[General Topics] CJBS:
IBM Midlet Manager - 6.1.1 - working on Blue Angel PPC2003SE

Works

Well, I got it working on my Blue Angel PPC2003SE. Google Maps, Opera Mini, and the GMail app all work fine.

Directory Structure

It's a bit of a troublesome installation process. I don't know why they didn't just have an installer like the 5.7 version. Still, I was able to install it to my storage card. My directory structure is as follows:

\Storage\IBM Midlet Manager\ (with no contents)

\Storage\IBM Midlet Manager\bin

\Storage\IBM Midlet Manager\lib

Shortcuts

It's possible to create shortcuts to individual applications by creating a shortcut, and then setting the parameter to the index of the Midelet as seen in the Midlet Manager. For example, I've got a shortcut to the Opera Mini app (which appears first in the list when running the Manager). It's shortcut is as follows:

"\Storage\IBM Midlet Manager\bin\emulator.exe" "-Xjam:run=1"

The "1" at the end is the index of the applicaion to run. So, in my case, "2" would be for the GMail app. It's actually possible to substitute the index "1" with the storage name for the application, however I was unable to find out how to retrieve the storage name. (It is possible to use the -Xjam:list parameter to list the storage names, but these aren't output to a dialog, and I don't have a command line program on my PPC.) Using the storage name would be better, as it would mean that each time a new application is uninstalled, the other shortcuts affected wouldn't need to be updated as a result of their indexes changing.

Font Files

It's possible to change the fonts used in the Midlets, too. There's a file in the lib subdrectory (in my structure, it's

\Storage\IBM Midlet Manager\lib\jclMidp20\fontPaths.properties

). Just substitute the names of the fonts with fonts that exist on your PPC. For example, to display Chinese characters, I substituted LcduiSystemFont: Windows\tahoma.ttf to become

LcduiSystemFont: Windows\sunglobe.ttf

- note that I have the sunglobe.ttf file in the \Windows directory. This may not work with all fonts. Ensure that when editing the file, it is saved in ANSI format, not Unicode (otherwise the MIDlet Manager won't load).

Gmail App

Note that in order to use the Gmail app, which is still in Beta, you'll need to have your language set to "English - US". THis can be done on the PC on the Gmail.com site by clicking Settings.

Google Maps - Fatal Error (upon loading)

Initially, after installing Google Maps, I was unable to run the aplication. The app would load the first part of the Terms and Conditions page, wait for about 20 seconds, and then present a dialog "Fatal error. Please exit and restart." I noted that it didn't even try and connect to the Google Server (as per the network data window, part of an app I have on my PPC). It turned out that I had another midlet (map-related - I can't remember the name) that used the Google Maps server, amongst other map data providers. I uninstalled both this applicaion, and the Google Maps application, reloaded the Midlet Manager, and then re-installed the Google Maps application. It then worked.

Google Maps - Hong Kong maps

Google has recently introduced road map files for Hong Kong, China (search for Hong Kong, China on the web at http://map.google.com, and you'll see it). However, when I use the Midlet Version, the (road) maps for Hong Kong don't exist - it seems that the PC version and the Midlet version are sourced from different locations/servers...

PenPower conflict

I use the trial version of PenPower on my PPC. This allows input of 50 drawn Chinese Characters per device reset. The first time that a character is drawn, this interfers with the main window process on the device and causes a lock. If running the Midlet Manager with this program, the Midlet manager may seem to stall. If this is the case, simply draw another character (or just a squiggle), and the lock will be broken, leaving the application to continue running.