Free42 for Windows Phone 7



#17

Disclaimer: I didn't create this port, and I haven't tried it myself since I don't have a WP7 phone, but I thought I'd mention it:

http://www.marketplacebrowser.com/293817/42s


The author's web site is http://rayzzor.com/.

- Thomas

Edited: 29 Apr 2011, 6:55 p.m.


#18

Very nice graphics :-)

#19

Thanks Thomas for the info. So, after all, somebody undertook the monstruous task to convert Free42 from C++ to C# ! :)
What I can't understand is, why did he base this on Free42 1.4.63, which is a version without the TIME functions, and with two remaing bugs (ASIN and INVRT) ? Did he tell you if there is a particular reason, or if he will upgrade to the latest core any soon ?
Anyway, interesting to know that Free42 is now available, with various degrees of maturation, on every mobile plateform that has a future for sure (Symbian is dead, and we still don't know about WebOS).

Cheers,

Vincent


#20

I assume 1.4.63 was the current version when he started. Converting everything to C# was a big task and Steve told me it took several months overall.


Regarding his plans to bring 42S in sync with the latest Free42 bug fixes and enhancements, you'll have to ask the author himself. :-)


#21

Thanks Thomas.
Why not putting a link (with a disclaimer of course, that you did not supervise this) to this version from your website ? it will certainly increase your user base :)
Cheers,
Vincent


#22

Re: Why not put a link on my web site?

I removed all the links to third-party Free42 ports from my web site a few months ago, because none of them were being kept in sync with my releases in a timely manner, if at all.

I have no problem with third-party ports, even commercial ones, in fact I like all of them (*), but when it comes to endorsing or supporting them, I think I should focus on promoting the ones that I can actually support myself...

N.B. In case it sounds like I'm contradicting myself, given that this thread started with me mentioning the WP7 port: I think that that port is worth mentioning, on this forum, because any HP calculator emulator is a matter of interest here. I hope I've made it clear that I am *not* offering support for that port; anyone who discovers a problem with it should contact Steve, not me.

(*) Except for the INFOWISE iPhone version (I don't mean Byron Foster's iPhone version!). That one is published by a pure leech, not to mention a GPL violator. One of these days I may get the energy to do something about that...

Edited: 2 May 2011, 3:44 a.m. after one or more responses were posted


#23

Quote:
N.B. In case it sounds like I'm contradicting myself, given that this thread started with me mentioning the WP7 port: I think that that port is worth mentioning, on this forum, because any HP calculator emulator is a matter of interest here. I hope I've made it clear that I am *not* offering support for that port; if anyone discovers a problem with it, they should contact Steve, not me.

Hear hear!

Such is open source.


- Pauli

#24

Hi all,

Thomas, thanks for posting about the WP7 version here!

Vincent, to answer your question on the source version, 1.4.63 happened to be the source I had at my disposal when I decided to start this project. As I progressed, I also had to scale back on some features as the project was taking a long time and I decided to concentrate on the baseline functionality of the original HP-42S (hence the lack of extended functions for time, gps, etc).

I wasn't familiar with the ASIN and INVRT issues, so I'll look into those soon. I'll also take a look at the 30ish time functions to see what's involved, but not sure when I'll get to implementing them. Maybe for release 2.0.

In May, Microsoft is releasing 2500 new APIs for WP7 developers including sockets support. I was thinking of looking into using this in version 2.0 to implement program import and export (either to cloud or desktop) and printout file download. Gotta see what the APIs look like before I know what's involved. Also, I don't think apps built on these APIs will be able to go live until much later this year when the major OS update is released.

Anyway, I started this project because I was moving from the iPhone to WP7 to develop other apps and I just couldn't live without Thomas' program! It made a good test case for my first WP7 app and I hope those of you on the WP7 platform enjoy it. Feel free to send me feedback directly at support@rayzzor.com.

Cheers,

Steve


#25

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the HP forum! :-)

Regarding the ASIN and INVRT bugs, those are easy to fix. I don't think I did anything else in the core since 1.4.63, so simply diffing 1.4.63 with the latest source should give you the required code changes without any noise.

UPDATE: Well, without any noise except for changing the copyright notice everywhere and some Android-related changes, anyway!

(I just moved my source repository from CVS to Subversion the other day and looking at the revision history with websvn is very cool...)

- Thomas


Edited: 2 May 2011, 4:30 a.m.


#26

Hi Thomas and Steve

Thank you for your work for the Android and WP7 versions!

I'm using both of these.


Regarding Subversion:

What platform do you run it on?

I'm looking for subversion on opensolaris, both platforms (SPARC/i386)

But I don't now which distribution to best go with! (Sunfreeware or OpenCSW, or even CollabNet)

Thanks
Roger


#27

I run Subversion on my Mac; it's included with Apple's software development tools. All I had to do was add a plist under /Library/LaunchDaemons to start svnserve at boot time.


I got WebSVN from websvn.tigris.org, and I run it under the Apache server that's included in OS X.

Regarding OpenSolaris, I have no idea!

Edited: 2 May 2011, 10:13 a.m.

#28

Thanks Steve and Thomas for your answers ! :) Much appreciated to see that Free42, besides being one of the most significant contribution to the HP community, is also probably the most multi-platform piece of software in the world :)

Steve, looking at your screeshots, it looks like you don't care about the "singular matrix" options, just like Byron ? ;)

Thomas, I realise that your version is now free on the Appstore, whereas I think it used to be not free, which was totallly respectable as developping on Apple is not free for the developper... what triggered this (generous) change ?

Thanks and cheers,

Vincent


#29

Quote:
Thomas, I realise that your version is now free on the Appstore, whereas I think it used to be not free, which was totallly respectable as developping on Apple is not free for the developper... what triggered this (generous) change ?

I think charging money for software is totally respectable even if it is developed on a platform where development is free! The cost of an Apple iOS developer membership is insignificant compared to the time I'm spending on this.

I decided to drop the price of the iPhone version to $0 because I didn't want to keep charging for an incomplete piece of software, given that I never seem to find the time or have the inclination to work on it lately. Once I finish the printer emulation window and local file import/export, I'll raise the price back to some non-zero level.

- Thomas


#30

Thomas,

You're absolutely right, sorry if I was unclear and seemed to imply that it would not be respectable to charge money for your time... You could actually charge HP big money for re-using Free42 for their next physical calculator, I don't think their development team can (any more) come even close to the quality of Free42 ! Your contribution to the HP community, by bringing for free a simulator which faithfullness matches the one of an emulator, of an accclaimed calculator which ROM is furthermore copyrighted, hence unavailable for the majority of people, is tremendous - on part with JF Garnier and Christoph Gosselin ! :)

My remark was just that you once posted you were making no apology for charging money to publish on the appstore, whereas other versions were free, so I was wondering why this had changed.
Please, please, finish your version ! otherwise we will have to stick with Byron's version. His version is awsome, but is stretching too far in the direction of the HP-48 and I'm affraid someday something will be broken. With you, I'm 100% sure that the app will be 100% HP-42S :)

Cheers,

Vincent

#31

Hi Steve again,

I am thinking out loud, if you do not want to wait for the socket API, can't the user have a WCF service running on the destkop to download .raw files from the phone ?

Thanks and regards,

Vincent


#32

Hi Vincent,

Absolutely. In fact, that was the direction I was headed. I actually delayed the release for a month or two while I started work on feasibility projects to test WCF-based file transfer.

In the end, I decided to hold on this approach and release an initial version without communication support. My reasoning was:

1) With the current APIs, though it is possible, it's certainly not ideal, especially for the user interaction model I wanted to implement (e.g. query from the PC rather than push from the phone).

2) I didn't want to invest a lot of time into a communication link that whould be obsolete or at least much easier to implement as soon as MS came out with the API updates.

3) I figured getting a release out sooner with all the core functionality might be of interest to some. Then I can add on the extras (communication, time functions, gps, etc) as my schedule permits.

Good suggestion though, thanks!

Cheers,

Steve


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