howdy, NetApex!

Evening

I finally made my first widget thanks to your books

how can I help you today?

widget widget, or app widget?

Widget widget

that's cool

not all that many people doing that

I am looking to add a voice search button to it, but (hmm, actually app widget is probably the better answer)

But the search part seems a bit above me

for searching your own app, you mean?

Right

how is your data stored?

and to be honest, i just want te voice recognition to put te word in place and I could do the rest

It isnt stored in app actually, it queries our serves Global Address List

(typing on the Tab so excuse the delay)

Hmm, that looks like exactly what I need

note that I haven't actually tried that code

but, it seems straightforward enough

oh I do have another question too

you're the only one here, so fire away

This app isnt going on the market

so is there a straight forward way to, make it check somewhere for dates?

Err...updates

I'd have it grab a file from a well-known stable URL

where that file has info on the latest version (version code, URL to download the update, etc.)

and more importantly how do you make it install the update?

I'd download the APK yourself

use the magic MIME type in the Intent

then, use startActivity() to kick off the install

application/vnd.android.package-archive

that will trigger the installation process, assuming the device is set up to allow non-Market installs

Ahh, so startActivity() will start the install if I get it downloaded

yup

in theory, you can hand it the URL

and Android can download it for you

okay cool

but if you want to do the download in the middle of the night or something, that doesn't work so well

I will have it check for an update when started and the download will be a choice then

at most 1 meg

that'll work, if the user won't mind the interruption

Cool, sounds easier than i thought it would be

Not used to being able to hog all of your time

yeah, I need to do a bit more to promote the chats, methinks

If there was an app for it....

Having it remind people of the time and even be able to chat using it

I don't think there's an API for Campfire

Dang

the reminder bit would be easy enough, though people could do that themselves by subscribing to the Google Calendar

I'll ponder it

That's the catch i don't get a reminder for some reason

hmm, that's disappointing

I have to remember to look

I've been poking around for another online calendar service to switch to

perhaps I'll have to escalate that process

I noticed you have been moving away from Google a bit, any certain reason?

they kinda messed up my accounts

Uh oh

I've never been a "put your eggs all in one basket" kind of guy anyway

Hello

Yeah

that incident just put more emphasis on trying to make myself less dependent upon any one firm

howdy, Andrew!

This is my first time here

Andrew: do you have a question?

welcome!

if there's a big crowd, I try to go round-robin on questions

Yes, let me see if I can figure out how to ask it

with a small group like this, just ask away!

Ah

okay

Well I'm trying to do some 2D graphics stuff

with Canvas, and Path, and Drawables

and I'm stuck right now

oy

not my cup of tea

but, feel free to ask -- maybe you'll be lucky and hit one of the bits of 2D graphics stuff that I know

Essentially I've been able to draw on the screen with my finger, create paths using quadTo, and draw the paths to the Canvas

which works

Ah, okay :P

However, when I draw enough paths, the app gets really laggy

since I'm having to redraw all the paths on the view each time I update a single Path

so, I've been trying to look into good Android graphics practices

I thought maybe I should create a single View for each Path, and add it to the parent View

yeah, definitely not my cup of tea

that's conceivable, but it doesn't feel likely

but then I watched a talk by Romain Guy from Google and he said try to keep the number of Views to a minimum

so I thought I'd look into Drawables instead

I suspect it may be that you draw to a bitmap-backed canvas and blit the whole bitamp onto the real canvas, so you don't have to keep re-applying the paths

but, that's just a lightly-educated guess

Hmm

haha

okay

so, create a bitmap out of my canvas each time I add a Path?

no

and then just apply the bitmap, and a new path each time?

I am assuming that there is a reason you have to "keep re-applying the paths"

and I am guessing that this is due to something with the Canvas that you get in the drawing methods, having to rebuild the whole image

however, you can create your own Canvas, backed by a Bitmap, IIRC

so, each time you add a path, you add it to your Canvas

well, right now when I update a path, I just invalidate the View, which in turn calls draw() on all the paths to redraw them all

which i know is not efficient at all

yeah, I'm really out on a limb here

see if you can find an open source Android project that does some similar stuff, and see how they do it

or, try StackOverflow

I _was_ able to make it more efficient by only invalidating a section of the view using invalidate(Bounds) and gave it the bounds of the Path I was updating

or, try a book that covers more 2D stuff (e.g., Ed Burnette's _Hello, Android_)

okay, I did search StackOverflow

and didn't get too much help, but I'll look for an open source project or a book

I may get into 2D stuff, with an eye towards charts/graphs, in 2012

I was hoping you covered what I'm looking for in your books :P

Which I bought yesterday

haha

assuming the whole Mayan calendar end-of-the-world thing gets delayed

Lol

haha

_Pro Android Games_ would be another candidate, though I have heard that its material is a bit dated

while you're not implementing a game, a book on Android game development is likely to have better 2D coverage than a general purpose guide

Yea, I know a bunch of stuff changed in Honeycomb in terms of graphics

to make it work better

most of that would be behind the scenes with graphics acceleration

I don't think any Canvas-related APIs changed

I was at Google I/O and watched a talk about graphics

leastways, not that I recall

which helped, but I still don't really understand it all

not my strong point

well, they change the way invalidating works, from what I recall

so an entire parent doesn't get invalidated if only a child gets invalidated

instead it just rebuilds the "display list" or something

oh, yeah, I remember something about that

I understand the concept...but I don't understand what it means for me and how I use it

haha

I think that's more for view hierarchies

I assume I don't _have_ to "use" it...it just works

ah

(e.g., ListView and rows, TableLayout and rows)

okay

Ya know Mark, you should do a Google+ hangout once a month or so

I'm trying to think if I have any other questions

I've got a few different projects I'm working on

NetApex: that implies that I would be on G+

which I'm not yet

Ahh, well that should change

Right now my main project is a startup making note-taking software for active-pen based tablets

that certainly would explain all the path stuff

Like the HTC Flyer, or the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet that was announced last week

haha, yup :)

does the Flyer ship with a pen?

Umm, I think it depends where you buy it

for a while I know Best Buy was not offering it _with_ the pen, you have to buy it separately for $80

which I thought was just ridiculous

but I believe it comes with the pen now

yeah, that's a little out there

probably because no one was buying it

I played with a Kensington stylus with the XOOM early on

but I believe the version of the ThinkPad tablet that comes with the pen is only $30 more

I also contributed to the Cosmonaut Kickstarter, and they're moving along

I think pen+tablet has interesting potential as an adjunct to traditional finger-based input

interesting, I wasn't familiar with that kickstarter

yea, the advantage of these pens (on the Flyer and ThinkPad Tablet) is that they're "active"

like a TabletPC

if you're familiar with those

right

vaguely

Yea, well they're pretty awesome

I used one in college, and I really wished there was something more like today's Android tablets paired with those pens

I'm just glad we've moved past the clay tablets I had to use in college

haha

Hehe

ok, that's a wrap for today's chat

next one is Thursday, same time (7:30pm Eastern)

Alright

thanks for your help

Alright, have a good one

or at least pointers in the right direction

:)

have a pleasant day, everyone!