I was looking for how to install sinhala unicode fonts for Mac. When I initially checked out about this I could not find this details from Siyabas site by ICTA where it has all other information regarding installing Unicode fonts for different Operating Systems. For OS X (Leopard, Snow Leopard) site did not contain any information. Then through wikipedia article on Sinhala Font Guide, I was able to get a link to download Malithi web sinhala unicode font designed for Mac. So I just thought of posting this few simple steps on how to have sinhala unicode running for a Mac. But still with some rendering problems may be

• Download Malithi web font for Mac from here (.ttf)
• Copy the file to /Library/Fonts folder simple as that

At this point at least now we can see some sinhala web pages but still with some rendering issues for letters with ‘combu’ some times. I will add it here if I find a better solution than this later.

Just found a better article on this subject with the help of a friend from sinhala-fonts google group. From here you can download a better Mac compatible unicode font.

Adobe and Mac Compatible Sinhala Unicode Font

You can Download the font from here directly since most of the content in this article is in Sinhala. And you might have to use firefox for your work then still

Download Mac Compatible Kaputa font

Few weeks ago, I bought an iPhone from Dialog(One of the main Mobile Service Providers in SriLanka). It comes with one year warranty from Dialog. And surprisingly its unlocked.  So soon after that I realized that it could not have been backed by Apple. It costs really high exactly 89000 SLR (less than 900US$). And main reason that people go for Apple products I think is about Apple’s one to one replacement warranty. So I doubt whether my iPhone from Dialog has that warranty. And about the phone, its a genuine iPhone you could update iPhone OS with iTunes. Play with all cool Objective-C iPhone apps from the device.

Last week I was able to contact a lady from DMS, she has confirmed me that no one in SriLanka is officially allowed to sell iPhones yet. And DMS is currently the official Apple representatives in SriLanka. But for the moment I was told that they only sell Mac computer stuff only. So I am just writing this post to let you guys know about there are still NO official iPhone dealers in SriLanka. What I mean is you don’t need to go to Dialog to buy an iPhone since they are also not officially allowed to sell iPhones.

I have been working on a quite a challenging project with few other guys last few months at hSenid Mobile. It was about implementing a J2ME Mobile Stock Trading client and few changes to existing trading mobile server and data feed server. CDAX Mobile users can sell/buy shares, retrieve real time stock quotes, streaming prices, modify/cancel orders, get updates on instant market statistics, obtain instant trade confirmation/ portfolio details/ account balance/ subscription details/  live updates on top gainers and losers over GPRS or WiFi using their java enabled mobile.

I have been mainly worked on J2ME Client implementation and some changes on Trading Server. It was quite challenging for me to work on Trading Server since I have been mostly doing Mobile Development. And I loved J2ME Development using J2ME Polish API and always worked to make UI better and better. CDAX Mobile application consists with two generic applications for MIDP 2 CLDC 1 / MIDP2 CLDC11 devices with great looking ui to its users. We have tested the application in several devices and make sure it functions well within different mobile handsets. The application would be available on CDAX site for its users within next few weeks.

I have got a great opportunity to attend a series of  traning sessions on Font Development at UCSC which was organized by ICTA. I was fortuante to be there to learn the best practices for developing unicode fonts in Sinhala. The first day was really wonderful and sessions were done by great people who have worked hard on this Sinhala Unicode concepts and who have been really working hard on Sinhala Localizations. Prof. Gihan Dias, Harsha Wijeywardana, Wini Hettigoda were helped us on this event. At the end of first day, I have got a real interest in coming up with a sinhala unicode font with next few weeks. And also I will add a good post on how to develop sinhala unicode fonts by the end of training sessions in next few weeks. You should have two things to develop a Sinhala Unicode font. First one is you gotta love your language and secondly you should have time. The second one is the one I am lacking with my university and office work but I need to somehow find some time to develop at least one nice sinhala unicode font.

As you might already know there are hundreds of sinhala fonts but only few unicode ones. The difference between a unicode font and a normal font is unicode font have a unique value for each character in each language. It means Sinhala ‘අ’(3461) has a unique value and English ‘A’ (65) has its own and any character in any language has its own value. It will be a complete different keyboard layout. In contrast in a normal font they say if you press ‘A’ on keyboard draw some picture something like that. It’s not a real sinhala font just a wrong mapping. Then If you don’t the have the font you will be reading something really confusing at the end. The intent of unicode is to give each language and each character a unique value. So we should develop sinhala unicode fonts instead of normal sinhala fonts in that sense. If we all use Sinhala Unicode instead of normal sinhala fonts, all you need to have is atleast one Sinhala Unicode font to see something written in different different Sinhala Unicode fonts. Great and much easier in the end.

Yesterday was one tough day for us regarding our L3 Project, we had our final presentation done. We had planned to create a Location Based Social Networking solution and we were able to successfully complete it to a level where we could present it yesterday with few days of full commitment dedicated for this work after a busy exam shedule. We have hosted our project at Google code so any new one will not have to start from scratch next time. Project was called lbim. Hope to add some wiki pages for more help there. And also we would like to improve the project further.

The solution consists of a terminal server and a J2ME mobile client with some great looking user interfaces powered by J2ME Polish. Here I have attached the content of the final report and the presentation also with links to download the mobile app. J2ME Application is a generic app that will work on MIDP 2 CLDC 11 all phones. If your phone does not have Location API(JSR 179) it even runs as a normal IM Client. The users can see their friends on a Google Map and they could chat with the friends, simply an exciting solution to an Instant Messaging App. Users of the mobile application can see their friends on an interactive Map with zooming and scrolling. Application can track your location and send it to server, and server will provide a map with locations of you and your friends.

Download Jar / Jad

Google Code Project: LBIM

Final Presentation / Report

Today We had a workshop conducted by Sun at our Faculty on Java FX. This was my first experience in anything about Java FX. Session was done by Mr. Faisal Ahamed, Senior Technical Consultant at Sun, and it was really exciting. We had a wonderful practical session which was a lot interactive. JavaFX is intended to achieve Java’s feature of ‘Write Once, Run Anywhere’.

I am not certainly an expert with Java FX, but I will just blog about my initial impressions and ideas about Java FX and Mobile Development. IMO Java is still not fully achieved this target (WORA) when it comes to mobile application development. Yes Java is so far the best language to learn if you want to learn a minimum to code for different Mobile platforms. Still Genuine iPhone is out of their range. Its perhaps because Apple does not want some one coding for their phone with a different way that they do not like. I think Java FX will perhaps take years to even work on mobile devices. Certainly this seem to be a far better approach for their target but its a matter of mobile vendors supporting their approach. We need Java FX Runtime on top of JVM to run Java FX Applications. So how could these FX applications work on millions of existing java phones ? But if all mobile vendors could agree on that new phones will come up with this it will be a better future for Java FX for Mobile Development. But so far to go yet. Perhaps I might be wrong.

See Some of the nice JavaFX Samples at here

We are currently working on our third year project for the University. It’s a 6 credit project work. ( Little too much credits when its compared with other subjects ). Our group consists of four members – Nirojan, Ishara, Withuran and me. We have decided to implement a location based IM client and server.

Simple user interaction flow would be as follows.

1. User could login to our server using mobile device
2. Mobile application would be a platform independent J2Me application with advanced and user friendly User Interfaces that would display Google Maps to set and view user locations. I would be mostly working on mobile client development.
3. Users could also use the client to chat with his friends, he could also manage his friends. In addition we also plan to give users ability to share pictures. or even taking pictures from mobile and share them.
4. With all these functions our aim of the client is to be one jar file for most Java enabled hand held devices with beautiful UIs. With J2ME polish api we are planning to do this. This would work for all MIDP 2.0 CLDC 1.0 hand held devices.

I would update more information about our project in future. We are expected finish this work with in another 3 months time. Quite challenging. We expect to come up with a quality application that would further enhance.

I am really happy to blog finally that hExpense is now available at Apple App Store. It took little while to be published at Apple app store. After few reviews its now available on Apple App Store to be downloaded. Developing the application gave a lot experience and confidence to play with iPhone development more. The application is tagged under Business and Finance categories. It is hSenid’s first iPhone application available on Apple App Store as a hSenid Mobile product.

hExpense is an easy to use expense tracker application, that its nice to have with any iPhone or iPod touch user. We can easily track expenses generate reports and email them with a fewest number of taps. Great

hExpense Info at appstism / AppShopper / downloadiphoneblog

Download hExpense on iTunes

I have just finished my internsip program last 18th at hSenid software international and continue doing part time there. I worked for hSenidMobile as a trainee software engineer last six months full-time.  It has been 6 months of challenging learning and coding. I really enjoyed the six months of training, In my case I had to do nearly seven months  since I was suspended from university for 8 weeks. Now again back to university from next week and will be having much enjoyable time out there. And also I planned to contribute to XWiki – an opensource development organization when ever I get free time.

I have been doing mobile application development at hSenidMobile. It included iPhone application development and also J2ME application development. And also here I have attached my training report, which took me hours of valuable time to finish. This could be useful for someone to save some time. We will be having our viva next week most probably.

Internship Report

I was little bit away from iPhone application development in my training place with in the last week. I did a research on converting our own protocol in to Jabber and possibility of allowing users of that protocol automatically use Jabber internally when logging, registering, private chatting or public chatting in joined chat rooms. My early experience using ejabberd (Jabber server) when I was implementing iPhone XMPP client helped me in this process. I have found smack api is a great Jabber client library in java that we could use in this process.

My initial task was to implement a command line java application that allow to enter messages in our protocol and when you press enter I needed to use Jabber to do what ever relevent with that message. Using Smack api and ejabberd server there has been a little mis match where it generated a null pointer exception. But it never came from my code, then I used smack api source code to build and found its coming from encoding some text with ejabberd server. After adding a try catch to the particular place I could login to ejabberd as well. Smack api works fine without any changes with their Jabber server – Open fire. Open fire seems to be having much advanced user interface, but it does not have clustering as ejabberd have. With in two days time I was able to complete my research and implement a java application to do features in our private protocol with Jabber server.