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KAlgebra on Android

Since I started blogging I’ve talked many times about KAlgebra. Usually it’s not to display it’s awesome features but to discuss its portability. I’ve always considered that it’s important for KDE not to lock down its applications to a platform. That’s why I’ve put my efforts into ensuring KAlgebra will work properly on different platforms so far, like the N9 and Plasma Active.

— TL;DR: you can jump to the video 🙂 —

I think we’ve done a great job so far. It hasn’t been easy and we are not there yet, but I think that being able to do things like this is an awesome opportunity for projects like KDE Edu where we want to target the widest audience possible.

Android offers this, a widespread audience where we will be able to put our things. That’s why I put my interest in it, anyway.

Regarding the actual implementation, it’s far from perfect. It’s using KAlgebra Mobile, which has different backends. I created a new one that doesn’t require any components present. QtQuick components are lacking for Android at the moment, so I came up with this UI that besides not being properly integrated it works good enough and keeps me from frustration. Things are looking good on that regard, apparently I’m not the only one needing those, so I hope we’ll get some proper UX eventually.

A lot is left to be done still: Integration with the system, integration in the Market, etc. Ideas welcome.

Oh, and last but not least, big thank you for Marijn Kruisselbrink who put up with my questions and opened the path by adapting kdelibs.

And now, the video.

Almost forgot, if anybody wants to try it, you can download the installer here. Remember, it eats easter bunnies.

10 Comments

  1. Maurice

    Thak you for your great app and I have tried the android and the nokia N9 version and my I have found that it doesn’t accept function like Ln (X) . Is it a bug ?

  2. apol

    It’s called log(x).

  3. dipesh

    Just amazing! Lot of work? What where the pitfalls? Rock on apol! 🙂

  4. apol

    Hi! 🙂 I’m glad you liked it!!

    Well it was quite a lot of work honestly, learning how to compile kdelibs for android, workarounding some KStandardDirs problems as well… it worked out great in the end, though 🙂

  5. korbusco

    A calculator specific keyboard would turn KAlgebra into a must have app for mobile devices 🙂

  6. apol

    @korbusco 😀 patches welcome!!

  7. ryuske

    Is there somewhere with an updated app? Like an active repository? Or a repository period.

  8. apol

    Not really, at least for the moment.
    The plan is to put it in Google Play eventually.

  9. Bogdan Cristea

    Hi
    Is there a tutorial explaining how to compile kdelibs on Android ? I am interested in porting okular core library.
    regards
    Bogdan

  10. apol

    @Bogdan not really, I just compiled the kdelibs android branch, but it was not pretty…

    my plan is to try to do it properly for Qt5/KF5…

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