Chuck gets an iphone

[Paul Rubin]

http://colorforth.com

He's got an iphone 5 and is going on walkabout. I'm kind of surprised
about the iphone. It seems like the must un-Chuck-like of computers. I
wonder if he'll run Colorforth on it. I'm sure it's still possible to
get HP 200LX's (pocket sized MSDOS pc's) on ebay, and the Ben Nanonote
(google it) also seems very nice. At least one c.l.f.'er has a
Nanonote, I think.

I wonder where he's walking to. Safe journeys, Chuck, in any case.

[jacko]

If he sets up a Ustream account, or maybe a google+ account and have a following. I'm not sure if Free42 is available for apple, but on droid it's a nice RPN calc for out and about engineering. :D

[Doug Hoffman]

On 9/27/12 7:46 PM, Paul Rubin wrote:

> He's got an iphone 5 and is going on walkabout. I'm kind of surprised
> about the iphone. It seems like the must un-Chuck-like of computers.

Maybe he simply decided on a technology that best matched his personal
needs for the walkabout. "Chuck-like", whatever that is, may have had
nothing to do with that decision.

-Doug

[Paul Rubin]

Doug Hoffman <glid...@gmail.com> writes:
> Maybe he simply decided on a technology that best matched his personal
> needs for the walkabout. "Chuck-like", whatever that is, may have had
> nothing to do with that decision.

But he describes how he has trouble entering text on the phone. Maybe
he should have gotten a phone with a keyboard. Those do exist.

[Doug Hoffman]

On 9/30/12 11:50 AM, Paul Rubin wrote:

> But he describes how he has trouble entering text on the phone. Maybe
> he should have gotten a phone with a keyboard. Those do exist.

As do keyboards for the iPhone. Though if the iPhone can't handle
something as simple as text input (I don't know, never tried), then it
seems like seriously flawed technology.

-Doug

[Mark Wills]

Chuck is probably not aware, but it is not allowed to write
interpreters/compilers on the iPhone. It violates their TOC. Makes
writing a Forth system for it a PITA.

On Android, however, you can just do whatever the hell you like.

[Paul Rubin]

Mark Wills <forth...@gmail.com> writes:
> Chuck is probably not aware, but it is not allowed to write
> interpreters/compilers on the iPhone. It violates their TOC. Makes
> writing a Forth system for it a PITA.

They got rid of that rule a year or two ago. It turned out to be too
absurd even for Apple.

[Mark Wills]

On Oct 1, 9:12 am, Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

Ah. Okay, thanks. Wasn't aware of that. That's good news!

Even so, I think an Android phone is much more suitable for a 'hacker'
type (in the old meaning of the word) like Chuck. The Apple is a very
neat *consumer* device. Brilliant. But hackers, I imagine, would find
the Android platform more hackable.

[Paul Rubin]

Mark Wills <forth...@gmail.com> writes:
> Even so, I think an Android phone is much more suitable for a 'hacker'
> type (in the old meaning of the word) like Chuck. The Apple is a very
> neat *consumer* device. Brilliant. But hackers, I imagine, would find
> the Android platform more hackable.

Android doesn't seem like that much of an improvement; one should not
have to "root" (break security) on a "hacker's" phone in order to
program it. There are still Meego phones around (Debian derivative from
Nokia) and they still have a following and the hardware is decent.

Also of possible interest, there are some Archos Android tablets that
can run Angstrom Linux, a fairly nice development environment.

Really though, if one is trying to write code, a small netbook computer
makes more sense than a phone or tablet. My sister has an Ipad and it's
basically a media consumption device, a hassle even for writing short
emails. I got her a bluetooth keypad for it, but that effectively turns
it into a less capable netbook.

[Bernd Paysan]

Paul Rubin wrote:

> Mark Wills <forth...@gmail.com> writes:
>> Even so, I think an Android phone is much more suitable for a
>> 'hacker' type (in the old meaning of the word) like Chuck. The Apple
>> is a very neat *consumer* device. Brilliant. But hackers, I imagine,
>> would find the Android platform more hackable.
>
> Android doesn't seem like that much of an improvement; one should not
> have to "root" (break security) on a "hacker's" phone in order to
> program it.

You don't have to "root" an Android phone to program it yourself. All
you need is to tick a checkmark in the settings.

I rooted my Android devices for rather the opposit of "breaking
security". Tools like LBE privacy protection allow much better control
of what apps can do (like reading my contacts), but they require root
privilege to do so. The rooting procedure consists of installing su and
budybox; su is an app that grants apps root privilege when they request
it *and* the user allows that.

A rooted Android is typically more secure than a non-rooted one, due to
add-ons that help to protect security, but won't work on non-rooted
systems.

--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

[Mark Wills]

On Oct 1, 4:31 pm, Bernd Paysan <bernd.pay...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Paul Rubin wrote:

That's right. You don't need to root your android to write code on it.
Just install the Android drivers onto your computer, install the
Android library into Eclipse and you're off. It's actually pretty
simple.

Writing native apps might be more involved; I haven't looked into
that.

Bernd, I saw your posts on your G+ profile re GForth for Android.
Where do we go to download it? I'd like to try it on my little Lenovo
Android Pad thingy!

[Paul Rubin]

Bernd Paysan <bernd....@gmx.de> writes:
> The [Android] rooting procedure consists of installing su and

> budybox; su is an app that grants apps root privilege when they request
> it *and* the user allows that.

Well, that depends on the type of phone, since some are apparently
harder to root than others. How does su get root privileges in the
first place, so that it can extend it to others?

At a higher level, the Android and Iphone ecosystems both remind me of
Windows back in the day, a million little independently marketed
standalone closed-source apps that do narrow, overlapping things and
(more for phone apps than the PC apps) try to spy on and exploit the
user in various ways. As a user and hacker I much prefer the GNU/Linux
community development model that manages to thrive in a certain
subculture of PC users, because PC's (even mass market ones) for
historical reasons have a reasonably open programming interface.
Whether for technical (closed hardware) or social reasons, it's much
less possible to do this with phones. Nokia (Meego) was the closest
thing to a viable exception, but it's now effectively an arm of
Microsoft.

Anyway, phone stuff aside, I wonder what Chuck is up to with this
walkabout. Maybe he will talk about it at Forth day.

[Bernd Paysan]

Mark Wills wrote:
> That's right. You don't need to root your android to write code on it.
> Just install the Android drivers onto your computer, install the
> Android library into Eclipse and you're off. It's actually pretty
> simple.
>
> Writing native apps might be more involved; I haven't looked into
> that.

Well, native apps require to install the NDK, and then you cross-
compile. It also involves using ant to create the apk; it's not that
easy. I first built Gforth for the KBOX, where you can install ordinary
.deb packages, because that's easier. But the real fun is off limits,
because you don't get a "surface" that way ("surfaces" are windows in
Android terminology), i.e. all you can do is terminal IO.

Gforth's CVS repository now contains most of the black magic, but I
haven't yet written a recipie how someone else can reproduce it.

> Bernd, I saw your posts on your G+ profile re GForth for Android.
> Where do we go to download it? I'd like to try it on my little Lenovo
> Android Pad thingy!

Direct download link:

http://bernd-paysan.de/Gforth.apk

Project wiki:

http://www.forth-ev.de/wiki/doku.php/en:projects:gforth-android:start

[van...@vsta.org]

Paul Rubin <no.e...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Also of possible interest, there are some Archos Android tablets that
> can run Angstrom Linux, a fairly nice development environment.

Also take a look at the "Open Pandora". A little bulky, but Angstrom
with Xfce window manager and ~11 hours actual runtime (screen and wifi
on, running programs, and so forth). And as open source as they could
manage (I think the Wifi has a binary firmware blob which gets fed to
the chip, things like that).

--
Andy Valencia
Home page: http://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: http://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

[Bernd Paysan]

After jailbreaking the device, the difference isn't that big anymore
(you can install whatever you like, and both systems are essentially
Unix systems). And hackers will root their Android, too (which is the
equivalent of a jailbreak). Yes, you don't need to root your Android to
install Gforth.apk on it, but the policy of Apples Market allows now to
have interpreters there, too.

The downside of iOS for hackes is more that you need a Mac to develop
for it. Android's SDK runs on all PC platforms.

Anyways: If you google for "iphone forth", you get a question here on
c.l.f as best hit. If you google for "android forth", the first three
links are *actually runable* Forth systems on Android; one of them is
Gforth. So with an Android phone, Chuck could run his GA144 simulator
while walking.

Apple uses llvm/clang as compiler now; though it is said to be GCC-
compatible, I'm not sure if it can successfully compile Gforth. I
probably should give it a try, clang is available on Linux, too ;-).

[rickman]

On 10/2/2012 4:34 PM, Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> Anyways: If you google for "iphone forth", you get a question here on
> c.l.f as best hit. If you google for "android forth", the first three
> links are *actually runable* Forth systems on Android; one of them is
> Gforth. So with an Android phone, Chuck could run his GA144 simulator
> while walking.

Or he can take a cue from Gavino and make his own gaPhone using his own
chips and write his own phone OS from scratch. That sounds more like a
Chuck sort of thing based on what I read here.

Rick