newRPL - build 1255 released! [updated to 1299]

[Claudio L.]

I haven't posted an update in a while, so here's the newRPL status report:

After the last ROM update, I decided to explore the possibility of building "newRPL Mobile". To my surprise, after adding just 3 lines to the main project files and dealing with some dependency issues (Android system doesn't provide libusb so I had to build locally and supply our own), newRPL Desktop was built as an .APK package and running in an Android simulator, without changing a single line of code!

Then, the issues revealed themselves:
* The horizontal layout in newRPL wasn't useful for phones, so I had to change a few things here and there to make it a more flexible (responsive?) portrait format, which will stretch the screen to adjust to the physical device resolution. That's done and worked quite nicely.
* Android doesn't have a menu on top, so I'll have to find another way to present the menu to the user, that will unfortunately mean extra coding. Even without the menu, when I closed the app I was asked to "save as" with a decently looking dialog and the app preserved state just like on Desktop, so at least that part worked flawlessly and gives me hope that just by displaying the menu I can make it work as-is.
* Android doesn't allow direct access to the USB port unless you are rooted, so that part won't work but I'll leave it operational in case people do root their phones, they should (in theory) be able to connect their 50g's to the phone and exchange files between the app and the physical calculator just the same as when newRPL Desktop is running on a PC.


I haven't tried it on real hardware yet, but at least I have hope that once I get that menu reworked we'll have a new addition to the newRPL family.