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libhpcalcs: a toolkit for communicating with Prime calcs...

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Lionel Debroux:
See the end of the post for download links.

Over the past few weeks, as mentioned at http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=13240 and http://ourl.ca/19769 , I've been working on a toolkit for communicating with HP Prime calculators, strongly inspired by libti* for TI calculators, and unsurprisingly dubbed libhpcalcs. It can be downloaded from https://github.com/debrouxl/hplp .
Thanks to critor's USB dumps and tests (EDIT: and later, other persons' tests), we believe the code now works well enough for being beta-tested used by a wider public (on Windows, Linux and MacOS X) :)
While neither critor, nor I, believe that anything can make a significant dent into TI's market share because TI is too entrenched and has lobbying power, we're nevertheless trying to do something with the Prime... as it's clear that if nobody bothers, the Prime won't stand a chance to get widely used (chicken-and-egg problem).


"Toolkit for communicating with HP calculators" means that it's a library backend for people to build GUIs on top of it, but libhpcalcs itself is a GUI-less library, and its terminal-based test program is currently the only UI for using libhpcalcs...

Excerpt from the README about the library's current capabilities:

--- Quote ---The code base does:
* support communication with a single Prime calculator connected to the computer. The communication is known to work with the "SDKV0.30" firmware version from mid-August 2013, but might not work with other older or newer versions, if HP performs backwards-incompatible changes in the protocol (like TI does);
* implement six operations (without _known_ bugs): ready check, get calculator information, receive screenshot, send file, receive file, receive backup, set date and time;
* provide a terminal-based UI: the test program "test_hpcalcs".

The code base doesn't:
* perform color conversion on PNG screenshots (libhpcalcs should depend on libpng to uncompress the files, and recompress them after mangling);
* provide a way to select one of multiple HP calculators (probing USB devices);
* provide a user-friendly GUI for the above, but a GUI can definitely build upon the library easily enough;
* implement _proper_ conversion from UTF-16 LE to other charsets on its own: that's a task for libicu, Qt or other libraries;
--- End quote ---

What's next ?
* first of all, making sure that people are interested in the work in the first place. I'm clearly not going to keep spending most of my free time (as I did over the past week) on something people do not find useful ! [EDIT a couple weeks later: seems that some people are interested :)]
* fixing bugs which are bound to be reported, none are known right now but there certainly are some :)
* implementing several extra features from the TODO list embedded into the README, starting with probing devices;
* implementing a GUI for the program (with Qt, which has become the main choice for a portable, good-looking, fast UI toolkit and software abstraction layer)... but I don't plan on doing it by myself, although I'll obviously gladly support anyone trying to do so.
* implementing 39gII support ?
* certainly more... again, iff people are interested.


Go forth and test, thanks in advance ;)


Development source code: https://github.com/debrouxl/hplp (master branch is stable, master2 contains changes for testing, which may be rewritten before integration to master).
Ready-made install script: https://raw.github.com/debrouxl/hplp/master/install_hplp.sh . Unless your distro packages hidapi (Debian and derivatives do not), you'll have to compile it yourself (autotools-based program, so configure && make && sudo make install).
Latest Windows binaries + source tarball: http://tiplanet.org/beta/libhpcalcs-0.0.1-package.zip .

Also, I'm looking for 39gII users who can tolerate command-line tools, for providing me USB dumps (usbpcap) from their Windows computers when running the HP Connectivity Kit, the way critor did for the Prime.

[latest EDIT: 2013/11/16]

DJ Omnimaga:

--- Quote from: Lionel Debroux on November 09, 2013, 04:20:26 pm ---While neither critor, nor I, believe that anything can make a significant dent into TI's market share because TI is too entrenched and has lobbying power

--- End quote ---
Not to go too much off-topic nor to offend anybody, but in Critor's case, I always wondered if his negative opinion about the Prime was influenced more by the presence of a certain troublemaker in the HP community (although that person did really bad things such as real life threats towards TI-Planet admins, I feel it would be unfair if HP and the TI community that tries to expands its horizons were punished for the actions of one person). A lot of his comments about the Prime were not very positive, despite its potential, and I felt it wasn't only due to a certain bias towards TI.


Now back on-topic, I'm glad this project is coming along and that some people supports the calc. I will probably try to test it when I have some time, providing that it isn't command-line based, isn't a major PITA to install and doesn't require 2000 dependencies (as I am not very tech-savy, I don't want to spend two weeks trying to install a software like I did many times before, halting my progress on other projects x.x). I wouldn't mind giving you an USB dump of my HP 39gII at one point, though, so that you can add 39gII support.

By the way, the official 39gII connectivity kit or OS doesn't even support file transfers properly, because any program you download from the computer to your calculator will freeze the calc. <_<.

Lionel Debroux:

--- Quote ---I will probably try to test it when I have some time, providing that it isn't command-line based,
--- End quote ---
test_hpcalcs is terminal-based, though interactive.
There's mild point in spending time developing a GUI for some code backend nobody cares about in the first place - and so far, hardly anybody cares about libhpcalcs: no reply on TI-Planet (where I posted a week ago), no reply on Cemetech, only your reply here, and a single beta-tester (besides critor) so far.


--- Quote ---isn't a major PITA to install and doesn't require 2000 dependencies
--- End quote ---
Well, I provided ready-made Windows binaries, just unzip the ZIP file attached to my previous post ;)
libpng needs to be added as a dependency at some point... but only if the program has actual users. For now, that's not a given.

DJ Omnimaga:
Yeah true, and just take a look at my 3D graphics topic, it was pretty much ignored since it was posted, with very few people checking and not bothering to reply. I don't know if it's because of site navigation issues (for example, there are no links to those sub-forums on the front page), but that is kinda worrying, especially considering that some of the people who checked the thread without replying already have an HP Prime.

Streetwalrus:
Sounds pretty good to me. Since I'm on Linux and I plan on getting a Prime, it's a no brainer for me. I'm willing to help develop a GUI for it once it's matured, but a set of CLI progs in the titools style would be cool too.

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