OPL Development

[omfdez]

Hi everyone,
I have been using a Revo since 3 years ago, but know I want to try to develop some software that I would need to take more from my PDA.
As far as I know, the easiest way is using OPL but I am bit confused about what do I need to start. I have found many tools to develop software for Nokia mobiles running Symbian, but I do not know if they will work on the Revo.
Does anyone could point me to some place in which I could find information about OPL for beginners? (tools, SDK, etc...)

Thanks in advance
Oscar

[WolfUK]

Hi Oscar,

As a starting point have a look at some of the information on Steve Litchfield's site ... http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/progindex.htm

You can create applications with nothing more than your Revo and the OLP editor (downloadable from Psion's site). If you want to develop the applications on your PC (better keyboard and larger screen) then you will need to get hold of the OPL SDK from Psion. I'm 99% sure that there are other posts here with details of how to get it so do a search for 'Emulator'.

You might also want to look at Diem's links page http://www.isbg00598.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/faqHacking.htm




Edited by diem to fix URL.

[Beakynet]

The Revo is similar in form factor to the older Series 3 which I used to write OPL on the move regularly. The only problems were the use of graphics that were better developed on a PC.

[MartinMaxwell]

Interestingly, whatever you develop in OPL for the Revo etc will work on the Nokia 9200 series with minor modifications.

The major differences are in summary:

- Unicode, which means that if you use buffers you have to think about that length of buffer is twice as large as length of string, and the header is one byte larger. And you will have to read characters with PEEKW in lieu of PEEKB.

- 4096 colours

- No touch screen. (In fact OPL ER6 itself supports touch screen so we can be prepared in case future Nokia Communicators will have it).

- CBAs in lieu of Toolbar buttons. But they work almost the same. There are four CBAs which can be directly mapped to the four Toolbar buttons on a Series 5.

- Some rearrangement of OPXs (language extensions)

- Some new OPXs, e.g. for sending SMS.

- Revo comes with OPL runtime in ROM and OPL editor in RAM. If you want to use OPL on the Nokia Communicator, you will need to install both OPL runtime and OPL editor in RAM. Both are available at www.symbian.com.

There was a recent announcement that OPL is now open source. This will likely mean that we will see OPL version for other Symbian OS smartphones in the near future.

I still hope for a Unicode version of netBook so that we can use it as a development platform for smartphones.