's DSOrganize homebrew PDA application for the Nintendo DS now. While it has all the features that anyone would need, I don't feel some of the features were executed very well in the application. In addition there was also no way to synchronize the data from the Nintendo DS back to computer applications or Internet applications like Google Calendars. Also, the interface was god awful. As such, I've decided to create my own application and post the status here as a Creative Commons thread.

As mentioned it's a PIM suite so it's designed to have these features in mind:

• Note Book
  
• Address Book
  
• Date Book
  
• Searching
  
• Synchronization
  

Those are the main things planned, but eventually I'd also like full UTF-8 support (to support any language, essentially), some way to extend the software (like adding new applications, icons, and the like), and ways to send and receive notes, addresses, and events to other people locally or through the Internet.

In this thread, feel free to leave comments and suggestions as I work on this project. Though... to be quite honest... I've never finished any programming project of mine. But perhaps some people actually paying attention (even if just glancing at the information) will motivate me enough to keep going.

Using This Information For Other Projects

If people decide to use my notes or file formats for any other projects, don't be stupid; give credit where it's due. I don't mind people using my notes - I never planned to profit from this project. But be sure to say somewhere that information was made by me and you got the information and descriptions of things from me.  

[Sentama Lin]

The Home Screen

This is a mockup of the Home Screen of the application. It serves as the main design I'm hoping to achieve with much of the other features.

As one can see, the style is very Vista inspired, with some mix of iPhone, and some mix of GNOME (thanks to the Tango icons I'm using). Much of what I imagined when thinking of this and future mockups is a combination of the default Nintendo DS Firmware OS look and a mixture of the Apple Newton OS.

The bottom tool bar on the bottom screen contains these buttons: Send Item, Receive Item, Home, Configuration, and Search. I understand the Send and Receive buttons, which won't actually do anything in the first releases of the software, are very ambiguous; I plan to make them more descriptive later. The bottom toolbar will be consistent and will remain as this at all times.

The application icons are from the Tango set, and I plan to use icons from there because it's free and it'll give a unified look to the system and the systems that it can sync with (after all, Tango was made to give consistency to applications of any platform). The button with the words "More Apps" can be seen and will be one of the widgets.

The top bar of the bottom screen contains the current application's name, a delete button (X), a help button (?) and a screen swap button (not shown on mockup).

The top bar of the top screen contains the registered name in the DS, the Wi-Fi meter (won't really be implemented until sending/receiving works), and a battery meter.

The top screen will just contain the current time and date and will display today's tasks and events for the user. The top screen will vary depending on application. For the Notes application it will contain the actual notes (a touchscreen keyboard will be at the bottom screen for most applications), etc.

Some qualms though. I'm 100% sure that the real product will not be as pretty looking as this mockup is. Secondly, as much as I want antialiasing, I may have to not have it because with text that small it gets pretty hard to read antialiased text. Third, the DS works in 16-bit colour I believe, so the colouring won't be as robust (unless I'm wrongfully mistaken) but would still be acceptable.  

[Sentama Lin]

Note Book

The Note Book application is exactly that: a note book. However, the formatting is not going to be so free as one would normally get when writing in one's own notebook. While this may be a turn off for some people, I've chosen semantics over presentation when creating the data file, in order to ensure that the data becomes the most important part of the text and not how it is presented. I know people will have qualms, but hopefully people will understand as the development goes along.

Here's the format for a Note Book note file after it has been saved on the computer:

Loredm Ipsum Test Note

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam nibh nisl, sodales sit amet, euismod in, ullamcorper id, mi. Maecenas lacus. Phasellus posuere pharetra massa. Vestibulum molestie, justo ut hendrerit dictum, quam turpis sodales urna, quis varius justo orci ullamcorper erat. Pellentesque lobortis ligula tincidunt velit. Praesent mi enim, egestas id, feugiat ac, ultricies vitae, est. Pellentesque faucibus iaculis nibh. Aliquam ut sem. Nulla iaculis eros quis lorem. Sed porta. Quisque urna erat, interdum ut, pharetra at, vestibulum id, arcu. Donec rhoncus magna eget mauris. Etiam vitae nisl. Phasellus elementum mi quis ipsum. Quisque magna ipsum, lobortis ac, viverra non, malesuada id, elit. Phasellus magna neque, posuere quis, facilisis et, luctus eu, lorem. Quisque sed felis vitae leo dignissim consequat. Aenean convallis condimentum mi.

Lorem
Ipsum
Dolor
Sit
Amet

Vivamus scelerisque lorem et nisi. Nulla fermentum posuere dolor. Integer dignissim, urna eget pharetra auctor, nulla mi elementum purus, et dignissim enim leo eget quam. Fusce non nunc vel odio blandit pretium. Sed dui lorem, congue at, condimentum ut, facilisis posuere, risus. Maecenas volutpat lectus eu nunc. Ut suscipit mi et mauris faucibus pretium. Sed mollis, ligula sit amet dignissim venenatis, tellus nisi tempus odio, et aliquam magna sem eu nibh. Suspendisse varius elementum orci. Vivamus libero elit, vulputate ac, iaculis quis, pellentesque id, mi. Aliquam suscipit. Cras at orci. Nunc et lectus vel justo ultricies adipiscing. Suspendisse in turpis et erat porttitor imperdiet. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sagittis consequat metus. Duis elementum. Etiam ultricies vulputate neque.

Lorem
Ipsum
Dolor
Sit
Amet

Donec Aliquet Dui

Donec aliquet dui. Phasellus mauris urna, feugiat nec, convallis posuere, tempus ac, orci. Fusce enim metus, porttitor sed, bibendum at, feugiat sit amet, arcu. Suspendisse ultricies gravida neque. Suspendisse accumsan accumsan purus. Phasellus semper adipiscing neque. Quisque porttitor ante et justo aliquet interdum. Phasellus nisl dui, molestie fermentum, lobortis ac, vehicula et, eros. Suspendisse tempor, nisl in sagittis pulvinar, erat massa luctus dolor, eu hendrerit elit nisl accumsan ante. Duis felis diam, porta in, pretium et, pretium ac, quam. Phasellus rutrum. Curabitur sed lacus. Nam eget tortor eu ligula condimentum vulputate. Phasellus sit amet risus. Nam cursus metus nec enim molestie accumsan. Nam vitae leo.

The file format is a custom format in XML. The note body will have these initial elements:

• Paragraph
  
• Unordered List
  
• Ordered List
  
• Emphasize
  
• Strengthen
  
• Highlight
  
• Heading
  
• Section
  

Each of those elements may contain the Relationship attribute (rel) and the hyperlink reference attribute (href) to link various other datas together. The linked data may be an Internet address or (more commonly) another piece of data cataloged by the application. The links are used to better describe pieces of data found in the note.

The touch pad, when running this application and, by extension, other applications that require inputting of anything, will show an onscreen keyboard with the same input versatility available by default on a Nintendo DS (but all pretty looking to match with the interface). Buttons which provide the elements listed above will also be available on the touch screen with the press of the button.  

[Sentama Lin]

Address Book

The address book, like the note book, is exactly that. It stores various tidbits of information about the people one knows.

The format used to store information is Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF), an XML file application designed to describe people and their relationships to other people and things. As there is already enough information about the format on the Internet, I won't post an example.  

[Sentama Lin]

Date Book

This is where information about the Date Book will be contained. I'll have information up after I finish the thread.  

[Sentama Lin]

Searching

This is where information about the Searching features will be contained. I'll have information up after I finish the thread.  

[Sentama Lin]

Synchronization

Thanks to the power of XML, synchronizing data between the DS, PC applications, and Internet applications is a breeze. The XML, using XSLT, can be transformed into compatible formats. An example transformation could be changing the FOAF Address Book files into vCard files, compatible with the majority of email clients used today. Notes could be transformed into regular text files or into XHTML files. Events and Tasks can be changed into their respective formats in the iCalendar standard. In addition, those formats can be transformed into the respective XML formats the DS application will expect.

Unfortunately, there will be some loss of meta information. At the moment I'm trying to think of ways for synchronization without losing the meta information stored about the file when made on the DS. Furthermore, there would be no meta information on files transformed into a DS-readable format. Work should be done in that area once synchronization is at work.  

[Sentama Lin]

Road Map

The road map will go here, detailing the steps I plan to take to finish this project.  

[Sentama Lin]

So... I feel like I made a ton of mistakes in my first mockup, so I decided to redo it, starting from the roots.

The rationale for essentially making a DS Firmware look-alike: easier to see what exactly everything is (the eye candy isn't as distracting) and consistency (to have the consistency in the firmware, the Operating System of the DS, and an application will ease user use).  

[Kusaragi]

This looks really good... but I'm not up for the long readings... when I feel the motivation I'll look into this for the details. ^_^  

[Sentama Lin]

Heh... You don't need to read the information here unless you're really interested Kusa.

All I really need from people right now is an answer to this question: Which one of the two up there look easier to use?  

[Thaliat Everwood]

The second one looks easiest to use, though both seem rather simple to understand anyway. I still think the first one looks more inviting.  

[Sentama Lin]

That's what I feel as well, Thal. I know that, compared to the first, the second looks extremely spartan, but at the moment I think that's where the development direction is going to go. I'll continue working on both mockups and decide finally once I have all my notes down (for I'm an outside-to-inside worker when it comes to code).

Possibly later, I'll make its visuals more robust.  

[124-C]

I would strongly encourage you to check out Notational Velocity before you get too far into your note book design. I've found it's method to be the most useful from an organizational standpoint.  

[Sentama Lin]

I like the idea of Notaional Velocity, Tsuj. One, it's simple. Two, the organization does make sense. Three, it only does what it tries to do and does it really well. Things I enjoy with applications. There are only a few things that I can forsee being problematic, however, if I want to use the method:

• The application is essentially modeless. While I like the idea, the PIM suite's applications, by default, was already designed to have modes. It's not a huge problem, and I don't think it'll degrade organization if I try to model the notes software to NV, but an implementation would no longer really be modeless.
  
• Consistency will need to be changed. My current plan was to always have a Search button on the lower right hand corner of the touch screen, available at almost any time the user is looking for a particular piece of information (will be described in searching). NV has it where the typing of "new" note titles essentially is a search for all the current notes's titles and content. If I'm going to have that, I'll need to have some equivalent feature for when one is creating new dates, tasks, and address book entries.
  

Heh... Even the last statement can be remedied methinks. If I use a procedure like this:

1. User opens up one of the applications.
   
2. The last-opened file is displayed on the top screen, with chosen input method on the bottom. Otherwise, the top screen shows "Please select Search to create or open a new ."
   
3. User selects Search from the bottom right of the screen.
   

That can remedy consistency use if all the applications utilize that method I think. There are still a few minor oddities (ones that, I don't think, can be fixed until I get an actual working program on my DS) and one major one (Search always works the same - searches in the context of the current application - except on the Home Screen) but I can work on those. The fact that Search no longer just Searches is a bit of a bother too, but to allow Search when making a New file makes the other search seem redundant.

*ahem* Anyways... Thanks for giving me that tip Tsuj. I have notes to work with now. :3