The look & feel of the MeeGo Keyboard (comes with the MeeGo Input Methods) can be easily adjusted to your needs. In the last post I already gave a brief example on how to modify the graphical assets. In fact, you will find that the look is mostly defined by the graphics contained in that one SVG file. The elements' id's are referenced from the keyboard's CSS file, so it is a good idea to just leave them as-is, unless you really need more graphical elements. The CSS file is installed to a slightly different folder than the SVG file:

I published new versions of the MeeGo Input Methods (framework and keyboard plugin) on the project's Launchpad PPA. It contains the API/ABI break that was announced in the beginning of this month.

At first I thought I would do this packaging only for others but I have to admit that I start to enjoy using my host system for input method development - it's really easier than having to use the MeeGo SDK or scratchbox even.

I also added some patches so that the on-screen keyboard docks itself to the bottom of the screen. For MeeGo Touch applications, focus widget relocation will work on the desktop now. If that's not enough for you then how about a slightly translucent keyboard background? For this to come true, you only need to modify the keyboard's SVG file, located at:

/usr/share/themes/base/meegotouch/svg/meegotouch-virtual-keyboard.svg

Search for this section:

<g id="meegotouch-keyboard-background">
  <g>
     <rect x="100" y="100" width="64" height="64"/>
  </g>
</g>

and add a opacity style property to the rect element like so:

  <rect style="opacity:0.5;" x="100" y="100" width="64" height="64"/>

You need to restart the meego-im-uiserver process to see the effects though. I will explain the other theming possibilities in another blog post.

The packaging problems I encountered in my last blog post are also solved: A Launchpad PPA keeps all packages in one repository, so one needs to explicitly mention the Ubuntu version in the package names, otherwise they can easily supersede each other.

I've been working on the MeeGo Input Methods project (codename "Maliit") for nearly a year now. The project provides a pluggable framework for input methods. It comes with a reference plug-in for a multi-touch-capable virtual keyboard.

It had bothered me that, even though our source code was available at gitorious.org, there were nearly no contributions from the outside. I attribute that to the difficulties when it comes to compiling all required components, but also to the lack of perceived openness.

We now offer packages for Ubuntu, through the Openismus PPA for MeeGo Input Methods, thanks to the packaging efforts of Jon. This is an offer for those interested in developing input methods for MeeGo. It's not targeting end-users (yet?) - a virtual keyboard might not be useful on a desktop, unless you have a touchscreen.

We also have a public wiki and if you wish you can visit us in #meego-inputmethods @ freenode.net.

Thanks to the work of [Dariusz](http://www.facebook.com/malcolmpl) and [Alban](http://alban.apinc.org/blog/) we now have [P2P via Telepathy for Miniature](http://maemo.org/packages/source/view/fremantle_extras-devel_free_source/miniature/0.1.9-3/). Maybe it's worth to notice that we use Maemo's contact chooser here, and that it blends perfectly with our Qt application (we still have some crashes on our side though). Nice job from the Fremantle team! there!

On Maemo 5, log output from your app isn't always accessible to the user. This has created problems for Miniature bug reports ([see bug #8124](https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8142)). To solve this, I created a "Game Log" screen which allows to filter the messages (by a given log level, I might want to allow combinations, too). It also has a nice fat "Copy all" button, so that the log output can be quickly attached to a bug report. Now I "only" need to add useful log information =D Thanks to [Openismus](http://openismus.com) for letting me work on this.

Reading about [Nokia's UI Extensions for Mobile](http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/2010/02/nokia-ui-extensions-for-mobile-compiled-in-ubuntu-and-maemo-5-sdk/) ([sources available](http://qt.gitorious.org/uiemo)) I wanted to quickly try it myself. So I looked at the provided examples, and [this video is the result](http://taschenorakel.de/media/beerchooser/orbit.ogv) of what I came up with (well, of course it is [FOSDEM](http://www.fosdem.org)-induced). The provided API allowed me to easily apply my previous Qt knowledge, which is a nice touch. Sources for the example in the video app can be found [here](http://taschenorakel.de/media/beerchooser/main.h) and [here](http://taschenorakel.de/media/beerchooser/main.cc). Happy hacking! **Update:** The UI Extensions for Mobile will *not* compile on 64bit architectures.

Thanks to Mathias, Miniature is now suitable for debian packaging. He also uploaded a first test balloon which at least allows you to move pieces around. Feedback is of course more than welcome.

Personally I wish the board's cell size could have been made bigger, but 60x60 pixels is already the upper limit. It is now up to us - the Miniature team - to come up with clever techniques to make the board handling as finger-friendly as possible.

Today at work, David King kindly informed me that there was some new Qt package in extras-devel. This could only mean one thing - I immediately fired up my scratchbox environment and installed the packages, trying to confirm that this new version would run with Qlom. And in fact, it was surprisingly painless. Thanks to autotroll, a simple QT_PATH env variable did all the magic, hooray!

Both of us were impressed with the UI improvements. It's certainly a big step forward regarding the Hildonisation of Qt on Maemo5. The application menues look correct now. Button sizes, colors, animations, etc - it all comes together nicely, finally.

There are still some widgets that need more work, but for a tech preview this is a pleasant surprise.

On another note, the timing for the Miniature project could not have been much better. We immediately switched to Qt 4.6, and it even runs on the N900. It feels good to know that we can stop using hacks and that we can start to do (most) things properly, staying as cross-platform as possible. Needless to say, Quim was happy, too.

How it begun

When I read Quim's thread about the idea for a better Maemo chess app I knew I wanted to join the project. To me, it's all about the device and the sparkling Hildon UX. I really want a good chess app, for myself! I want to play chess online, everywhere! And I want to analyze games as (OK, maybe after =p) they happen. No more "I'll check this position later" (we all know this rarely happens).

So I finally started last friday. At this point, Quim and Andreas had already created a beautiful, content-rich wiki page. It took a while for me to digest it all, and I added information where appropiate.

Kick-starting the development

Andreas had registered a garage project, but we eventually decided to use gitorious for our repository. Gitorious' UI definitely improved over the recent months, and the possibility to have teams working on a single project - also known as not-so-extreme-dvcs-development - makes gitorious a better choice than github, at the moment.

Saturday night (what better things to do than coding some Qt - my soul will be forever lost) I had a first running example (see screenshot). Currently, Miniature can move between positions, using next/prev menu navigation (we don't need this functionality per se, but it's perhaps a good demonstration that the simple approach I took works).

So no matter the toolkit, no matter the outdated packages or the endless confusion I had with the various Qt repos at gitorious - this project is really fun! Hopefully we get to make a 0.1 release soon.

To me the empty home screen* of the N900 looked like an invitation, so I tried to fill it up with useless stuff as quickly as possible. The home screen configuration menu offers app launchers (shortcuts), bookmarks, widgets and contacts. Let's go through all four options in detail:

• Shortcuts: I almost always have some tasks running in the background so launching an application would usually take three to four finger touches. Therefore the app launchers are extremely helpful to me.

• Bookmarks: The idea is neat but not essential. The browser starts with a list of bookmarks anyway (how convenient).

• Desktop widgets: I never believed in them, but the calendar widget might easily change this! It shows the current day and up to five upcoming events. It's a great addition to the fantastic calendar app.

• Contact shortcuts: On this device, everything focuses on integrated contact management. For once, keeping your contacts up-to-date is actually useful and not just a time sink, simply because you can use them from almost everywhere. The logical conclusion follows: you can also add shortcuts to contacts on your home screen! It will show online status, avatar and nick of the chosen contact. Nice!

So what's on my current home screen?

• Calendar widget,
• two bookmarks,
• home ip widget,
• 12 app launchers (from top left to bottom right): settings, app manager, terminal, media player, photos, chess, notes (nice app, too), e-mail (ugly icon, and potentially confusing), IM (why does this look like an e-mail icon?!), browser, address book, phone (I had to disable the "launch when rotating" feature since phone calls would stall and eventually force me into device restarts. Too buggy for now),
• two contact shortcuts.

I know - it looks as if this was a Symbian smartphone (that is, ugly and horribly crowded). But I like it this way, at least for now =)

So what's on your current home screen?

*: I still think dashboard is a better name.