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Preview Release 0.5.0

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@codepoet80 codepoet80 released this 03 Oct 19:45
· 104 commits to main since this release

DB8 for Newer Android

  • Chromium 119 removed WebSQL, so the Pixel Tablet's WebView had no openDatabase. Apollo and every Mojo app's
    Depot stopped at their first store.
  • websql.js and WebSql.kt now provide the device's API over one SQLite file per app and database. Android 5
    devices keep the WebView's own.

PDK native apps coming to life!

  • The TouchPad's own binaries run unchanged, through the glibc loader on 32-bit ARM and under bundled qemu on
    64-bit-only devices.
  • Commander Keen plays on the Nexus 5 and the Pixel Tablet.
  • GLES 1.1 and GLES 2 are streamed to the shell and replayed into a framebuffer of the app's own size.
    Transformers G1, Dice and ThermalPad run.
  • Also built: SDL_mixer, SDL_image, SDL_ttf, SDL_net, and the image and font libraries apps link by name.
  • webOS file paths and the TouchPad's fonts resolve in the webOS root.
  • PDK cards show full screen, turned as measured on the TouchPad.
  • The accelerometer is SDL joystick 0, as on webOS.

Phone layout

  • FormFactor decides phone or tablet from the screen, or from an owner setting that is also reachable over the bus
    or adb.
  • The launcher gets a 40 px scrolling tab bar, two permanent tabs, 84 px cells with 56 px icons (four across a
    Nexus 5) and a four-icon dock. Nothing changes on a tablet.
  • Apps are told they are on a Pre3 on a phone.
  • Phone Zoom is a per-app fixed-viewport switch, listed in Device Info's new Software group. It is on by default
    only for Palm's Clock, Calculator and Memos.
n5 n5b
  • Launcher cells are 84 by 112 so labels clear the next row, with 13 px labels. The edit frame is a nine-slice.
  • The dock is 95 px tall with 8% smaller icons.
  • Just Type's panel fits a phone, and a keyboard's first key opens Just Type with that character on phones and
    tablets.
  • The layout choice moved from Device Info into a Layout group on Screen & Lock, an exception to rules 0 and 5
    (delta B11). A change restarts the shell. Device Info keeps a read-only row and the Phone Zoom width.
  • Screen & Lock and Sounds & Alerts fit a phone's card, and Screen & Lock's footnotes share one spacing.

Bug Fixes

  • Mojo lists coast again.
  • The launcher's over-scroll snaps back in about 370 ms instead of hanging for about a second.
  • Android apps can be uninstalled from the launcher on the target-28 flavour.
  • The grey box behind First Use's Start Over button is gone, for every page (delta A11).
  • webOS Community Account Manager installs on the Pixel Tablet and Nexus 5.

Busybox

  • On 2026-10-02 the prebuilt busybox was replaced with a build without FEATURE_SUID, so package scripts stopped
    dying on Android 10 and later.
  • Rebuilt against Android's own libc for both ABIs. The static glibc build was still killed by seccomp
    on Android 17, which left the 64-bit webOS root with no commands at all.

Keyboard 0.5.0

  • Draws at a whole-number scale chosen from the screen: 2x on the Nexus 5 and Pixel Tablet, 1x on the HP 10 G2 and
    Nexus 7, with 1x to 3x in the setup screen.

Measured on Pre3

  • A PDK buffer of the other shape turns clockwise, the opposite of the TouchPad, and the PDK card now follows that
    on a portrait device.
  • The accelerometer's x axis is positive to the right, as assumed.