The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie) project has released a developer preview release in hopes of attracting testers for a pending stable release. The Opie 1.1.3 release previews a “vastly improved” version of the free graphical application environment for Linux handhelds and webpads, project leaders say.

The pending 1.2.0 release will be the first stable Opie version since the August, 2003 release of Opie 1.0. It will feature a new PIM (personal information manager) database backend based on SQLite.

The 1.1.3 Opie release comes just two months after the launch of an Opie development toolkit based on KDevelop3.

According to “Chief Opie Evangelist” Oliver Fels, “Since the closing of the Opie 1.0.x BRANCH, the Opie code base has been vastly improved thanks to a lot of long-standing cleanups and restructuring. Several libraries have been optimized by splitting them up in modules with a cleaner API. Several new applications have made their way into the platform, [including] a brand new package manager, the Eye-of-Zilla image viewer, and the new Gutenbrowser reader for Project Gutenberg documents.”

Additional enhancement, according to Fels, include an improved graffiti input extension, the addition of a screenshot applet and an image drawer app, improved support for high resolution devices like the Sharp Zaurus C7xx, and a more usable network setup with wireless neighborhood scanning.

A complete changelog is available on the Project Opie Website. Testers are invited to submit bug reports. One additional developer release is planned prior to the 1.2.0 release.

Opie is a fork of Trolltech's Qtopia project. It currently supports Sharp's Zaurus with stock firmware, the Familiar firmware, or OpenZaurus firmware. It also supports Compaq's iPaq running running on Familiar firmware.

 
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