Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Super Scribble (EDITED: 10/03/2011 v2)

EDIT:
You can download the latest package installer .sis file from here:
Downloads - super-scribble - Project Hosting on Google Code

If you have a Nokia with a touchscreen and a Symbian OS and ever tried Python I'm sure you know Scribble, a small sample application that shows Python touchscreen interaction by providing a simple doodling application.

One of the things you may have noticed it, it's the limited feature set, you have an eraser and a pencil, you also have a color picker from where you can pick a few colors, thankfully you can save the doodles or notes you make on it.

There are other applications for Symbian touch devices that deliver some similar features, some allow for zoom and a better color picker, but nothing else...

Here are some of the doodles I did on scribble's unmodified state:

As you may have noticed, they are only B&W pictures, this is because rarely any of the colors provided are truly useful.
I've used scribble for quite some time and this week I spent my time practicing Python and PyS60 API.

I messed up with pretty much everything on Scribble's source code, so I added a number of features to it, namely mix brush, smudge tool, opacity, RGB sliders to pick color and brush color history. All this while trying to maintain the performance and smoothness of the application.

With those changes I manage to do these doodles in little time:

Of course there is still room for improvement, like the ability to open and edit images (and by consequence the support for bigger images and removal of the white stripe on the bottom of the images)

You can download the application (sis and python source) from here (tested in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, should work in N97, 5530, 5230, X6 or any other Symbian touch device that has PyS60 2.0.0 installed and working)

I'll perhaps post a video later explaining what each of the interface areas does... If you're going to try it, you should at least know that touching the red bordered rectangle on the will pick the rectangle fill color for the brush.

Have fun!

PS:
R.I.P. Nokia, if you didn't know Nokia it's now a Microsoft's partner and while Nokia isn't dead, Symbian S60 5th and S^3 will kinda meet a dead end, S40 will continue to survive in lower end devices where nokia still have a valuable market share.

EDIT (10/03/2011):
I improved it (currently version 0.6.x) but didn't released it yet - probably will release a video together with the new version (that will probably be version 0.7.x).

v0.6.0 features the following additions:
  • Support for any size of drawing (as long as the memory handles it)
  • Support for Zoom
  • Move tool (allows one to move the canvas by dragging it)
  • Color picker tool, picks a tool from canvas to use in brush

Stay tuned for updates :]