2006-03-17

Putty for Symbian OS

There was one thing I didn't like about in s2putty: it didn't take advantage of the full resolution available on the device, but used traditional resolution that was scaled up. The result was a bit fuzzy, and nearly gave me a headache.

I downloaded the latest beta source, as it is supposed to support S60 3rd Ed and the double resolution. A quick browse thru the sources revealed that it should support double resolution on N90 as well, if it provided the proper flag for the OS. Reading the 2nd Ed FP 3 C++ SDK docs I realized all I have to do is recompile the project with the correct SDK, and the ELayoutAwareAppFlag is turned on. The other choice would've been to find the CAknAppUi::BaseConstructL() method and give it the flag, but since this required no source changes it was the way to try out first...

Workes like a charm, the text is crisp and clear, with the 5x7 font it gives a 70x53 terminal window in fullscreen mode.

If you don't want to compile the project your self, you can download s2putty 1.4.1 beta 1 for S60 2nd Edition FP 3 (PGP Signature) and install it on your device, if you trust me enough :-)

Update: it does have a small problem with fullscreen setting, if you store fullscreen mode as default. It won't activate fullscreen UI mode at startup, although the internal state is set to believe it is in fullscreen mode. You have to toggle fullscreen mode twice (off-on) to actually use it in fullscreen mode.