OPL - Open Programming Language

The OPL Symbian Diary is here to provide you with news, articles and tutorials all about The Open Programming Language for Symbian OS. It is a companion site to the Source Forge pages (linked to on the left), and we hope to provide a friendly source of information for OPL.

UIQ Event Core Updated to v0.61

The OPL Skeleton application Event Core, by Ewan Spence and FreEPOC, has been updated to version 0.61. The main change is the menu system now works correctly through pen taps, and can be tapped on like any other UIQ menu.

Round Up of UIQ OPL

It's been three weeks now since the OPL Runtime for UIQ was announced at 3GSM - the OPL-Dev team had a tight schedule and the final builds were only completed on the Sunday beforehand, which meant there wasn't anything immediatly available for people to see what OPL could do.

That didn't stop the OPL Forum over at My-Symbian (Free registration required) getting down and dirty and discovering what they could do with the code - it's a good place to ask questions.

Steve Litchfield of 3-Lib has updated Timelog, Fairway and STB to UIQ OPL. He talks about the conversion process here. STB (Shut The Box) also includes the Source Code so you can see how things are done.

Another app with source code available is Ewan Spence's Event Core, available at FreEPOC. This is a fully commented source code for a skeleton app, showing you how everything works. There's been a lot of back and forwards on the Event Core in the OPL-Dev team to make sure everythin is done correctly. It's a great place to start you application coding from.

And in the winges there are a fair few apps undergoing beta testing before full releases over the next few weeks - and they're big hitting applications as well, not little puzzle games like Vexed (whcih should be released for UIQ anyway).

Thoughts on OPL Conversion

Steve Litchfield, of 3-Lib, has been busy porting his existing OPL applications over to the latest runtime on UIQ. We asked him how he felt the conversion process went, and why he's supporting OPL.

Event Core for UIQ OPL Released

Ewan Spence and FreEPOC have released Event Core for UIQ OPL. Event Core is a program that does absolutely nothing! It's strength lies in the fact that packed in the zip file is the OPL source code that illustrates how everything works.To go with the new UIQ Release of OPL, we've updated Event Core to run on the UIQ Platform. Is there anything to stop you coding your own apps now?

OPL Runtime and Tools Released for UIQ Platform

The third Symbian Platform (after the Communicators and Series 60) can now support OPL. Following a quiet development process, the OPL-Dev team is pleased to offer not only an OPL Runtime and SDK for UIQ, but a full suite of OPX Language extensions, providing access to almost every facet of the UIQ Platform.

Thanks also go to UIQ themselves, who have announced OPL at the annual 3GSM jaunt to Cannes., and have generally been really supportive of getting OPL onto devices such as the Sony Ericsson P900 and the Motorola A920.

More details can be found at the OPL Sourceforge Homepage.

OPL at O'Reilly

I'm finally back in the UK, after talking about OPL at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. The talk went really well, around 70 people turned up to listen and see what OPL could do. And I expect most people at the conference got personal demos of OPL from myself (and some free OPL applications on the MMC Cards I was giving away).

There's a lot of people out there interested in OPL, and programming their smartphones. There's also some corporate interest, some from Nokia, and some from other large organisations that I need to follow up. Hopefully we'll see some new programs from people in the near future.

In summary, OPL continues onwards, gaining mindshare, momentum and new runtimes so OPL can appear on more devices.

Some people have been watching news from Etech and asked "what are we going to do now Nokia are releasing Python for Series 60?" The obvious answer is nothing. Firstly OPL isn't all about Series 60 (more on that next week), and the languages are geared to doing different things. After talking to Nokia, there should be no reason why OPL cannot call Python scripts (and vice versa).

Secondly, the more languages a platform has, the more developers there are. The more developers there are, the more applications. The more applications, the better the community for the device.

Are You Attending the OPL Presentation?

The talk is tomorrow, and not only will you get to hear what OPL is all about, you'll get to see real live OPL apps running on Symbian devices. There's also a whole bundle of OPL Related stuff to give away (yes, free for everyone who turns up), and the best members of the audience will win some jelly babies. \

Do you want to know more? Find the man in the kilt at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference