Database Develop

Updated [Dev][App] NoLitez 1.0.28 Dec 17 2008

UPDATE: Dec 17, 2008
older versions are no longer available here, the latest version is in the market under the developer name "snctln"
let me know if you have any problems with it
mpenguin14 said:
so I decided not to abandon development, competition is a good thing, right? and I am going to update the first post with a new build... in this new build there are a lot of improvements
- all 50 levels from the classic lights out, before it only had the first 5
- after level 50 new levels are randomly generated... I believe there are more than 8000 solvable
- added a hint engine... press the menu key and select the "Show Hints" and you will see a small red dot on the keys that you need to press in order to complete the puzzle, updates in real time, you can turn off this feature if you want by going back to the menu and selecting "Hide Hints"
- the state of the application is saved across instances... this way you can continue a game even if you restart your phone
any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
My main question is this: Does this app feel the like it is the sae quality as other apps on the Market? Or does it seem cheap and too simple?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(mods: if this is not the correct forum to post development of an android app please feel free to move the post or tell me where to move it to)
So I put up a thread a week or 2 ago requesting android app ideas and at first it seemed that games were in demand, so I started working on a simple game...
NoLitez is a simple game that take inspiration from the old simple handheld video game "Lights Out", (wikipedia link)
basically the idea of the game is that all spaces in the gird can either be turned on or off... the goal is to get all of the lights off. When you touch a light, you toggle the state of that light and the 4 lights immediately north, south, east and west of the light
I ran the apk using the latest android for titan build and it worked as I would expect.
So now I am curious if any G1 owners want to be a beta tester for me and tell me if this apk even works for them, and if so what they think of the game.
I only have very basic features implemented, and only the first 5 levels...
This would count as my first android application so please go easy on the criticism, but I am open to hearing all things good and bad
thanks for any feedback

i tried it out, good game. No crashes or hangs, works as described

neerhaj said:
i tried it out, good game. No crashes or hangs, works as described
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cool, thanks for the feedback

Nice. Clean interface and classic gameplay. I remember when they advertised these things on television in the '90s.
On a side note, how's Android running on TyTN? There's not a week goes by that there isn't a new device Android is running on, but it seems that most of the devices still need some spit polish.

jashsu said:
Nice. Clean interface and classic gameplay. I remember when they advertised these things on television in the '90s.
On a side note, how's Android running on TyTN? There's not a week goes by that there isn't a new device Android is running on, but it seems that most of the devices still need some spit polish.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well I have a Titan rather than a TyTN (PPC6800, CDMA device, aka Sprint Mogul vs P4500 GSM aka AT&T 8525 here in the states) [but they do seem to be named the same]... and I have to say that android doesn't run too well on it, I have been able to get android up and running on it since July thanks to dzo's vogue releases but even with the latest editions the touchscreen doesn't work quite right and the button mappings aren't very intuitive to me... maybe I just need to give it more than 5 minutes, but my plan is to buy a Android Dev 1 or some unannounced 2009 android phone so I shouldn't have to rely on testing on an unsupported QVGA device... but I just got laid off last Friday, so it could be a while until I have a proper android device to develop with

Works like a charm, no bugs at all and a pretty fun game! Do you mind if i throw it in my g1 files in my sig?

stats555 said:
Works like a charm, no bugs at all and a pretty fun game! Do you mind if i throw it in my g1 files in my sig?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am glad that you are enjoying it, it is not a problem to put the apk up in your directory, I have a few more things that I want to do before I make a proper release in the android market, but I have a few questions and I am not sure if this is the proper place to ask them
1.) Does this application behave as you would expect it to as far as saving and restoring its state? Like if you get a phone call or have to leave the app for some reason when you restore the app does it save the lights on/lights off state? Does it at least behave as you would expect it to when compared to other G1 apps?
2.) I am not fully sure if this application would be allowed in the market because Tiger electronics has the "Lights Out" game patented... does anyone know if any other game "clones" exist on the market like say a tetris clone?
thanks again for the feedback

There's an app on the Market called 'Lights Out" already...? Seems to be the same game? Not sure who developed it though.
(http://code.google.com/p/lights-out-android)

punkweakling said:
There's an app on the Market called 'Lights Out" already...? Seems to be the same game? Not sure who developed it though.
(http://code.google.com/p/lights-out-android)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wow... you are correct, this exact same game already exists for android and I had no idea. Looks like I am going to abandon development unless someone thinks it is good to have diversity in the market, since I don't have a G1 there really is no way for me to test to see the differences that may exist...
I enjoyed putting this together, but I wish there was some way to browse the titles available on the market other than directly from a G1, that way I would have known to work on something different. (and after a quick search my second game that I was planning on making "4NARow" (a connect 4 clone) is already on the market too...
maybe if I pay the $25 and register as an android developer I can see the different apps available in the market?

so I decided not to abandon development, competition is a good thing, right? and I am going to update the first post with a new build... in this new build there are a lot of improvements
- all 50 levels from the classic lights out, before it only had the first 5
- after level 50 new levels are randomly generated... I believe there are more than 8000 solvable
- added a hint engine... press the menu key and select the "Show Hints" and you will see a small red dot on the keys that you need to press in order to complete the puzzle, updates in real time, you can turn off this feature if you want by going back to the menu and selecting "Hide Hints"
- the state of the application is saved across instances... this way you can continue a game even if you restart your phone
any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
My main question is this: Does this app feel the like it is the sae quality as other apps on the Market? Or does it seem cheap and too simple?

posted version 1.0.28 in the market, developer name "snctln", let me know if you have problems getting it or using it.
any other feedback is appreciated

Of course I have problems. One big fat problem - I cannot run it.
Well... I'm using Android on my Titan. So..... I cannot even download and install it...

Magister2k7 said:
Of course I have problems. One big fat problem - I cannot run it.
Well... I'm using Android on my Titan. So..... I cannot even download and install it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Magister, I am using your titan build of android, so I will go over to that thread and post the apk package for this (NoLitez) and my latest game (PingPong), if anyone else wants these apks go to the Titan Linux wip thread in the Titan Forum for the download

mpenguin14 said:
Magister, I am using your titan build of android, so I will go over to that thread and post the apk package for this (NoLitez) and my latest game (PingPong), if anyone else wants these apks go to the Titan Linux wip thread in the Titan Forum for the download
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, Thanks!

Proper Gnu Tools ?

I'm just curious about something.
I recently moved from the iPhone to a Nexus One.
While I noticed there are a lot of ROM cookers etc (thanks for your great work guys) the development community seems kind of thin?
For example, on the iPhone there are full sets of all GNU tools. Anything you can use in Linux/Darwin they have for iPhone. There is a full apt packaging system will full console tools. The full OpenSSH suite has been made supporting all the wireless administration that I've come to love on my phone. Basically, it makes it feel like a full computer in my hand.
Now, I love this Nexus One, but I wasn't sure what the reasoning behind no one out there doing development on this kind of stuff. You'd think a phone running Linux with all code available would attract hordes of eager coders.
Instead we get weird crap like "dropbear" that has to be recompiled yourself to even work right, and even then...haha.
Not much as far as package management in the console, and our tools come from Busybox! Just seems very odd to me, but there must be reasons that I am not seeing.
This post is really not meant as an insult because I love this OS so far etc, but it just really suprised me that full sets of standard tools are not available.
Anyone know why?

Because you have to replicate the entire standard GNU/Linux userspace, which is a bear. Most of the work is done on the Android userspace instead, and you can find the fruits of those labors on AOSP Gerrit (http://r.android.com/) and the CyanogenMOD repository (http://github.com/cyanogen/android_vendor_cyanogen).
The best bet for getting a standard GNU/Linux userspace is to just boot Debian.
For future reference, this is probably not considered the correct forum for this discussion (probably Android General or the generic Android Development, not too sure.)
EDIT: Just to address some more specific points, Android has a package manager (those .apk files you see everywhere) and Busybox makes the most of the limited internal memory and provides enough tools to manage the Android userspace.

Sorry I thought the development forum would be the right place.
The iPhone 2g/3g have only 128mb of memory, and since gnu tools aren't resident in memory there is no problem having a full compliment of them on the phone.
The problem with debian is it is not really a nice UI for a phone. It would just be nice to have my phone, plus having the GNU tools underneath.
It isn't like its a dealbreaker, it just struck me as odd that all the proper tools have been built for the iPhone, and using it really feels like a full computer you're SSHing into, where as an open source Linux based OS on android basically is lacking all of it, minus the limited functionality provided by Busybox and Dropbear (like..dropbear really?).
These things have more memory and comparable processing speed to computers running windows 98 and early XP, so there is no reason not to have everything available to you when you need it.
I'm kind of a sideline commenter here as I'm not a coder, but it just struck me as odd.
Thanks for your reply!

anethema said:
Sorry I thought the development forum would be the right place.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NP, it's side discussion though. "Here's a complete set of native GNU tools" would be a dev forum topic.
anethema said:
The iPhone 2g/3g have only 128mb of memory, and since gnu tools aren't resident in memory there is no problem having a full compliment of them on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nonono, not RAM. Flash memory. iPhone has tons of it. G1 (where most of the developers got started, mind you) has very little. Further, the partitioning left limited room for additional binaries. There's some ways around that (symlinks, mostly), but they aren't elegant, and are subject to wiping at inopportune times if you aren't careful.
anethema said:
The problem with debian is it is not really a nice UI for a phone. It would just be nice to have my phone, plus having the GNU tools underneath.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious about your use case. "It would be nice" is, well, nice, but is there a need you have that the existing tools aren't fulfilling?
anethema said:
It isn't like its a dealbreaker, it just struck me as odd that all the proper tools have been built for the iPhone, and using it really feels like a full computer you're SSHing into, where as an open source Linux based OS on android basically is lacking all of it, minus the limited functionality provided by Busybox and Dropbear (like..dropbear really?).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what's with the Dropbear hate. There are not many use-cases for SSH servers on a phone, so few people have worked on it. I'd think the Android-phone-powered robot guys are the most likely to need it. But again, Dropbear is going to perform a whole heck of a lot better on a G1 than OpenSSH, and the G1 is the origin of all this stuff.
Remember, Android is explicitly not GNU/Linux. You might call it "Android/Linux." The fact that the Android userspace is open-source means that the alternate (and exciting new) userspace is attracting development, instead of people trying to port GNU just so they can use their closed-source iPhone. This is, in fact, a Good Thing, because it can result in improvements for all Android users (via contributions to AOSP), not just that subset of geeks (read: us) who mod their phones.
Understanding this difference is key to understanding the development pattern. People aren't working on the GNU userspace for Android phones because the Android userspace supplants it. The tools we have do what is needed, nothing more. In fact, `am' and `pm' are more useful in the Android context than anything that's left out of Busybox.
anethema said:
These things have more memory and comparable processing speed to computers running windows 98 and early XP, so there is no reason not to have everything available to you when you need it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Back to my use case comment above. What is it that you need?
anethema said:
Thanks for your reply!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem, it's a good discussion.

I guess it is basically that you don't know what you need until you need it. I treat my phones like this basically like little computers. Certainly on a laptop/desktop no one would bother questioning why you need general tools you use to get jobs done.
For the iPhone there was a need for unique certification to apples push servers so phones that were basically 'tricked' into activating could still get push messages via these servers.
I wrote a tool called Push Doctor with phone based scripts and with a donor style one server side. Basically I was generating these certificates and people could download them. The whole thing on both side is just a bunch of shell scripts. One running on the phone, one on my and cert donors computers. Now this may or may not have worked in busybox as I haven't tested it, but I just mean you never know what you are going to use stuff for, and having a nice standard set of tools across all Linux platforms can be nice to have for this reason.
As far as the space issue, I think that whole thing seems crazy as well. You're right there is a ton of space on the iPhone, but the G1 came out after it, and the Nexus One long after it, so its too bad 'space' is still an issue these days requiring ugly hacks to circumvent.
Regardless the tools could be distributed as part of several core apk's which people could install if they wish.
Like I said above, these are hardly embedded devices anymore. It's not like there's 4kb of ram and 5 mips CPU.
As far as dropbear, it isn't that I hate it, I just think even the G1 has comparable speed to the first iPhone (not in the Graphics/UI but certainly as far as the CPU is concerned) and running something as insignificant as OpenSSH should not be an issue. I've never personally heard of dropbear, and have no idea what their security track record is, but I do know OpenSSH's. It is a VERY widely used package with a lot of eyes on it making sure it is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
Apparently the default dropbear will authenticate any password if you enable passwords and you have to build your own from source run about 50 commands, all to get it going.
Where is the APK for a working dropbear, or apt-get install dropbear? Can you even have APK's for system level packages? Everything I seem to find tends to be a custom download from someones site whcih you have to 'push' to your phone, try to follow some 50 step guide to hopefully get going, etc.
I am loving a lot of facets of this OS, I'm just curious where the community is to work on this stuff, get it going, and make it easy. Android isn't really -that- young.

anethema said:
For the iPhone there was a need for unique certification to apples push servers so phones that were basically 'tricked' into activating could still get push messages via these servers.
I wrote a tool called Push Doctor with phone based scripts and with a donor style one server side. Basically I was generating these certificates and people could download them. The whole thing on both side is just a bunch of shell scripts. One running on the phone, one on my and cert donors computers. Now this may or may not have worked in busybox as I haven't tested it, but I just mean you never know what you are going to use stuff for, and having a nice standard set of tools across all Linux platforms can be nice to have for this reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Market Enabler is in that class of application, and, like other "rooted" apps relies on shell calls to Busybox on the backend--ugly, but keep in mind this is an attempt to explicitly defeat the Android security model. BB is sufficiently standard and POSIX conformant that it hasn't posed any difficulties for these kinds of applications.
anethema said:
Where is the APK for a working dropbear, or apt-get install dropbear? Can you even have APK's for system level packages? Everything I seem to find tends to be a custom download from someones site whcih you have to 'push' to your phone, try to follow some 50 step guide to hopefully get going, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So-called "native"--that is, ARM binary--applications aren't supported by the Android platform in the conventional way. In mid-2009, Google released the Android NDK which permits ARM binary libraries to be intermingled with Android applications via JNI. Since Android is explicitly intended to be compile-once, run-anywhere (which is why apps run on a VM), this is only recommended for computation-heavy code. However, the Mozilla project is using the NDK to directly port legacy code (Firefox/Fennec) with a thin Java interface to the Android system, so such a thing is possible.
This doesn't really make sense for the GNU toolkit, though. The SSH case; you could certainly set up an SSH server to run as a system service using NDK+JNI to connect any SSH library you like. The fact that this has not happened leads me to believe that there is little demand.
In general, the needs of existing developers appear to be met by the tools available.
Based on everything you've mentioned--you may want to take a look at the Android Scripting Environment.

Amazing apps

I have found some really amazing apps for android and thought i should share if anyone else might need or want them.
8pen: The keyboard has been reinvented for mobile devices. Was intended for phones but works great on my tablet. going to be using this as my main keyboard.
freenote: I was looking for a note taking program that can be used for classes. college level physics mostly. so i needed something i can write/type words on as well as put in a far bit of diagrams or equations. This one was the only one i found that did it all at a bang up job to. the controls may be a bit confusing but can have multiple groups of notes per class. save it and back it up (to restore a backup i only know of copying the back up folder into the main folder).
Win-Remote and URemoteDesktop: both of these are great computer control programs. win-remote only works with windows, URemoteDesktop works with both windows and linux. can make win-remote hidden in the taskbar and start with computer to have some fun with someone. (i have played joke on my bro and everyone was laughing was great). URemoteDesktop shows up in the terminal as a java process so its even more hidden. batch file and shell can run without constantly being on screen.
Font Changer (Root): is a nice simple font changer program. there are others i personally found this to work the best and be easiest to use. can be used with any launcher, also changes fonts in web browser, many apps... basically everything unless the app says otherwise.
AccuWeather: i have found this to be the most amazing weather app. has nice clean non clutter widgets that link to the app as well as show information. the app it self is basically a whole weather channel in your hands. even shows radar and 15day forecast. also very nice eye candy. it also tells you more about the day then just sun or rain. there is a lifestyle forecast section that tells you risk of asthma, cold, flu, mosquito risks, migraine risk and much more, even a dog walking forecast. lol
that's what i found. if there's an app that makes you go WOW please share cause i would love to know of more.

FreeNote looks like exactly what I've been looking for for taking notes in my engineering classes. Tried a few last semester and they just didn't work out very well. I tried replicating a few things and looks like it works very well and is easy to switch between modes (typing, hand writing, drawing).

I searched for about an hour tonight and finally found my perfect math handwriting note taking app = handrite!
Sent from my Flashback HC-TAB using XDA Forum App

Hey guys I'm a newbie, and I'm trying to find how you guys DLed these apps (I need freenote or handrite myself for classes) the only links I've found, when i try to download them i get stopped with this message
"There are no Android phones associated with this account. Please sign in with a different account."
How are you downloading on the G tablet and get it to recognize the thing?
if any of you know which direction to point me in even that would be a huge help!

try the amazon appstore and 1mobile or put a rom on it that gives u the market

GoofOff said:
Hey guys I'm a newbie, and I'm trying to find how you guys DLed these apps (I need freenote or handrite myself for classes) the only links I've found, when i try to download them i get stopped with this message
"There are no Android phones associated with this account. Please sign in with a different account."
How are you downloading on the G tablet and get it to recognize the thing?
if any of you know which direction to point me in even that would be a huge help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like you're facing a bug. On your gtablet you can download the apps from the market. If you're having trouble, remove your gmail account, reboot, and readd your gmail account to your tablet. This should fix things!

FreeNote FTW!
Wow... I just wish I had FreeNote when I was taking classes. Thanks for posting this OP!

Nice apps. FreeNote is very nice. The kool apps keeps coming and coming...Thanks.

Crossword Puzzles

Edit: Sorry, I had to remove this app when it was brought to my attention recently and I found it was NOT the appI had thought it was :-( It does NOT display properly on the NST/G. Still looking for the one I remember and if I find it I will update this post.
I stumbled across a brief reference to this app buried in another thread from long ago and thought I'd bring it back into the light. Market apps for crossword puzzles seldom work well on the NST, many of them having issues with partially disappearing keyboards.
The app attached below is actually from the Nook Color! It installs and runs just fine on the NST (probably NSTG as well). It has a nice, clean UI--with a custom keyboard that doesn't disappear. Puzzles can be selected by difficulty level.
The drawback: there seems to be no way to get more puzzles. But for casual use, it's great--and the price is right

This app appears to work on the Glowlight Plus also. However, it seems to be pixel mapped, so it appears very small on the higher resolution screen.

are there any services that generate hints?

Great idea! I will gladly support any effort to port/fork/customize/make such app better.

On my Glow3...

Renate said:
On my Glow3...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've actually learned a few things since my original post (shocking!). Just a cursory inspection of the apk file reveals the stored puzzles in res/raw. There appear to be 100 of them and they are actually in a known format (.puz)!
I've not tried adding anything yet (it's probably not that simple), but here is a site with lots of information about obtaining .puz files for use in Across Lite (a puzzle creating and solving platform): https://communicrossings.com/crosswords-sources-web-sites
Maybe I'll pursue this. I do actually have a very old Crossword app that works well across all my devices and can download new puzzles daily from a variety of sources. I don't even recall where I got it but it has clearly been "modified" in some fashion by someone. Most features work on the NST except for updating the list of puzzle sources. For some reason this fails on the NST although it works on other devices. Probably an SSL issue. But as there are quite a few sources in the "old" list, it's fine for the NST where I don't generally spend a lot of time doing puzzles. But it's there when I need a break from reading or just idle entertainment waiting in a doctor's office, etc.
Edit: I lied. There are actually 189 puzzles (easy, medium, hard, themeless).

nmyshkin said:
I've actually learned a few things since my original post (shocking!). Just a cursory inspection of the apk file reveals the stored puzzles in res/raw. There appear to be 100 of them and they are actually in a known format (.puz)!
I've not tried adding anything yet (it's probably not that simple), but here is a site with lots of information about obtaining .puz files for use in Across Lite (a puzzle creating and solving platform): https://communicrossings.com/crosswords-sources-web-sites
Maybe I'll pursue this. I do actually have a very old Crossword app that works well across all my devices and can download new puzzles daily from a variety of sources. I don't even recall where I got it but it has clearly been "modified" in some fashion by someone. Most features work on the NST except for updating the list of puzzle sources. For some reason this fails on the NST although it works on other devices. Probably an SSL issue. But as there are quite a few sources in the "old" list, it's fine for the NST where I don't generally spend a lot of time doing puzzles. But it's there when I need a break from reading or just idle entertainment waiting in a doctor's office, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is the crossword app that works across all of your devices same as the one attached to the first post of this thread? You have my support in doing this man. We think similar in approaching the problem. I would also have started from the file type and then go further. I need to look up that platform and attached link. Say if you need any help with this. I need to check crosswords in my language and is there any available site to download them. It might be futile effort for NST without keyboard change. As for SSL problem it starts to be such pain in the a$$ that someone is going to lose patience and find the way to solve it by programming or find the way to obfuscate it through NST as dashboard and any newer phone as server for example. That was also one of the approaches I proposed for missing GPS. Now I rarely need GPS on NST however making it better in terms of book and newspaper device I am all for it.

SJT75 said:
Is the crossword app that works across all of your devices same as the one attached to the first post of this thread?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, that app of questionable origin is different.
SJT75 said:
You have my support in doing this man. We think similar in approaching the problem. I would also have started from the file type and then go further. I need to look up that platform and attached link. Say if you need any help with this. I need to check crosswords in my language and is there any available site to download them. It might be futile effort for NST without keyboard change. As for SSL problem it starts to be such pain in the a$$ that someone is going to lose patience and find the way to solve it by programming or find the way to obfuscate it through NST as dashboard and any newer phone as server for example. That was also one of the approaches I proposed for missing GPS. Now I rarely need GPS on NST however making it better in terms of book and newspaper device I am all for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I started to look at this and got a couple of surprises. First, on initialization the app creates one binary file in the data folder. That's all. So any puzzle substitution/updating would have to be done by taking the app apart and then putting it back together with apktool. Not very convenient, but I suppose if you did a good number of puzzles at once it might be worthwhile.
However the real surprise was looking at the app running. It's nothing like I remember! So I'm not sure what I'm looking at now. Maybe I've got yet another crossword app among my files. Better download from the earlier post and see... Although the package does say com.encore.crossword. But the short of it is that the app I was looking at is a no-go on the NST. The puzzles are half-hidden behind the keyboard and no amount of persuasion in either word or gesture (rude or not) will convince the puzzle to scroll up.
Edit: nope, it's the same app I posted earlier in this thread so long ago. It seems impossible but there it is. I wouldn't have posted it if I had seen how it was bolluxed up on the NST. I have no explanation.

Huh. Your 15 x 15 looks better than mine.
I did a once over trying to fix the app.
I chopped down the keyboard a bunch.
Still, the whole layout is a mess.

Renate said:
Huh. Your 15 x 15 looks better than mine.
I did a once over trying to fix the app.
I chopped down the keyboard a bunch.
Still, the whole layout is a mess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I did a little fiddling but could not convince it to show the entire grid as accessible along with the keyboard. It really must be coded just for the Nook Color/Tablet display.
I am baffled as to its appearance. I am getting older, but its nothing at all like I remember. I never would have posted if it had looked that way when I first tried it. But its definitely an app from the Nook Color, that much is evident from the package name. Just a mystery.

From little bit I have read about this ancient version of Android what nmyshkin reported about behavior of the application led me to believe that is developed as NDK app. I believe it is easier to make new app starting from scratch if you gathered enough knowledge about that crosswords file type and if download sources are not behind paywall. I would start with calculating size of standard on screen keyboard and then put rest of the screen for use by the crossword. It might be little small that way although but if field input is letter sized from some regular NST font I believe it can be squeezed. Other option might be that you do not make keyboard input at all but select input square and then use gesture in input field resembling writing. You would also need erase button. Then you would have more space for crossword but had to program input interface for the app. IIRC Opera does support gestures so maybe you could get the idea how to make that interface there.

Since the thread contain nonworking app can we consider it as place for discussion about either rigging that one or finding or developing new one for NST?
You already mentioned modified keyboard so I guess changing crossword layout is not out of question too. I didn't check .puz file type so obviously I have no idea about it but I did skim little through the site nmyshkin posted here. There are also other options there so it might be good to consider them also. Firstly using browser with JS woodoo. I do not know much about that but I have gained an impression you have previously make some good stuff using similar approach. Second option is using .PDF file type for puzzles. It might work considering that NST have some limited PDF reflow ability. Maybe that can allow us to adjust crossword layout? Problem is that it seems like it is slightly abandoned file format for puzzles although it was possible to have even interactive ones in that format. Can"t say what the term interactive means. Hint, letter reveals or something else. If it means connection to a server on net that will most likely be to big bite for old NST in the future.
Just a stray thought inside puzzle letters shown are real letter font used on NST or pictures generated in app?

Looked little about crossword file format. It seems that .puz is albeit old and easier to view/change using tools as simple as Notepad somehow proprietary. On the other hand it is claimed that .jpz is more versatile but even if it is so it seems to be some hybrid between Java and XML.There is also third format .ipuz that is completely free but as I understand it is originally for Mac which I do not have. Now if I delve into this what is the opinion of others? Consider it as a poll. 1, 2 or 3?

The New York Times apparently uses .puz
I'd give that some weight.
NYT links to this download: https://www.litsoft.com/across/alite/download/index.html
That file format seems to be (mostly) documented here: https://code.google.com/archive/p/puz/wikis/FileFormat.wiki
It could be edited by hand but there are binary parts and checksums.
Edit: Well, I take that all back. NYT (just yesterday!) stated that they are dropping .puz format.
NYT Games No Longer Available on Across Lite as of Aug. 10 (Published 2021)
Starting next week, we will no longer provide downloadable .puz files.
www.nytimes.com

I understand that up until now adoption by influential publisher (which regularly paid to owner of file format for software and rights to use) kept .puz in game. Format is simple and already have been reverse engineered by others which irked rights owner to the point of threatening with lawsuits left and right. They should have invested more in development of format and software instead. Second format .jpz is supposedly better but had so far lagged in adoption on the market.

Ha, ha!
Cross words over New York Times puzzle change
The US-based publication is cutting third party support for its popular crossword puzzles.
www.bbc.com

Well I can anticipate two things. First its a good time to start torrent search for old crosswords files archives. Second is that I believe we can find alternative sources on the link nmyshkin posted earlier. Still that doesn't resolve dilemma which file type is a way to go. Based on previous statement Rennate made on other topic I presume she would like .ipuz as open and free standard.

Just a link to share. If someone need old crosswords it appears someone already had made a database. link

The use of source code.

Well.
Its kinda off topic...
But I thought I would ask here.
I'm not a dev but I try learn about developing stuff by trying develop stuff.
Most of the time is it to stuff I have laying around at home.
So... I got my hands on a Samsung smt-h3126.
I short: it's a set-top box from a carrier here in Denmark called YouSee under the TDC group.
I fired the box up and discovered that it works but with the YouSee firmware..
The device have HDMI, HDD, Ethernet and runs Linux.
So I rushed to Google and made a boob search and found the source code for the box at Samsung (http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...s/resource/opensource/cable-set-top-box.html) the only problem is that I don't know what the next step is.
Normally it would be to download the file, find a guide on how to flash it, flash it and install needed apps.
But I dont think its that easy.
I am thinking I have to make a Linux environment to work with this in and code in the apps that I need (YouTube, Netflix, viaplay, Plex and so on) and also much of the interface. But I don't know where to start or how to start.
Is there someone here on XDA there can give me the kick in the behind so I land at the start point on my travels on designing my "own" software?