Symbian Example

Problem while displaying the arabic text

deeptig — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:20:00 +0000

Hi,
I have tried to display the text in the arabic format using the class CCnvCharacterSetConverter. I have pasted the code below. Please let me know what is the problem .
TBuf8<128> aText;
aText.Copy(_L("\u0634\u0627\u062f\u062c\u0645\u0647\u0648\u0645\u0646"));
CCnvCharacterSetConverter* aCharacterSetConverter = CCnvCharacterSetConverter::NewL();
if (aCharacterSetConverter->PrepareToConvertToOrFromL(KCharacterSetIdentifierJavaConformantUtf8,CEikonEnv::Static()->FsSession()) != CCnvCharacterSetConverter::EAvailable)
User::Leave(KErrNotSupported);
HBufC* data = HBufC::NewL(aText.Length());
TPtr16 ptr = data->Des();
TInt state = CCnvCharacterSetConverter::KStateDefault;
if(CCnvCharacterSetConverter::EErrorIllFormedInput == aCharacterSetConverter->ConvertToUnicode(bText,aText,state))
User::Leave(KErrArgument);
CAknInformationNote* note = new (ELeave) CAknInformationNote;
note->ExecuteLD(bText);

The output that I am getting is in the box form. I have copied all the font files from the windows to the directory \Symbian\8.0a\S60_2nd_FP2_CW\Epoc32\release\winscw\udeb\z\system\fonts but still I cant see the converted text.
Is it necessary we have to include the gdr files or will it work for the ttf files.
Please help me out.
Thanks
Deepti

Unit-testing framework for Symbian

Artem — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:07:11 +0000

I haven't posted to SymbianExample.com for a while for a reason. The reason is that I simply don't have enough energy for several projects. So I decided to focus as much as possible on my main project - Agile Software Development.

However, sometimes my interests intersect. Lately I've done a detailed and extensively commented example of applying the CppUTest unit-testing framework on Symbian platform (some Symbian-specific extensions included). Have a look and feel free to use.

Nokia on AdSense

Artem — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:55:09 +0000

Interesting ad I've noticed today. It looks like after announcing the change to an internet company Nokia started to actually try using the existing internet services.

Did you ever notice another Nokia text-link ads?

observing the flip open and flip close event in case of N93

kshetrapal — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:24:07 +0000

Hi,

I wanted to observe the flip open and flip close event in case of N93.

I have tried with handling EEventCaseClosed, EEventCaseOpen events in HandleWsEventL().

Also i have tried by registering with EnableScreenChangeEvents().

iam handling flip evnets in Active object RunL().

if(iStatus == KErrNone)
{

TWsEvent e;

ws.GetEvent(e);

switch(e.Type())
{
case EEventCaseClosed:

case EEventCaseOpen:

}

and iam issueing the reqest like this.

ws.EventReady(&iStatus);
iMmcActive = observer;
SetActive();

My RunL() is getting called..
but iam not able to recieve flip evnets. can u pls help me..

Regards,
Kshetrapal

Flash Lite development

Artem — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:30:02 +0000

Unfortunately there are not too many Flash Lite resources on the web. Here is a short guide on the current web resources related to the Flash Lite development to save the "getting started" time.

Adobe - Flash Lite Official Adobe site on Flash Lite. News, tools, SDKs
Adobe - Flash Lite: Nokia Adobe's developer forum on Flash Lite. Not too much activity at the moment
Getting Started With Flash Lite An introduction to Flash Lite and the tools you need to start producing your own mobile phone content.
Flash Lite For Mobile Game Developers Quite a usual blog on Flash Lite. Mainly focused on integrating the industry news
Category:Flash Lite - Forum Nokia Wiki Forum Nokia wiki on Flash Lite. At the moment there are mainly short articles, but also a couple of "getting started"s and code examples
Flyer - Open Source Python FrameWork for Flash Lite Developers An open source activity on joining Python for S60 with Flash Lite. In essence it adds a possibility for using from Flash Lite programs some interesting phone features including text to speech and camera.
Mobile - Actionscript.it Flash Lite subsection of yet another mobile developers community. Couple of interesting "howtos" including "Flash Lite integration with Python S60" and "How to: "embed" Flash Lite into C++ Symbian application"
Flash Devices Blog on developing for flash lite. Mostly just a blog plus some resource links
Adobe - Mobile and Devices Developer Center: Development Kits Flash Lite SDKs. Or CDKs (content development kits) as it is called it in flash community
Developer tutorials SonyEricsson tutorials for the mobile developers. There are couple of code examples for Flash Lite.

Also have a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks on Flash Lite. All the above links are also sitting there.

Is there any useful link missing? What would you add for Flash Lite developers to check?

Blogging more, coding less

Artem — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:07:18 +0000

At the moment it is quite obvious that I am not able to create and publish code examples even every month and not too many people want to publish own code examples here.

Sometime soon I am going to change this site concept a little bit and transform it into more blog-like thing. There will be code examples still and everybody will be able to publish them here. However, I will also discuss the coding-related things here and will publish links to the most interesting code examples on the other sites. Certainly, everybody is very much welcome to do the same.

What do you think about this idea? Will it work?

Application compatibility

Artem — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:32:48 +0000

Symbian operating system and Nokia's S60 based on Symbian are well known for breaking the binary compatibility here and there, changing constants and interfaces between the minor versions, etc. As Mika Raento puts it it "Nokia is completely schizophrenic when it comes to backward compatibility". Some interfaces are maintained with the help of various compatibility layers for a long time, while another interfaces sometimes are dropped or heavily re-engineered even within the same S60 version.

While it is definitely up to Nokia and Symbian when and how to change their interfaces, the big problem for the external developers in that the principles for maintaining or dropping the backwards compatibility are not known. Therefore the software vendors don't know on which APIs to rely and of which not to rely.

One way of solving this is to get a compatibility principle based on the business value of maintaining the compatibility, i.e. on how many useful applications rely on this or that particular API. The rumors tell that when Microsoft released its Windows 95 it invested huge amount of efforts into making the OS work even with particular popular games that contained bugs normally incompatible even with the DOS (where the games worked by accident).

I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.

As we know in the end this attitude made Windows the dominant desktop OS on the Earth.

In the Symbian world the situation is that opposite that despite the growing Symbian market share, Nokia's own bloggers notice that during the last couple of years the third party fail to cope with the changes and the usefulness of the 3rd party apps is diminishing. Is it because the Nokia applications improved by the order of magnitude? - I doubt. Why doesn't Nokia go over the popular applications third party providers and S60 licensees and ask them what APIs they rely on? Then Nokia could make a list of APIs guaranteed to be maintained for a long time (e.g. two years), for medium time (e.g. one year) and for undefined amount of time. Preferably with the tests attached.

Certainly, at the moment being almost the market monopoly Nokia might not have a solid business reason for it. Just the same way as Palm did not have it until Windows Mobile with the hordes of loyal developers destroyed the Palm business in just a few years.

Sorting custom objects

Artem — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:59:06 +0000

Objects stored in RArray or RPointer array can be sorted basing on any properties you like. Everything you have to do is to define a comparison function to be passed to the Sort() routine.

Here is an example on how to sort the custom CPerson objects by the last name. Note the use of CompareC for taking into account the locale specifics, when comparing strings.

class CPerson : public CBase { public: static CPerson* NewLC( TInt aId, const TDesC& aFirstName, const TDesC& aLastName );

static TInt CompareByLastName( const CPerson& person1,
const CPerson& person2 );
...
}

TInt CPerson::CompareByLastName( const CPerson& person1,
const CPerson& person2 )
{
return person1.LastName().CompareC( person2.LastName() );
}

...
RPointerArray people;
CleanupClosePushL( people );
CPerson* blake = CPerson::NewLC( 3, _L("John"), _L( "Blake") );
CPerson* bond = CPerson::NewLC( 7, _L( "James" ), _L( "Bond" ) );
CPerson* smith = CPerson::NewLC( 3, _L( "John" ), _L( "Smith" ) );

people.AppendL( smith );
people.AppendL( blake );
people.AppendL( bond );
console->Write( _L( "Before sorting\n" ) );

TLinearOrder byLastName( CPerson::CompareByLastName );
people.Sort( byLastName );
...

As usual see full compilable example attached

How to call 3rd Party API

mrdillip — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:51:34 +0000

I have an application developed on symbian c++. i want to call a 3rd party API for which i have included all the DLL and .h files provided by 3rd party vendor in coresponding directory .UDEB and Include .of symbian.

How can i call that 3rd party API ,please suggest me .I have the Pseudo
code for that ,i am confused in which directory/file of my project i have to include them(writethe code).

please suggest

Regard's
Dillip

Reading profile data in S60 3rd edition

Artem — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:35:17 +0000

Here's how you can read the current profile data in S60 3rd edition. The public central repository keys are defined in ProfileEngineSDKCRKeys.h. Mika Raento gives you a hint on how to access the hidden profile arguments.

As usual, find the compilable code example attached.

CRepository* cr = CRepository::NewLC( KCRUidProfileEngine ); TInt actProfile; User::LeaveIfError( cr->Get( KProEngActiveProfile, actProfile ) ); ... TInt ringingType; User::LeaveIfError( cr->Get( KProEngActiveRingingType, ringingType ) );

switch( ringingType )
{
case 0:
console->Write( _L( "Ringing\n" ) );
break;
case 1:
console->Write( _L( "Ascending\n" ) );
break;
case 2:
console->Write( _L( "Ring once\n" ) );
break;
case 3:
console->Write( _L( "Beep once\n" ) );
break;
case 4:
console->Write( _L( "Silent\n" ) );
break;
default:
console->Write( _L( "Unknown ringing type\n" ));
}
...