Sojourner: a(nother) FOSDEM schedule app for the N900

Last year, I threw together a primitive FOSDEM schedule application for the N900. A year later—just in time for FOSDEM 2011, which I am attending!—it’s back, with more polish and a catchier name: Sojourner.

A screenshot of Sojourner's main window A screenshot of Sojourner's single event view

New since last time around:

  • You can refresh the schedule from within the app;
  • It works in portrait mode;
  • It generally looks a bit better, with margins and button sizes matching other Fremantle applications more closely;
  • It has, yunno, icons and packaging.

Most of those fall firmly into the “well of course it should be like that”. I told you it was primitive the first time around. 🙂 There are a few more screenshots on my Sojourner page, or you can install it from Fremantle Extras. It’s currently in extras-testing; please feel free to leave feedback there or here. The wiki on Gitorious has a laundry list of suggestions for improvements, as well as a few buglets I’m aware of. Of course, if you want to get involved, I’d be delighted. It’s written in Python, using Gtk+ and Hildon. Non-code-wise, the artwork could definitely use some love (I just threw it together in a few minutes in the Gimp) and some more careful thought about the user experience might be nice.

8 thoughts on “Sojourner: a(nother) FOSDEM schedule app for the N900”

  1. It works great. Thanks!

    Don’t worry about the artwork, it’s just fine.

    I also voted for the package.

  2. That would be great! The app currently parses the Pentabarf XML format. I don’t know what machine-readable formats—if any—the next MeeGo Conf schedule will be available in, but it should be relatively straightforward to glue another parser in. (I think an ical/xcal backend would be ideal, really.)

  3. Does it cache the calendar? Or is there free wifi @ FOSDEM? I would not like it if I had to use my dataplan abroad.

  4. It caches the schedule! There’s no way I’m paying my mobile operator for roaming data.

    But there is also free wireless at FOSDEM, so you can ask the application to check for updates while you’re there, if the wireless hasn’t fallen down under the load of hundreds of people with at least two devices each …

  5. I see there was an update? There are colors now?

    What is still on the TODO? Maybe for just a FOSDEM app, it is too much to ask, but it might be nice to be able to add the favorites to the calendar.

    Where can I follow the development? Here? 🙂

    Thanks for the app so far,
    Karlo

  6. Karlo: yep! Colours and features! See http://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2011/01/31/sojourner-0-2-coloured-and-communitized/ for some info on the update.

    http://willthompson.co.uk/sojourner/ has links to the Gitorious page for the project, which is probably the best place to follow the development, though I’ll probably blog about releases. No mailing list/IRC channel yet, I’m too lazy. Maybe I should use a Google Group or something. There’s also a link to the TODO list on the website, specifically to http://gitorious.org/sojourner/pages/Home

    Adding your favourites to the device calendar would be a great feature! I don’t know what the API to add/remove events to the calendar looks like, and I definitely won’t have time to find out any time soon, but if you’re interested on hacking on it that would be awesome. 🙂

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