Slashdot Mirror

You're looking for a Palm Treo. The Developer Suite for it is totally free. It's got a no-nonsense phone, and can do basically anything you want it to. A couple of my more financially well-adjusted friends have them and absolutely adore them.

For instance, there is no Java JVM for a Palm.

There isn't? What will I do?

Dude. Java is everywhere. It's in tiny little cards and in the latest ARM processors. You can't run. You can't hide. Java will find your OS, and you will be assimilated. Submit to the collective!

Java doesn't run everywhere: For instance, there is no Java JVM for a Palm

Hmmmm, IBM and PalmSource might disagree with you there.

But you're correct in general. Not every platform you'll want to port code to will have a JVM. And those that do will not have the right JVM

It's a shame that no Palm OS 6 Cobalt devices have actually made it to market, because PalmSource has done a lot right in that version of the Palm OS to provide a sound security model.

Not only does the OS provide for digital signing of code, it provides secure databases where only signed applications can access the data. You can control which databases are synchronized to the desktop, and even which applications can access screen buffers (to prevent screen-scraping).

Hopefully either Palm OS 6 Cobalt or its Linux-based successors will make it into actual devices soon. It would be a huge step toward powerful, secure PDAs.

Nagel's response was that they're thinking about porting their Eclipse toolkit to Linux. No one wants or cares about it.

I want their Palm OS Developer Suite (eclipse kitted out as a full Palm OS ide) on Linux. I have the sources and their patches but haven't been able to put aside the time yet to see how far I get and what problems I hit. In fact, their desire to maintain their own Free Software based ide was a significant factor for choosing Palm for our product. I'm not complaining about PalmSource not having done this work already, they have done it a free software way so their work is there to pick up.

they don't do enough to make it easy to develop for Palm OS

It may only be available for Windows (90% of the market?) but how much easier do you want then PODS? A complete, Free software based ide, using standard tools, register as a developer (basically to get access to device roms), download one file and install it, you know have a small cygwin setup with all the command line tools, plus a kitted up eclipse to act as a full ide (including Palm documentation).

You say that you asked why tools for developing Palm OS apps on Linux are neglected, but you mention pilot-link as an example. pilot-link is a hot-sync program, not used at all to develop programs (though perhaps to transfer them to a device for testing, or to test conduits under Linux).

Note that I am not trying to refute any arguments you make about the history or levels of co-operation, I don't know enough to say anything sensible about it.

According to this documentation, the Personal Data Interchange (PDI) part of the SDK supports iCalendar. The description of Palm's Versamail says it can open iCalendar attachements. Once they're opened in Palm OS and added to the calendar, they'd sync to Palm Desktop like anything else. Like you, I would rather be able to open them on the desktop machine, in Palm Desktop, as you can do with vCalendar files now. I wish all Palm users would start bombarding them with e-mails about this.. iCalendar came out in 1998, surely they could have added support by now!

Actually PalmSource has an Eclipse based development suite for its Palm OS devices located here http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/dev_suite.html

When I first looked at it, it was still in a very early beta version, and since I've moved over to a Pocket PC device I haven't kept up with advancement on this program so I'm not sure how good it currently is.

Try this.

http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/

It's open source too. You'll need a device ROM, which you can either download from your device using a program that you load onto it or you can download a developer ROM from the PalmOS developer site.

This emulator is what PalmOS developers use to test and debug their applications before loading them onto actual devices.

As an aside, I do own two PalmOS devices: An old Palm III and a relatively new Sony Clie TJ25 with Japanese PalmOS. Japanese Decuma is awesome, by the way. I looked into developing an application for learning/practicing/quizzing Japanese and I've started to write it twice. Each time though, I get a bit past the "hello world" app before stopping. There's a huge paradigm shift when doing PalmOS development. Instead of creating windows, you have "forms" that are resources linked into the program. The biggest thing is that the data structures are different. You can't just have a "file" on a PalmOS device. This is VERY different from systems like Linux and *BSD where everything is a file (including memory, devices, files, et cetera). All data needs to be stored in database-like structures (except of course, for some extensions added in later versions of PalmOS to deal with memory cards). Anyway, it's very weird. The API is nothing like Linux or Windows.

For those interested, Palm OS Cobalt (a.k.a. Palm OS 6) is taking a similar direction, using relational-style databases to hold address book data, appointments, etc. etc.

Plus, someone mentioned WinFS. Everything old is new again.

If you don't have a Palm then you could always run it under the Simulator

I am new to PalmOS development (possibly just in time for the finale?). I went to the Palm Developer Conference in February, and here is my perspective on some of your questions.

(1) If you're referring to Usenet mailing lists: I perused the comp.sys.* newgroups that pertained to Palm development a while back (I don't recall the specific newsgroups). I concur, they have become stale. I think this is one of the weaknesses of Usenet as opposed to the way Slashdot keeps things interesting. In Usenet, you troll through so many newbie questions and bitter, irrelevant flamewars and just give up. At least I did.

(2) I think there are some weaknesses in the way Palm 3rd party software is marketed. It seems as though everything is marketed almost like shareware instead of the way it is sold in the PC world. Given the very low prices, that probably makes sense. But I suspect things would be better if there were some consolidation: some big boys should probably just buy out some of the crapware vendors to clear the decks and increase the signal to noise ratio. Just my perception, but I think there are a lot of basically sameware that makes the market worse.

I think that Cobalt may result in some interesting new categories of software coming out. Path graphics, multitasking, better security, schema databases, and better multimedia support are coming. Some basic info is here.

(3) PalmSource reorganized the developer documentation recently. Try it again and see if you think it's better. Here it is.

(4) I get the impression that a lot of developers still like PRC-tools. But there is a new Eclipse-based developer suite now. I haven't used it, because I think it is Windows only (ah, the lack of Mac support... sigh). Here is the link.

(5) I don't know. I was able to get a ROM by registering on the PalmSource site, and after clicking on a few legal agreements (eternal soul, first-born child, etc). Then again, ROMs are under the control of the PalmOS "licensees" (device makers). So it might be more difficult if you want a ROM for some specific device. I don't know.

As a new developer, I saw some reasons to be optimistic but also I have a lot of doubts.

Optimism:
1. The Palm Developer Conference was apparently well attended, according to people who had attended previous ones.

2. There are lots of interesting devices out there. Sony, Tapwave, Garmin and PalmOne have built some slick devices that I think are very impressive. While Slashdotters find it easy to yawn at gadgets, when I compare my HP-11C calculator (ca. 1981) with my Sony Clie TJ37, I'm not sure which is more impressive: the longevity of the HP, or the amazing level of technology integration in the Clie. Take your pick... I may still be using the HP in 20 years, but the Clie will be long gone. (These two devices are about the same size and weight by the way).

3. The new OS. I don't know if it will put them at parity with MS, or ahead, but right now they are behind, so this is absolutely necessary.

Pessimism:
1. I heard some of the same arguments from PalmSource execs that I used to hear from Apple in the mid 1990s: we're better than MS. I trust that these execs understand that they are whistling past the graveyard.

2. Hand-waving about sales stats. PalmSource execs said that handheld sales figures don't tell the whole story -- that they omit smartphones, which are splitting the market. OK, maybe. I haven't seen the sales figures for smart phones.

3. I think the biggest question is the value equation. One post referred to the paucity of storage on PDAs as a problem. I have to agree, though there i

I am new to PalmOS development (possibly just in time for the finale?). I went to the Palm Developer Conference in February, and here is my perspective on some of your questions.

(1) If you're referring to Usenet mailing lists: I perused the comp.sys.* newgroups that pertained to Palm development a while back (I don't recall the specific newsgroups). I concur, they have become stale. I think this is one of the weaknesses of Usenet as opposed to the way Slashdot keeps things interesting. In Usenet, you troll through so many newbie questions and bitter, irrelevant flamewars and just give up. At least I did.

(2) I think there are some weaknesses in the way Palm 3rd party software is marketed. It seems as though everything is marketed almost like shareware instead of the way it is sold in the PC world. Given the very low prices, that probably makes sense. But I suspect things would be better if there were some consolidation: some big boys should probably just buy out some of the crapware vendors to clear the decks and increase the signal to noise ratio. Just my perception, but I think there are a lot of basically sameware that makes the market worse.

I think that Cobalt may result in some interesting new categories of software coming out. Path graphics, multitasking, better security, schema databases, and better multimedia support are coming. Some basic info is here.

(3) PalmSource reorganized the developer documentation recently. Try it again and see if you think it's better. Here it is.

(4) I get the impression that a lot of developers still like PRC-tools. But there is a new Eclipse-based developer suite now. I haven't used it, because I think it is Windows only (ah, the lack of Mac support... sigh). Here is the link.

(5) I don't know. I was able to get a ROM by registering on the PalmSource site, and after clicking on a few legal agreements (eternal soul, first-born child, etc). Then again, ROMs are under the control of the PalmOS "licensees" (device makers). So it might be more difficult if you want a ROM for some specific device. I don't know.

As a new developer, I saw some reasons to be optimistic but also I have a lot of doubts.

Optimism:
1. The Palm Developer Conference was apparently well attended, according to people who had attended previous ones.

2. There are lots of interesting devices out there. Sony, Tapwave, Garmin and PalmOne have built some slick devices that I think are very impressive. While Slashdotters find it easy to yawn at gadgets, when I compare my HP-11C calculator (ca. 1981) with my Sony Clie TJ37, I'm not sure which is more impressive: the longevity of the HP, or the amazing level of technology integration in the Clie. Take your pick... I may still be using the HP in 20 years, but the Clie will be long gone. (These two devices are about the same size and weight by the way).

3. The new OS. I don't know if it will put them at parity with MS, or ahead, but right now they are behind, so this is absolutely necessary.

Pessimism:
1. I heard some of the same arguments from PalmSource execs that I used to hear from Apple in the mid 1990s: we're better than MS. I trust that these execs understand that they are whistling past the graveyard.

2. Hand-waving about sales stats. PalmSource execs said that handheld sales figures don't tell the whole story -- that they omit smartphones, which are splitting the market. OK, maybe. I haven't seen the sales figures for smart phones.

3. I think the biggest question is the value equation. One post referred to the paucity of storage on PDAs as a problem. I have to agree, though there i

I am new to PalmOS development (possibly just in time for the finale?). I went to the Palm Developer Conference in February, and here is my perspective on some of your questions.

(1) If you're referring to Usenet mailing lists: I perused the comp.sys.* newgroups that pertained to Palm development a while back (I don't recall the specific newsgroups). I concur, they have become stale. I think this is one of the weaknesses of Usenet as opposed to the way Slashdot keeps things interesting. In Usenet, you troll through so many newbie questions and bitter, irrelevant flamewars and just give up. At least I did.

(2) I think there are some weaknesses in the way Palm 3rd party software is marketed. It seems as though everything is marketed almost like shareware instead of the way it is sold in the PC world. Given the very low prices, that probably makes sense. But I suspect things would be better if there were some consolidation: some big boys should probably just buy out some of the crapware vendors to clear the decks and increase the signal to noise ratio. Just my perception, but I think there are a lot of basically sameware that makes the market worse.

I think that Cobalt may result in some interesting new categories of software coming out. Path graphics, multitasking, better security, schema databases, and better multimedia support are coming. Some basic info is here.

(3) PalmSource reorganized the developer documentation recently. Try it again and see if you think it's better. Here it is.

(4) I get the impression that a lot of developers still like PRC-tools. But there is a new Eclipse-based developer suite now. I haven't used it, because I think it is Windows only (ah, the lack of Mac support... sigh). Here is the link.

(5) I don't know. I was able to get a ROM by registering on the PalmSource site, and after clicking on a few legal agreements (eternal soul, first-born child, etc). Then again, ROMs are under the control of the PalmOS "licensees" (device makers). So it might be more difficult if you want a ROM for some specific device. I don't know.

As a new developer, I saw some reasons to be optimistic but also I have a lot of doubts.

Optimism:
1. The Palm Developer Conference was apparently well attended, according to people who had attended previous ones.

2. There are lots of interesting devices out there. Sony, Tapwave, Garmin and PalmOne have built some slick devices that I think are very impressive. While Slashdotters find it easy to yawn at gadgets, when I compare my HP-11C calculator (ca. 1981) with my Sony Clie TJ37, I'm not sure which is more impressive: the longevity of the HP, or the amazing level of technology integration in the Clie. Take your pick... I may still be using the HP in 20 years, but the Clie will be long gone. (These two devices are about the same size and weight by the way).

3. The new OS. I don't know if it will put them at parity with MS, or ahead, but right now they are behind, so this is absolutely necessary.

Pessimism:
1. I heard some of the same arguments from PalmSource execs that I used to hear from Apple in the mid 1990s: we're better than MS. I trust that these execs understand that they are whistling past the graveyard.

2. Hand-waving about sales stats. PalmSource execs said that handheld sales figures don't tell the whole story -- that they omit smartphones, which are splitting the market. OK, maybe. I haven't seen the sales figures for smart phones.

3. I think the biggest question is the value equation. One post referred to the paucity of storage on PDAs as a problem. I have to agree, though there i

And you wonder why you're having trouble finding GPL programmers for it? :)

You might have better luck trying to sell the same idea to the Palm community. Not only do you already have a bunch of "anything-but-Microsoft" folks, but even the new development tools are based on the Eclipse open-source IDE. There are FAR more apps and developers out for Palm, many of them free.

"The Emulator software does not include ROM images. It is like a computer without an operating system. Also note that the emulator emulates 68K devices and thus runs ROM images through OS 4.x. For testing on OS 5 based devices see the Palm OS 5 Simulator page."

For OS5 development purely in Linux, I have to synch my code into my own Zire71 and pray every time... thank heavens for programs like backupbuddyVFS

Mostly, I keep another box on my local network running win2k so I can load my code straight into the OS5 simulator. That situation really bugs me... and I hope that the OS6 simulator gets released in a Linux version.

It would probably pay me to get into java on the Palm as that would widen my market to include other devices that support the IBM J2Micro Environment.

"The Emulator software does not include ROM images. It is like a computer without an operating system. Also note that the emulator emulates 68K devices and thus runs ROM images through OS 4.x. For testing on OS 5 based devices see the Palm OS 5 Simulator page."

For OS5 development purely in Linux, I have to synch my code into my own Zire71 and pray every time... thank heavens for programs like backupbuddyVFS

Mostly, I keep another box on my local network running win2k so I can load my code straight into the OS5 simulator. That situation really bugs me... and I hope that the OS6 simulator gets released in a Linux version.

It would probably pay me to get into java on the Palm as that would widen my market to include other devices that support the IBM J2Micro Environment.

Mod parent up, especially for the Zen of Palm document reference...

I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.

I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.

I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.

The universal cradle interface is nothing more than USB pins, plus serial port pins, plus power pins (for the battery charger.) You may find this diagram of interest. Note that the only "circuitry" inside a cradle is a bunch of wires, a pushbutton and a resistor.

If you look at what's available today, you'll find that all but the cheapest models (Zire, Zire 21 and Tungsten E) still use the universal-connector and a USB cradle.

Seemed pretty obvious to me what was meant by port, considering the article and my discussion of what POS lacks as a potential host. GCC on other platforms have been able to target PalmOS for a long time.

here

extra dev tools for Treo 600 needs a login from

here

Tools from here

Cheers

VikingBrad

Don't be so sure.

I was really talking about current Mac support from a desk-top, integration, usability point of view. Palm and Apple have, for the time being, formed a business relationship to promote each others' tech.

How long this lasts is always open to interpretation, but is out of our hands anyway. Currently, core funcitionality works Good Enough for me. That is, I can sync to everything I need (on Windows at work, on the Mac at home), and can drag and drop files to the palm via Bluetooth. This is the kind of support I'm talking about.

As for developer support, Palm seems happy enough to provide documents and links to free prc-tools and emulators for all platforms, including Mac. Took me only a few hours to set up a gcc cross-compiler and prc creation system on OS X. I'd never have considered Code Warrior as a dev platform, but according to Metrowerks, they still sell and support Code Warrior for the Mac. Perhaps if I coded for money for a variety of embedded targets and wanted a one-stop solution, I'd consider Code Warrior.

Anyway, my point still stands: if you want a handheld that has good Mac OS X support (where "support" is defined as above), you have to buy a new Palm.

The largest hole in this support is lack of third-party conduits, as these are generally very platform-specific, and tend to be targeted to the most common platform (i.e., Windows). The Mac Plam conduit API still exists and is supported by Palm.

As far as pilot-link is concerned, I didn't see much in the Docs section that gave anything more than what I already have with a default Palm-iSync-Mac setup.

Titles on the above page that appear relevant to you are:
Zen of Palm
Palm OS User Interface Guidelines

I suspect your HVAC may not have as sophisticated a UI as a Palm but maybe their guidelines will give you some insights and rules of thumb.

good luck.

-joe

Provided you don't mind Sprint PCS (I don't).

You have to pay the cost of a service plan, but Sprint is offering such plans that include unlimited after-hours voice and unlimited data for $40 a month.

Yes, by default mail must be routed through their equipment. But likely for mass-market easy use. You're quite free to install your own software that can do anything you want.

You can install your own stuff onto the regular phones if you do a bit of hackery - but if you get a phone that is sufficiently advanced - a Palm (Handspring Treo) or PocketPC phone (Toshiba 2032), then you can load your own software easily. With the right software (eg Qualcom's Eudora) you can access whatever email you want - you can even SSH into remote computers from your phone (with Top Gun SSH).

Hell, Microsoft even has a *full* copy of Visual C++ for embedded devices (Pocket PC, Smartphone) available for download from their website - for free! Same is possible with Palm (although I've not done it). How's that for making your own wireless crap you to run on your phone!

Skimming the overview on how to link in an ARM subroutine here, I didn't get the impression that it'd be very hard to do. There's no mention that the linked in function must be assembly - there's no reason that the entire ogg codec couldn't be linked via a large ARM C API.

FWIW, it looks like a tools improvement permitting pure native ARM application development ought to be forthcoming sometime next year.

Skimming the overview on how to link in an ARM subroutine here, I didn't get the impression that it'd be very hard to do. There's no mention that the linked in function must be assembly - there's no reason that the entire ogg codec couldn't be linked via a large ARM C API.

FWIW, it looks like a tools improvement permitting pure native ARM application development ought to be forthcoming sometime next year.

• The really awesome thing about the zaurus is that you have the power to do things like create GUI based apps in python, which allows you to rapidly create useful mobile apps and not have to worry about things like memory management and cross compilation. It really takes the edge off of doing PDA development. I wrote a program to keep track of what I eat making use of python + xml + qt. There is no chance in hell I could have done that with a 33mhz dragonball.
  
  
• The problem with the zaurus is that there are very serious usability problems with the zaurus UI. Mossberg was absolutely 100% right when he said the zaurus is hard to use. Trolltech (with Qt embedded) and sharp (with their hardware design) has given absolutely no thought to making their products usable. Most of the glowing reviews of the zaurus interface you will see are given by entrenched techies who pride themselves on being to stumble their way through badly designed interfaces and decry anyone who finds a UI confusing or ambiguous as "not wanting to learn". Or they equate the zaurus' aesthetic beauty with usability (again, the "purty == usable" stupidity we see in so much Free Software these days). The reason why the Palm UI gets such a glowing review is that palm creator Jeff Hawkins designed the interface (both hardware-wise and software-wise) before he ever wrote a line of code or manufactured the hardware. He crafted a block of wood in the shape of the palm, whittled down a chopstick for a stylus, and carried the mockup around with him everywhere he went to ponder how the Palm UI should be designed. In the HCI world, we call this "preliminary task analysis", and it's obviously something that sharp and trolltech haven't done in the slightest. To read more about why the PalmOS UI still kicks the crap out of the zaurus UI, read the Zen of Palm and then try to find a document of equivalent enlightenment and quality relating to the zaurus.
  

Applications that need that already have it built-in. This makes no difference to users, at least in the short term.

a doubling of screen resolution,

There are already plenty of PalmOS devices with doubled and higher screen resolution, and applications support them. It's convenient for developers that there is a single API now, but that makes no difference to users.

better support for web browsing, native support for 802.11b,

If you want those features, they are already available and they work. Again, no difference to users.

and the ability to finally use multitasking and multithreading applications.

That is not one of the features Palm lists on their web site.

I maintain: PalmOS 5 is a non-event as far as users are concerned, and mostly as far as developers are concerned as well. All indications are that for most users, it will work no differently from PalmOS 4.

Palm devices will continue to be a great way to store and manage you personal data on the road.

Did I ever say they were not? All I'm saying is that you don't need a PalmOS 5 device for that--stick with PalmOS 4 devices--they are cheaper and they work for those applications.

Port AGI over to Palm? Meanwhile, I'm playing Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island on my iPaq.

I love my PocketPC machine, and the fact that Palm has basically conceded that a serious OS that does more than appointment management is needed, shows just how ahead of the game MS really was in this whole battle.

Not to mention the fact that everyone HAS to upgrade their PDAs to get the new OS and that was something that Palm constantly brought up as an ANTI-PocketPC issue (the ARM vs MIPS pocketpc issue of a few years ago.) Hell, it's still on their graph. Nowadays though, MS users are having the last laugh, considering they can upgrade their PDA's OS without buying a new machine.

Palm really has dropped the ball... hopefully, this will signal a change in their stragety and they'll start to actually make money of their devices (since only Sony and Handspring seem to be pulling profit from the palmos.)

There are two C/C++ development toolchains for Palm OS: Metrowerks CodeWarrior and what's called prc-tools, which is GCC, GDB, etc configured and patched as a cross-compiler for Palm OS. Some surveys suggest that each of them has about 50% of the market of Palm OS developers.

In the past, Palm OS SDKs have supported both toolchains: the 3.5 and 4.0 SDKs contained various linker (static) libraries in both CodeWarrior format and, for GCC, COFF format. The 4.0 SDK was even available from Palm as an RPM as well as a Unix tarball.

The 5.0 SDK's ReadMe has this to say about GCC:

This release of the SDK does not provide any support for the GCC development tools for Palm OS. GCC-specific components have not been updated for this release. SDK 4.0 Update 1 should be used for development under Linux and for using GCC on Windows.

I've also posted to palm-dev-forum about this.

In practice, it's not a show-stopper: the header files, which are all you really need to use the new 5.0 APIs (notably high density graphics and ARM subroutines), work fine with GCC. There's a bit of extra pain on Unix due to line termination issues and PalmSource's lack of familiarity with case-sensitive filesystems, but it's not too bad.

The GCC link libraries are entirely missing from the 5.0 SDK. This is unfortunate: while you can easily write an application without using them, the glue routines in one of the libraries makes compatibility with various versions of the OS easier, and PalmSource recommends their use.

Curiously, while the ReadMe says the SDK "does not provide any support for [GCC]", PalmSource were happy to fix showstopper GCC-usage-related bugs in the SDK's header files when they were pointed out to them during the SDK's beta period. Thus the note in the ReadMe is not really true.

All that's really missing is the GCC linker libraries and the Unix builds of the SDK. Because they were happy to fix those header bugs, because their Web pages still claim to "support prc-tools", and because of what various PalmSource employees have told me, I don't believe there's been any conscious decision (or conspiracy :-)) not to support GCC. I think the problem is that, even though the GCC library and Unix build scripts are still lying around from the 4.0 SDK, it's simply nobody's job to take responsibility for maintaining the scripts or for pressing the button that runs them.

It's all very disappointing: in all probability, there's no technical reason why the 5.0 SDK doesn't include GCC libraries or an easily installable Unix package, it's just that no-one cared enough to make them. It seems like it was always just Someone Else's Problem.

It's not too late to fix this. The company I work for and I know how to build these things (I wrote the scripts in a previous life :-)), and we've offered to help PalmSource build them several times. Hopefully they'll take us up on it, and make the users' lives easier.

Oh, disclaimer: I'm a prc-tools maintainer.

goto www.palmos.com you'll find screenshots there. The OS looks pretty much the same though, the changes are mainly internal and you really wont notice them till apps come out with support for them.

As was clearly stated at the PalmSource conference back in February, the OS is equally suited to a 640x640 display or even the odd resolutions like 320x480 (like the NR70).

Palm OS 5 incorporates a set of high-density APIs that double the screen resolution of a Palm Powered device -- from 160 x 160 pixels to 320x320 pixels.

yeah, but Palm OS 5 is going to be StrongARM based: Palm OS on ARM Processors

That emulator can be found at http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/.

Access to the ROMs requiers a membership of the Palm OS Developer Program. to bad...

There are tools packed with the emulator to extract ROMs from your PalmOS device.

That emulator can be found at http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/.

Access to the ROMs requiers a membership of the Palm OS Developer Program. to bad...

There are tools packed with the emulator to extract ROMs from your PalmOS device.

Okay, this is a little offtopic, but which dolt came up with the brilliant idea that in IE, the web site should use tiny grey characters on a pure white background? Two paragraphs into this article and my eyes are about to bulge clean out of my skull...

OK, so you meant this page and not this page (be a bit more clear about it next time). That said, Palm's site is legible enough, even on an LCD. (I'm stuck with a couple of flat-panel displays at work...light shades tend to be washed out and color accuracy isn't as good as with CRTs.)

Well, check this link out and you may change your mind. Palm vs. PPC.

Yeah, you think so? Check out this link: Palm vs. PPC

I think you missed the "still" -- AFAIK, you can d/l the SDK for PalmOS right here.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black ! Did you actually TRY and register ... check this page out ...
Palm OS Developer Program
...
I think the problem is the original poster didn't discuss the SDK in terms of their OS Development Program. But those of us who actually know what's going on figured this out.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Getting the SDK is about 4 clicks from www.palmos.com, and one clickthru license. No forms to fill in. Don't believe me? Try this link:

http://www.palmos.com/cgi-bin/sdk40.cgi

In the first week in February, Palm is having it's annual developer's conference called PalmSource in San Jose. This year it looks like they are going to be releasing details about the new PalmOS v5.0 which is the next generation, 32-bit Palm OS incorporating bits of BeOS. (They started working on the OS before they bought Be.) Remember that Palm is also spinning off their operating systems division soon, so I assume that they are going to try to use this conference as some sort of launching pad. Here's a link to an InfoSync article about the new Palm OS.

-Russ

".doc is NOT a standard. It is a format that is determined by one group with no regard for compatibility or interoperability. Standards exist to INCREASE interoperability."

So if I my new Windows 3D rendering package used the .DOC extension for its Direct Optical Correlation files, this wouldn't cause confusion, because .DOC isn't really a standard?

And if Microsoft issued an 'update' that changed the format of files created by Word 6.0+ in such a way that StarOffice could no longer read or write them, it wouldn't be a problem because .DOC isn't really a standard?

And if for the same reason, I suddenly can't use Documents To Go on my Palm OS device, I shouldn't be inconvenienced because .DOC isn't really a standard?

I think you're referring to industry standards, and not to de facto standards. The moment other companies began writing software which was dependent on the structure of a Microsoft Word document (.DOC) file in order to operate correctly, that structure became a de facto standard.

I'm not saying you have to like it. I'm just saying that it's the way things are.

It tells your heart how fast to beat, checks your blood sugar and oxygen levels, and controls your pupils so the right amount of light reaches your ...

There's an OO principle called dimeter which advocates as few dependancies as possible between objects. This sounds like a lot of hooks all over the place which is not a model of simplicity. It would be better for "it" to step out of the way and let each object adjust itself based on its surroundings just as in natural systems. Nature has a tremendous advantage over computers. It is far more efficient because everything is happening literally in parallel. Computers can really only do a very limited number of things at a time although sometimes the user perceives concurrencey due to very rapid time-slicing.

As a result, programmers are forced to make tremendous compermises given the comparatively limited medium with which they have to work. It will take well established techniques and objective analysis to determine the be way to utilize bits on silica.

Over the years I have recognised one principle that transcends this issue -- the issue of dealing with complexity. Oversimply it is Recursive Composition. This "pattern" or OO construct as it is sometimes referred to does not have a Class or particular set of relationships between objects. It's completely arbitrary. The idea, is to recursively delegate the responsibilty of another part of the system to yet another module. At the leaves of this tree you have the primative operations and at the root you have one simple instruction for triggering a potentially very complex cascade of instructions. Thus you have reduced the complexity of the overall system. The key difference between this and just another group of functions calling one another (and thus target to reduceing complexity of programs and in real-life systems) is parameterization.

As a simple example, imagine trying to encode or decode a database file. The database file has a header, a record list, and data chunks. Like this one on PalmOS PDB files. If one were to apply the principle of Recursive Composition the API for this PDB codec would be, at the top level, PDB_decode(char *src). At the next level down you have operations like Hdr_decode(char *src) and Record_decode(char *src). At the leaves you have dec_uint32be(char *src) to decode an unsigned 32 bit integer in Big Endian byte order.

If you can parameterize cleaning exactly what is required to perfrom a task and delegate it to another module you have broken the problem into at least two smaller problems which reduces the order of complexity. Simple! ;-P

Gosh, the amount of misinformation flying around here is amazing. Both Palm and Microsoft have professional dev tools for free download. A very long time ago, the only dev kit for palmos was codewarrior, which is not free. It's still the "official" dev kit, and runs on win32 or macos. A group of volunteers got gcc to compile palmos apps, and the resulting dev kit also got adapted by palm, as the prc-tools. As you can guess, it's free and runs on windows or unix. Some linux distributions include this package on one of their cd's.

Microsoft used to charge for their wince dev kits. Since the amount of software for pre-3.0 wince was disappointing to say the least, they started to give the embedded visual tools away for free, a while ago. (The link seems to be down at the moment though.) AFAIK, the tools only compile for wince 3.0 and higher, and only runs on win32, which is no big deal, since wince can only sync with win32, and nobody bought the pre-3.0 anyway :).

Gosh, the amount of misinformation flying around here is amazing. Both Palm and Microsoft have professional dev tools for free download. A very long time ago, the only dev kit for palmos was codewarrior, which is not free. It's still the "official" dev kit, and runs on win32 or macos. A group of volunteers got gcc to compile palmos apps, and the resulting dev kit also got adapted by palm, as the prc-tools. As you can guess, it's free and runs on windows or unix. Some linux distributions include this package on one of their cd's.

Microsoft used to charge for their wince dev kits. Since the amount of software for pre-3.0 wince was disappointing to say the least, they started to give the embedded visual tools away for free, a while ago. (The link seems to be down at the moment though.) AFAIK, the tools only compile for wince 3.0 and higher, and only runs on win32, which is no big deal, since wince can only sync with win32, and nobody bought the pre-3.0 anyway :).

Palm forces you to buy a developer kit...

No they don't. You can download free GNU tools right from the developers area at PalmOS.com There are also other languages available if you're not the C type. I do believe you need to buy an SDK if you're going to write a conduit though.

Something your colleague might to take a look at
PRC-Tools
And then there is the Palm emulator POSE.
PilRC might come handy, too.
Nothing to pay for AFAIK.

Well, since he now has the iPaQ, you might not mention it to him (unless he overcame is general dislike for Windows)