[PythonCE] PythonCE on Smartphone (WM6)

[Jorgen Bodde]

Hi Christopher,

Thank you for your answer, I guess I need to find a port of wxWidgets
/ wxPython or some kind that targets the mobile platform better, or
instead use the Embedded Visual Studio with .NET. I love Python so I
hope there is a better alternative for the smartphone.

Regards,
- Jorgen

On 10/15/07, Christopher Fairbairn <christopher at christec.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi Jorgen,
>
> On Tue Oct 16  5:37 , "Jorgen Bodde"  sent:
> >I have PythonCE 2.5 and TKinter running on my smartphone. I wrote a
> >minimal app and I see a dialog with a button, but since it is a
> >smartphone which does only have number keys and a jog dial to control
> >the input, the window stays unresponsive to input. I cannot even set
> >the focus to a control.
>
> In general smartphone programming is slightly different from programming for a
> standard Pocket PC device.
>
> As you mentioned the first issue you typically come across is the lack of ability
> to select a control. The solution to this is to programatically select the first
> control on your window when initialising it. The OS has support within the default
> window procedure to then allow the user to "tab" between controls when the up or
> down arrow keys are pressed.
>
> A potentially larger problem with TKinter (a toolkit that I have no experience
> with) are issues around the standard controls such as combo boxes and buttons.
>
> On a Windows Mobile smartphone standard controls such as a combo box are exactly
> the same as you would see on a Pocket PC device. This leads to usability problems,
> for instance with a combo box there is no way to drop down it's list without being
> able to click on the little arrow button to the side of the control, which you
> obviously can't do on most smartphones.
>
> For this reason Microsoft suggests using a series of alternative controls. For
> example what you may think is a combo box within a smartphone application is
> probably a 1 line high listbox coupled with an up/down spinbox auto-buddy docked to
> its right.  Application frameworks such as the .NET Compact Framework generally
> abstract this different within their control classes, so an application programmer
> creates a "combobox" and the framework determines which set of native controls need
> creation to implement this.
>
> I assume that TKinter probably hasn't been implemented with this kind of thing in
> mind.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Christopher Fairbairn
>
> PS: Just thinking about it now I bieleve TKinter is a framework which essentially
> draws all it's own custom controls. If this is the case the problem is probably
> more involved, since you won't get the native OS support for selecting controls on
> a smartphone etc.
>
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