Tuesday, December 31, 2013

it works, I'll make it work.

Now having GIMP and Inkscape in an Android app might sound like a good thing. I know I was blown away. Well not blown away, maybe surprised a little. It does work, I keep saying that.

So what is missing besides speed? A mouse! A mouse is missing, you know that handy click and hold to select some objects. I never thought I'd miss a mouse. This is a quick blurb between doing other stuff.

So I think I need to investigate what that little switch on the side of the stylus can do. It is rather awkward to use and I hope it's function is programmable.

I realize I need to explain the need for speed. Speed it reaction time. When you click-n-wait for every action, it can make you impatient. I click on a object, wait for it to fully surround the selection, drag and wait for it to finish. So this app might not be for you if you have that knee-jerk Frisbee frustration reaction.

But still, it works.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

yeah they do

Ok here's my deeper thought about running open source apps on Android tablets. PCs have chips and circuits to direct memory paths and allocate data in fast and efficient ways. These Android tablets do not share the same circuitry. Android apps are optimized for Android hardware. I am in fact amazed at what you can do on Android hardware. If you look at a tablet motherboard, there are only a few chips that do it all. Now cram software into it that is designed to run on a PC motherboard with groups of chips to handle specific functions, it runs so slow.

Some one used the word porting. When you port you recompile the source code so that the software will run on targeted hardware/software combination. To get a picture of that the source code of GIMP written to run in Linux is recompiled to run in Windows OS and have an (.exe) on the end. Compiling adds the necessary libraries, utilities and code instructions that the host operating system understands.

There are cheats like emulators and compatibility layers and virtual machines which allow for instance Windows programs to run within Linux OS without recompiling. This is very convenient, like fooling Linux to think it's running a Linux program when in fact it is a Windows program. A word to the wise, mileage may very. For some combinations of hardware/software it works well, for others a typewriter works better.

Of course another way of doing this is the "cloud" where GIMP would be on a server at some data house and you could subscribe to use it over the internet. Adobe is doing this with it's Creative Suite. This is stupid for GIMP because it's free anyway and brilliant for Adobe cause it is expensive, so you can rent time on Creative Suite and not have to buy it or install it, yet have at it.

Again I think the apps on Android tablet are great. Some have even done finished art on the tablet. Ultimately the tablet is cool for portability, taking notes, doing sketches in odd places. A regular PC can do the heavy work at home with full blown software. Ok it wasn't that deep.

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

aaah! they do exist......on Android

Well, on my tablet I just installed Gimp Inkscape Android. I am in shock........it works, slowly but it works. If you have great patients, it works. It opened with both Gimp and Inkscape on the desktop. A side bar with tabs for each program because they are separate. Then I made two squares, blured one into a shadow, oooh! I shut down Inkscape, then Gimp, what!!!, it's XFCE desktop! They put two powerful programs and Linux XFCE on Android!?!

Slow but it works. Patience Luke, use the open source.

I had to run, fight Vader, so now I'm back.
This is what came up. Gimp and Inkscape together. I figure if this is what is in store then the future is bright. Now most Android devices don't have the memory or the CPU power to run this thing at a descent speed (my opinion) but it does work. What's the point? I have Linux albeit a very thin Linux running Gimp and Inkscape my favorite open source apps, slowly but they run on Android OS. I also have a version of Open Office for Android, gee feels like I'm on my laptop. 

Now when you are using Inkscape you can't use Gimp. You can close one and full screen the other. I have used other vector apps but what's sweet about Inkscape is the alpha channels. You can blur things nicely, man I love shadows. Slow but it works. My Galaxy Note 10.1 came with 16 gig of RAM memory, I wonder if the 32 gig model runs this better and if a larger RAM model is in the works. Graphics apps use lots of RAM. AAH! they do exist on Android.