Meizu M6 Firmware suggestion regarding Languages (as of S 2.003.2)

I saw this post today:

Originally Posted by golles

I would more likely see skin files, so you can add them to the M6 and then select them on the player... (then they can also add a sort of random or time related function for the skin

From #11 in the thread http://www.meizume.com/showthread.php?p=18247#post1824

This got me thinking about the current firmware and a few of the things ive heard being asked for on the forum. Perticular things which caught my attention were:

• Some people want more software, others want to remove things like Calendar
• Many regions have locality issues with firmware releases (languages)
• There are still many things we _could_ do with the player, if the architecture was a little more open

A propper skinning GUI on the player (as golles suggests) would be much smoother. Which also ties in nicely to the idea of splitting the firmware into seperate modules.

The entire process could be organised through the file structure in a "System" folder. By ensuring USB MSC is built into the core of the firmware it would then be possible to easily add and remove "software" in designated folders within the "System" folder we already have.

e.g.:

• Languages (Something a LOT of people would like)
• Games
• Utilities (Calculator, Calendar etc..)
• Alternative game skins (e.g. the PacMan & Donkey Kong skins for BoxMan)

Esentially all im describing is a 2-tier software architecture. Theres an underlying operating system which controls the GUI, settings, FM tuner, audio and video playback (basically the firmware we have so far). Then ontop of this lies modules of code for utilities and extras (as listed above), taken from the current firmware.

It should be quite easy to extract modules like this, take existing segments of code, wrap it up with some metadata in a header (e.g. application name, application category), then the OS just has to process the header, and if necessary load the code into memory & jump to it (using the stack to return to the previous location once the code completes). Its not like these "utilities" even hold dependencies with eachother so that wouldnt even be an issue. Ofcourse skins would also become more segmented (for individual modules), but this is also for the better - like I mention above, there may be a greater appreciation for the game skins people have been making.

I personally think the most important part of this is making language support better. The meizu should only need to load the language data once when it starts up, assuming a restart is even necessary at all. Loading the data from 3 INI files in a subfolder of System instead should not be _that_ much harder.

This is assuming the miniplayer has a stack and its relatively easy to move data from storage memory to executable memory. There may ofcourse be hardware limitations which prevent this from working, but if not.. this could be a far more versatile method for dealing with firmwares & user settings.

Additionally: ALL user settings should be in a recognisable format, like the FM.INI file (that is good practice), the settings dat file should not exist at all. This would also make it easier for people in this community to develop new software for the meizu. But more importantly would also make it a lot easier to transfer settings between firmwares.

I do like the meizus firmware, but improvements are always welcome. Just my two cents from a programmers perspective

hehe, quite impressive opinion. I think you're right but don't think about it as a two-tier development, settings are not a tier on multi-tier development, they're part of the tier they belong to.

Actually, what you pointed above it's something i came across a while back when I bought my first player and requested an IDE to improve the firmware on several firmware's whishlists.

What I dont understand is why some functionality is locked down, for instance there's no point on having several languages on the firmware if they'll unlock only 3 (Meizu firmware I mean).

Also, I think they wanted to keep important settings away from user's access to avoid several problems that will happen with guys trying to be kinda 'smarter' and screwing up the firmware by changing critical data.

There are some large images in this post. The forum kept re-encoding my gif images to jpeg - considerably decreasing their quality.

Sorry for the misunderstanding regarding tiers. I ment it in a purely conceptual sense, please see the following two images (before / after) for a simpler explanation. The two tiers are in terms of "Main OS" and "Utilitys", rather than anything complicated (or specific to settings).

Before:

After:

I can understand they may want to keep some very low level settings away from users, especially with the touchpad calibration, but idealistically it would be better to keep all non-critical settings in a recognised format.

To be honest im surprised more people arent interested in this, especially considering the number of people who demand 'this, that or the other' language for each firmware release.. with my proposal you only need 1 language definition file, which would only need minor updates (easily fixed in this community) for any added/changed text between firmware releases. Better yet the languages could be directly used with the different versions of each release (Dane-Elec, Meizu, etc..) just by copying 1 extra file to the Meizu.

An example of how the seperate files could be laid out:

Again, its all just ideals probably never happen. Im really surprised there isnt more support for something like this though.

Apple put a lot of money into building software propperly, especially the HCI aspect (how easy it is to use). If Meizu really wants to take them on, there has to be a high level of quality control to obtain a similar or greater quality product. So far in my eyes Meizus strongest advantage is just that it propperly provides USB MSC drag & drop file management - improving the overall quality of the firmware would help a lot.

See what people think of the change in controls between audio/video playback. From what I see, nobody likes it. These finishing touches are something Apple are especially good at.

eheh you'r so right, nice analysis though.

Man, that would be great. If only Meizu gave the source or whatever from the firmware to allow the users on this or other forums to make better. The users here could make something great! One game I would really like that should not be hard to make for the Meizu would be the one where you shoot the cat from a cannon and see how far you can get LOL. http://www.addictinggames.com/kittencannon.html

It sounds unlikely they would open the source up to the public though. But atleast this way us users would get more control over what software we keep on the m6 (from the tools provided in the firmware so far) and a nicer way to change skins and languages.

Thats a great idea, the apps could at least be open source, that way the user could create more games, and utilities like the mapping a user hear posted.

I basically would prefer not to install apps and have more memory for music.

agreed, this would at least help us implement the small changes and features we want instead of "demanding" them and having meizu always update their firmware.

But I dont think this would happen, it would require them to recode a few things, and it seems like they are lazy to fix a few lines of code to remove the bugs let alone recode code that already works. If u know what I mean, They already have our money, thats why im surprised they still release firmware updates.

Originally Posted by b-w-d

This was one of the first ideas I had when I found out about meizume (skins resource editor etc.)

I thinks this structure will be easier for meizu, they can let people work on their firmware (updates and bug fixes) and they can let other people to make extra apps. or let everyone make his apps.
This is the best idea on meizume

nice b-w-d!!

Its nice to see that people are having a look at this now. But just to make sure people dont go too off track I wouldnt even go as far as to say that even.

I dont expect meizu to open its firmware, and I dont expect them to let users make software to run ON the meizu - im a little worried people are getting too focused on that idea when they read this. If meizu refuses to open its source, seeing my idea only as a way of doing that detracts from the other advantages im suggesting.

Im not suggesting that meizu lets us develop software to run on the Meizu - although that would certainly be nice.

All I am suggesting so far is a different layout to the data (text/images) and code (in the case of the utilities) already in the current firmware. That is the first step. Then we will have a decent basis for improved skin and language support.

If meizu then needs to make minor updates to the utilities (if they did split the utilities out into seperate files), this will be easy to seperate from other more crucial firmware updates. Any new utilities developed by meizu could be easily added to the player without a full firmware update. & not every utility has to be included in each firmware release - if you dont want some of them, you dont have to install them.

Hope that clarifies maybe if im lucky some people might suggest this in the wishlist for later firmware updates :P. But asking Meizu to open the firmware is pushing a little too hard I think, they could easily reject the whole idea on that basis, but that is not what this is all about. So its important to see this mainly in terms of skin & language support IMHO. Allowing people to write new software for the meizu firmware should be seen as a seperate issue.