A Pragmatic Perspective by Nino D'Aversa

1.0 Release – Camera Capture with Live Preview

This is a picture of a very happy person…

1.0 Release - Nino Shot

That’s my Camera Capture application in action! I started from the built in Microsoft SDK sample and added the live preview. This is a big first step towards introducing the functionality to Fennec. I have zipped up all the code which can be found here. Also see the gallery for a few other shots: Ted wanted a picture of the code that lets me takes pictures and Mike wanted a picture of my blog within a picture of my blog, in order to create a singularity that would implode the blogsphere (however I believe I have failed him – sorry Mike!). Finally the last image is a picture of my car from the window, this is the image captured after tapping ‘Take a still image’.

This concludes my DPS911 course work, however I have managed to land myself an internship this summer at Mozilla! So that means I’ll be taking all my work this term further and starting new and exciting things for Fennec, so stay tuned!

1.0 Release Update

It’s finally here, my last week at Seneca. It’s been a long time coming and I can sense the good feeling of being done coming along. However before I let myself enjoy my graduation I have a few more things to clear up. One being my 1.0 release. I will be working today and tomorrow on it, with an expected release for no later then Wednesday night.

Also I’m happy to report that my WiFi patch submitted for my 0.9 release has landed. The r+ and sr+ from Doug and Johnny came through yesterday and today.

Hopefully my next blog post will be for my 1.0 release.

0.9 Release – WiFi Scanning Updates on Windows Mobile

Needless to say for those in and around Seneca, and especially those in the BSD program, things have been non-stop for the last few weeks. After meeting with Dave I adjusted my 0.9 release target to something more realistic. I have been pushing on my WiFi bug to try and get it to the landing stage. I believe my latest patch gets it quite close, if not there. I know Doug is tied up with FF3.5 tree freeze so I’m not expecting a review for a little while. Thanks to Dave who understands the juggling act that consumes our lives right now and bringing real world solutions to real world problems; everything is not always clean and simple, as he says. For my next release I plan to produce a stand alone Camera application that at the very least captures still images using DirectDraw. In a more ideal scenario I will also add the live preview functionality, but I want to temper my expectations surrounding exams. More to follow in the coming days.

0.9 Release Update

So it’s Easter weekend and I’m plugging away at some code. I wish I didn’t have to be like this but its been a crazy couple weeks and this release was put on the back burner even though it was the only assignment I really desired to work on; due dates are due dates and you need to prioritize. However I am alienating some family to get some coding done today. I updated my WiFi scanning bug with an updated patch. This new approach now utilizes the code already existing for the win32 implementation and adds some #ifdef’ing to allow for the changes needed for my Windows Mobile implementation. This approach was suggested by Doug and it makes sense to reduce code duplication and increase maintainability. I’m switching gears to the Camera API now with hopes to get a WIP patch out before the end of the night. Wish me luck and Happy Easter to those to whom it applies.

0.9 Release Update

Okay so its been a while since I blogged (I know Dave is going to yell at me). I have been pushing hard on this open source course work all semester and I really needed to concentrate on my other courses for a while. Gladly I have completed my white paper which was the single largest assignment we have had in BSD. I’m happy with the result but it definitely ate up a lot of my time. Moving forward to my 0.9 release, I got some feedback from Doug yesterday and after further discussion on IRC I plan to take his advice and move the Windows Mobile WiFi code into the same implementation as the Win32 version. There is quite a bit of code overlap and it makes more sense to maintain it in one location if I can manage it (unforeseen blowups notwithstanding). I have started researching my Camera API work, however it seems to me that the only solution is to pop-up the built in camera application and then receive the picture once the user clicks to take a picture. Brad asked me to look into direct way through DirectDraw, however I have been unable to find anything yet. If someone knows a bit more I would appreciate some leads. To reiterate my goals for this release cycle: I plan to update my WiFi code to use the win32 implementation file, get a WIP patch for the Camera API (hopefully) and write that guest blog post for the GPSObessed.com. Look for more blog posts in the coming days now that I can focus on open source again.