OPL ... The Future Is Open Source

[WolfUK]

Have a look at http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/newsdisplay2.php?id=5256 ... It seems that OPL is going to become an Open Source language.

What benefits this will bring I am not sure but if it results in a visual development language (a la VB or OVAL) then I'd be very happy).

[ShadowFix]

if this was able to be interpreted by different Operating Systems that would be really cool, I left Epoc a while ago but still love OPL as a programming Language.

[paniq]

It depends on if any manufacturers take it up. It will continue on an enthusiasts level (and you may get some people using it to teach simple programming), but if it just remains used on psions & emulators on the PC, then it will just be seen as a "dead language".

Hopefully as OPL was also designed to work on low power chips & low memory requirements, then you may see some manufacturers wanting to embed it in their systems - for instance phones seem an ideal platform, as manufacturers want to keep the costs down so having OPL & an OS on ROM with say 0.5MB Ram.

[ktkawabe]

Hi Simon,

A great news if this actually does mean what it appears to mean, i.e. the sourcecode of OPL runtime and OPL translator are released under OSD-compatible license. I hope that is actually the case, but Symbian sometimes seems to have radically different view of some terminology. (For example Symbian calls Symbian OS an "Open standard", while in my understanding this term is used for a specification which is PUBLISHED by a standardizing organization.) Anyway, if "open source" means open source, it's extremely good as there's a hope for an OPL debugger.

And paniq, I have a different view on this. Manufactures wouldn't take it up (though I hope they would), but it doesn't matter much from the developers' and users' point of view. What really matters is the existence of OPLR and OPLT somewhere. If they exist for your platform, that ensures two things:

1. You can develop OPL apps.
2. Nobody can stop you from shipping your apps with OPLR.

Therefore you can deploy your OPL app without bothering the manufacturers nor users. Look at Nokia 9210. OPLR is not on ROM, but it is available to those who want it. That's the reason why some ER5 OPL developers ported their apps to ER6 (and why there're already many ER6 OPL application users).

Regards,
Keita

[MartinMaxwell]

Hi Keita,

Good post.

I would like to add that it will likely lead to OPL being ported to other Symbian OS flavours:

- Series 60
- UIQ

and perhaps the new i-mode/FOMA Symbian phone from Fujitsu.

Symbian has repeatedly stated recently that there are some further 3-4 new UIs under development.

cheers
Martin