Monday, June 13, 2011

Gmenu2x Revisited

I'm still working my way ever so slowly through the rockbox SVN revisions, searching for the one specific change that's dimming the high frequencies in the up to date rockbox code.  But since I can't hear so well these days I have to wait a bit between test builds for feedback on the zipit IRC channel from dronz who can actually hear the difference.  This occasionally leaves me some time to play with other stuff.

I found some SDL based vnc clients to play with, but they suffer from about as many issues as the framebuffer vnc clients.  I'll have to piece together a good one from all the best bits, someday when I have a solid block of time to think.  But not yet.

So I decided to pick at something a bit simpler.  Way back when, in the early days of my zipit experiments I did a test build of gmenu2x.  But then I got sound out of a rockbox build and put gmenu2x on the backburner.  Since I'd already done a build of gmenu2x I figured now I could spend my little snippets of time working on the config bits required to make it work right in IZ2S.  So I tinkered with the keyboard layout config file and setup a few apps to launch, run, and return to gmenu2x.  I also built the termula2x terminal program to see what that looked like when launched from gmenu2x.  The whole thing needs plenty more work, but all in all I think I like the way it's shaping up.  I can picture myself launching straight into gmenu2x for the car music player instead of hooking rockbox to the home key with e2bindkeys.


I put it here for now gmenu2x-iz2s.zip if anyone wants to try it.

I've recently updated the input.conf keymap file and some of the icons here gmenu2x-iz2s-icons.zip, and the source is available in the Goodie Bag.

9 comments:

  1. Bonjour,
    Termula2x works nicely, but gmenu2x drives me to a black screen. Maybe I do not launch it correctly ?

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  2. Gmenu2x uses a bunch of the libs from the earlier packages, but I only included the SDL_ttf lib because it required a slightly newer version. I'll have to test it on a fresh IZ2S SD card to see exactly which libs are required. Then I guess I'll update the package because I've already rebuilt the executables and modified the config files to fix some issues and add features specific to IZ2S and the zipit.

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  3. This is really impressive. I've thought for a long time that gmenu2x would be perfect for the zipit. Getting this working with xfbdev and sdl, and a suite of simple SDL programs, we could abandon X entirely and have much speedier zipits.
    I know this is in a pre-release state at the time of your blogging about it, but when it's completed, have you any plans to get this on z2lite? Also, which buildroot did you use? I used buildroot-zipit from a git repo, and can't get it to build an FS. I'm about to give up. Any sagely wisdom?

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  4. I'll probably build it for z2lite someday. I actually did compile it in buildroot a long time ago. http://macrofig.blogspot.com/2011/01/looking-for-right-gui.html I don't remember much trouble, except when I tried to get a static build for IZ2S out of buildroot.

    I did the z2lite rockbox builds in an old buildroot from like last November.

    So many questions... Can you get on the zipit IRC channel? irc://irc.freenode.net/zipit

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  5. Actually, I've intended to for quite awhile. I'm just very busy with university and life. I might be able to swing by tomorrow, provided i'm not pestering anyone.

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  6. I added my buildroot .config file to the Zipit Goodie Bag (link on right). It's for BR2_VERSION 2010.08 and I got it from wejp's userland distro. I remember it helped answer some questions I had when I first started making things with buildroot. I believe z2lite is built with a newer buildroot, but with the same uclibc version for compatiblilty.

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  7. Your post was re-edited later, and I did not see and did not download gmenu2x-iz2s-icons.zip. If by chance you can find back this file in your archives, can you re-post it ?
    Icons are not so important, but your input.conf keymap file can be usefull and has its place in your goodibag.

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  8. I uploaded it again and added a temporary link to it on the post above. Let me know when you get it and I'll remove the temporary link.

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  9. Thanks ! It is now available in your goodibag.

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