Ubuntu Developers Devise New Terminal & Calculator Apps

Among the "Ubuntu Apps" being discussed for development today during the final day of this first Ubuntu 15.04 Online Summit is the planned improvements to the calculator and terminal applications.

While an Ubuntu Tablet could come next month and Ubuntu Phones are coming soon too, Ubuntu developers still have a long way to go to mature their default applications that ship for Ubuntu Touch as part of the Unity 8 user experience. On Wednesday I wrote about the many improvements needed to the Ubuntu File Manager and being discussed today were improvements still needed to their new terminal and calculator apps. Like the file manager, the calculator and terminal are being custom written for Unity 8 in Qt/QML and to fit in with Canonical's converged vision with these apps ultimately hitting the desktop -- likely in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Among the features that the application developers hope to tackle for the terminal are user experience improvements, possible restructuring of the UI, determining how to expose advanced terminal features on touch devices, a possible terminal first run wizard, and many other changes. The notes to the Ubuntu Terminal planning can be found at summit.ubuntu.com.

The calculator app planning was also discussed with a focus on just being a simple calculator but to add a scientific mode later. The calculator is a brand new app compared to the existing calculator. The calculator will use a QML front-end but they haven't even decided on what back-end math library to use for the app nor many other details. The calculator planning was in this session.

On a related note, new app guidelines are being rolled out for those designing apps for Ubuntu Touch.