Forum: General Topics

Hi Chris,

Firstly, insert the now-obligatory apology here for my lateness in replying!! ;-)

You probably won't be too surprised to hear that my plans seem to have stalled yet again for upgrading TMJ. The last few months have been unexpectedly hectic at the day-job, so I've simply not had enough quality time to dedicate to TMJ.

What is increasingly annoying is that I now have a shiny new Limited-Edition Z10 plus a beta Q10 courtesy of BlackBerry, and would really like to switch to using the Z10 as my main phone. However the lack of TMJ on it means I'm still using the trusty BB9800 day-to-day.

I have actually had a stab at a BB10/Android app already - Planetscope is essentially a port of the TMJ Orrery and Sky gauges and was a useful introduction to development on the Android platform, which I must say is rather a horrible beast compared to the simpler (but admittedly less powerful) J2ME platform...

I've made the smallest of starts in porting TMJ itself, but really need several weeks to dedicate to it to get anywhere fast, which isn't likely to happen in the next couple of months at least. Having said that, the 'annoyance' of having the slick Z10 to hand does keep it constantly in my mind, so I do still intend to make a go of the port at some point, honest!!

As far as your question about the ease of porting the code, I'm hoping to not have to rewrite everything from scratch (by using the Android tools at least I can keep it all in Java), but it will mean that pretty much every line of code will have to be reviewed to some extent. In practice a lot of the complex maths algorithms will hopefully run as-is - this was largely the case with Planetscope. Hopefully once I get a basic framework running reliably (eg the back-end GPS and web functions plus a simple working UI) then development will speed up, but this is all entirely theoretical at the moment...!!

Cheers,
Stephen

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the reply. No rush on my behalf, as I said, I can't really see when I would use TMJ on a tablet, as I mainly use it when cycling or walking, so a phone is much more appropriate. That said, it would be cool to have it on my PlayBook, and I'm sure that I will find a use for it ...

Just out of interest, were you planning to write a native BB10 version, or a 'generic' Android version that could be 'sideloaded' onto BB10 devices? Or maybe both...!? At the moment there is some doubt, not to say controversy in the PlayBook community as to when/if BB10 will be available on this device. (If you want some fireworks, go to the CrackBerry Playbook forum, and ask 'When is BB10 coming to the Playbook?' then stand back...! :) So as I understand things, I should able to run an Android version on my PlayBook as it is (assuming your code caters for the screen size/orientation etc. - which I'm sure it will) but not a BB10 version until they release an upgrade to the PB (if they ever do).

Cheers,

Chris.

Stephen,
I'm sure that you already know more about this than I do, but this is quite an interesting thread on the subject of background processes on BB10
http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-10-os-f269/how-do-bb10-background-apps-work-775315/index2.html

Sounds like you are right, and it can't be done at the moment, unless you can keep the app in an Active Frame (can you even do that with an Android app? I don't have a BB10 device, so I can't check it)

Interesting thread, thanks...

Yes it *should* run in an active frame, although I'm slightly suspicious that the GPS stops providing updates when it is no longer the foreground app (but this might just be that I've not implemented the API quite correctly yet). My main issue with the active frames is that I find it a bit too easy to accidentally close an app (each app icon has a cross in the bottom-right corner, which forces the app to immediately quit), so ideally it would run more stably in a background process.

Cheers,
Stephen