TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog

According to PhoneNews, Sprint plans to phase out the dog known as Palm Treo 700p in May:
http://www.phonenews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1715

The model is said to be replaced in June by a machine called Sherlock - it will be offered in dark blue and burgundy(read: dark red with a slight pinkish hue) color choices.

Anyways, I have a pretty “wild-assed guess” style theory on what this Sherlock thingy of Palm’s is. Yeah, I don’t have confirmation for all of this - but I know from a trusted source that Palm is developing and testing some kind of clamshell due to be released in approx. the next five months. But lets dive right in…

I personally expect a clamshell handheld somewhat similar to either Nokia Communicator or HTC Universal(probably not a slider technique) with a big(HiRes+) screen, bluetooth/wlan or bluetooth/gprs and some kind of integrated storage that we know and love from the Palm LifeDrive which was recently discontinued.

This is supported by first of all the insider source mentioned above, and also by a few other factors. First of all, clamshell handhelds come out in hoardes currently - HTC Ameo, HTC Universal, etc. Palm has a long experience with keyboards in handheld devices(see: 5way navigation, …) - so why not use the know-how?

Secondary, Palm will probably not want to give up on its “usb” memory idea and technology. OK, the Palm LifeDrive was not exactly well-done in some aspects, but it was a revolutionary idea nevertheless…creating a smart USB stick is still a great idea. I’ll never forget the ahs and ohs I got when I used my Palm Tungsten T3 as USB stick and then viewed the stored files.

Last but not least, Palm hasn’t launched any really innovative “highend” boxen for a long time - its fast loosing the grip on the high-end organizer/Smartphone range, giving leeway to companies like HTC and HP.

To cut a long story short, this year is gonna be crucial for Palm. If Palm releases cool products, it could keep and reclaim its place as industry leader. But, if Palm doesn’t manage to get quality and innovation under control, I expect the “downward spin” to speed up even more. Up or down - what way do you expect us to go?

Dear Readers,
I just released Daily Quote 2 for Palm OS. Before we look at the news, please let me offer you this Tamspalm-Reader-Exclusive discount that knocks 5$ off either FileFind or DailyQuote at MobiHands. But hurry up, it expires on the 02/MAR/2007!

ILOVETAMSPALMREADERS

Tamoggemon proudly announces the release of the latest update to its Palm OS quote solution.

Daily Quote is the most flexible quote program for Palm OS! It supports a flexible quote database system that allows quote downloads off the internet or the creation of quote databases on the handheld. Quotes can be displayed at each start-up, the first start-up each day, or once each hour!

Daily Quote 2 improves the following aspects of the product:

2DAY SUPPORT
The currently-active quote database’s quotes can be displayed in ShSh’s 2day via a plugin file. Plugins for further applications are currently being developed and will be released soon.

HiRES+ SUPPORT
Daily Quote’s editing UI now supports HiRES+ to reduce scrolling!

IMPROVED RELIABILITY
DailyQuote v1 contained a bug which dead-locked the quote display on some handhelds. Version 2 completely resolves this issue!

A free 14day trial can be downloaded from www.palmdailyquote.com, registration costs 9.95$ at MobiHand’s. Registered customers get access to the update for free.

I was watching 24 last night when I saw a familiar sight on a PPC (too bad it was not a Palm). There it was, in the top left corner, “TCPMP”. Anyways, here is a blurry photo of it. I have a bad cable connection in my dorm room, this was recorded and paused on a VHS tape, and the photo was taken with my cell phone in bad light. They werent actually using it for anything, it was just on the screen for a second before they switched to a new program. Must have been watching movies on the job (which is pretty bad when you are trying to save the world). Enjoy!

Palm OS has a nasty little “habit” of forcing code resources to have a defined maximum size - if that size gets exceeded, the code needs to be “swapped out” into another resource(called segmenting). Creating such multi-segment applications in projects that have Managed Make enabled is difficult - but a reader sent me this tutorial some time ago(which works really well):

In case you need it, here is a copy of my notes on going multisegmented
(including some quoted comments from other list subscribers and things
I found on the net — thanks guys, and sorry I didn’t include credits).
My comments are in square brackets.

================== Multisection/Multisegmented Applications =======

1 - Create a “Managed Make 68 C/C++ Project” (only managed project works
with me)
2 - Create a file named “Sections.def” in the root of your project
3 - In the top of “AppMain.c” or equivalent, include the file “Section.h”
4 - Now, edit the file “Sections.def” and “Sections.h” to define what
sections your project will have.

Sample: “Sections.def”
=======================
application { “_temp_” TEMP }
multiple code { “code1″ “code2″ }
=======================
[You must have at least one segment in the 'multiple code' definition.
The names must match those in Sections.h. Try to minimize the number
of sections you define and use, while making sure none of them grow
too big. In place of "_temp_", use your application's name. In place
of "TEMP", use your Creator ID.]

Sample: “Sections.h”
=======================
#ifndef _SECTIONS_H
#define _SECTIONS_H
#define EXTRA_SECTION_ONE __attribute__ ((section
(”code1″)))
#define EXTRA_SECTION_TWO __attribute__ ((section
(”code2″)))
#endif
=======================
[The names (here code1 and code2) can be whatever you want, but must
match those in Sections.def. You can use whatever you want as the
symbol defined. Here, it's EXTRA_SECTION_*, but could be anything.
You will use it again in #5, just below.]

5 - On the function definition specify what section will be used, the non
specified functions will be redirect to default section code.
[Try to group functions together to minimize the jumps between sections.
Be careful not to miss any, because they will default to your first
section, and possibly make it too big.]
Sample:
=======================
// [Here's where the compiler learns where to put the function:]
static void myfunc() EXTRA_SECTION_ONE;
// [Remember to add the macro every time you add a new function to your
// application!]

static void myfunc() {
// `the code`
}
=======================
If your project have a section defined and don’t use it anywhere, you got a
error. So, you need use the sections defined one time at least, or don’t
define it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For a managed project, in your project properties, you need to go to the
build panel and choose the prc-tools-68k-compiler->Symbols section and
add a line:

MULTISECTION_BUILD=true

to make the managed project look for your .def file. If you do everything else
in the prior posting it should then work. (The stock Sections.h file said to use
MULTIPLE_CODE_SECTIONS, but that didn’t work. I found the definition above
by looking at the generated objects.mk file.)
[I tried this and it worked; I didn't try MULTIPLE_CODE_SECTIONS - JT]

NB It also seems to require that some function be in each section or it will
complain about the section not existing at link time.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Also, it might help after adding the files to the project, right click
on the project's name in the Navigation window and select Refresh,
before building the project.]

Jay Ts

Thank you very much for sending this in(a few months ago…whew, some things take a LOOONG time). All I can add is that you should clean the project whenever you get ld issues at compile time - there seems to be some kind of weird segmenting cache somewhere in PODS!

I develop my Palm OS applications on two machines - a desktop and a notebook computer. Source codes get exchanged via a CVS server - so far, this has always worked well.

However, I recently enabled Multisegment support for one of my apps on the desktop side - and after committing and moving to the laptop, ld bickered about missing segment information. This was caused by the PODS’s local cache containing a few files on segmenting support - they did not update after the commit.

The solution to this is in the Project menu - just click Clean and enjoy a painless rebuild!

This video could be interesting for all game programmers who need a few ideas for powerups or weapons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxSdKF5Fd38

No comments…enjoy!

Digital cameras usually come with manuals explaining how to access the plethora of functions available. However, these manuals usually don’t explain what the functions actually do - finding this out yourself can be a more than just daunting task leading to many spoiled images. OReilly’s Pocket Guide is compact, cheap and short…but do you get more than you pay for?

Derrick Story divided the book into three parts. The first part, called What is It looks at the different kinds of digital camera, how they differ and what they have in common. The parts of the cameras are explained well too - picking a camera type is possible after this part.

The second part is the one where the meat is at - it looks at the camera functions in alphabetical order(makes for a good reference, too). Derrick Story gives many practical examples of what happens if you change x - very, very helpful especially if on the go..

The third part looks at various shooting opportunities(wedding, landscape and so on) and gives hints on how to handle them. This part is a bit difficult to read at once, and is probably intended as ‘mission briefing’ before the shot.

Last but not least, the book contains a bunch of tables looking at stuff like memory card capacity/image resolution(wrong data for my DSC-N1 btw), image resolution/print size, lighting, focus and flash mode. Helpful!

The book is well-written and contains many (color) pictures illustrating what the text explains - a sample is below. I had no problems understanding the book, and found it a quick but nevertheless interesting read. Paper quality is good as usual, no blotting whatsoever with the x-nibbed Parker 45:

Overall, it has been a long time since a book last received a ‘must have’ from TamsPalm - and this book does it again! If you own a digital camera and want to learn more about creating good images, the 11$ price at Amazon’s is more than worth it! The small size makes it easy to fit into your camera bag so that you always have it around - and the short ’subchapters’ allow you to read up on sth important in about 30secs. My pictures improved significantly with this book, and so will yours…good photographs!

TamsPalm posted an article confirming the m500’s compatibility with 1GB SD cards some time ago. Reader Michael now shared the following results on performing the same tests I did with a 2GB memory card:

Hello everyone

I have obtained a 2 Gb SanDisk SD card and carried out extensive testing with the Palm m500. Conclusion: the 2Gb card is INCOMPATIBLE with the m500.

1. when you put a 2 Gb card into an m500, it recognises the card and correctly reports its size, and remaining memory. You might possibly even be able to wander around the filesystem and see all the file/folder names. However, if you try to actually access any of these files, you get gibberish. My theory is that the m500 is able to read the basic structure of the card, but can’t cope with the way the underlying data is stored.

2. The 1 Gb size card is totally 100% compatible with a Palm m500 that has had its operating system upgraded to OS4.1 In fact it’s also compatible with an m500 running OS4.0 as long as you ensure that FATFS.prc is installed.

3. In fact Palm Corporation is the authoritative source on this issue. See http://kb.palmone.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,kb=PalmSupportKB,CASE=obj(34080),ts=Palm_External2001

The above URL is correct at the time of me writing this post. If it disappears, try searching for “Maximum SD expansion card” on palmone.com. It says that the Tungsten E2, T3, T2, T | Zire 71, 31, 21 | Palm m125 m500 m505 m515 are all totally COMPATIBLE with 1 Gb cards, but INCOMPATIBLE with anything larger than 1 Gb. All of my experiments totally support the official information from Palm Corp. All us users of the above devices should get ourselves used to accepting this limitation. It’s time we got the wikipedia folks to offer custom-made text-only wikipedia subsets so we can make 700 Mb wikipedia dump files of our own choosing.

The Tungsten E2 was released as recently as April 2005 and is subject to the 1 Gb SD card limitation, so there are stacks of people out there who need a smaller wikipedia dump file.

4. My experiences support your theory, Tam, that the slowdown is about the number of files on the card. More precisely, the slowdown seems to be related to the number of files in the directory that the Palm is attempting to access. You can therefore make a program such as “Tomeraider” access the card really fast if you simply change the default directory it looks for eBooks in to a dedicated directory where you keep you eBooks.

The slowdown is just a bad on a small card such as 64 Mb as on a 1 Gb card, if you have a lot of files. As far as I can tell, the size of the card is totally irrelevant: the m500’s slowdown is solely related to the number of files in the directory you are attempting to access. Please post here if anyone has any experiences which contradict my findings.

Thanks, Michael

Thank you very much from the TamsPalm team for your interesting feedback!

Microsoft’s background selection skills have improved from version to version, with Vista having a few really cool-looking ones.

Selecting artwork is always a difficult process - and this page has a nice overview of the process used:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070126/finding-vista-wallpapers/

In the light of my editorial on the Treo 600’s unpatched vulnerability, Palm launched a few updates for their smartphones and PDA’s. Our friends at the PalmInfoCenter have more information, so I’m linking straight to them:

DST Update
This update addresses changes to the DST “implementation” of the Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices, making them use the right switch dates.

Outlook 2007 update
This update allows all kinds of handheld synchronize with Outlook 2007 via the Palm Outlook conduits. Since I had success using the conduits even with my old Palm IIIc, it looks as if this update will allow your vintage handhelds to work with the latest Outlook ‘offspring’.

Don’t ask me why, but I love to look pictures of classic Palm OS handhelds. Clieler of Germany(he really needs to start an english version of his blog) just posted a nice “repair guide” for fixing Palm Pilot Professional’s with broken screen connectors and also a nice picture of the Handera 330.

The pictures are here:
Palm Pilot Professional repair guide
Handera 330

Lets start this article off with a true story that I didn’t share back when it happened because I deeply respect the Palm employees reading TamsPalm. However, I think that telling it is now in order - its the best way to start off this article:

A few years ago(the Palm Tungsten T3 was freshly released), I bumped into a man using a strange BlackBerry I had never seen before in a subway train. I went up to him and had a chat…he was a product line manager at XXXXXXXX(big Austrian carrier). I asked him why his carrier stopped carrying Palm after the Treo 270 - and his response was short and hard:

because the c*** s*******(sic) don’t stand behind their products. I don’t want to have my customers biting my carrier’s hide just because some jerk high at Palm’s decides that its time to move on to the next product and stop supporting. Yes, WinMob is a bit sucky - but the HTC guys at least have the balls to stand behind their stuff.

I didn’t dare top ask for his card after that - I mean, I told him that I run a Palm OS site, so go figure.

Anyways, the story above clearly shows that carriers understand and know that Palm has a tendency to chicken out on problems - and lawyers and customers proved this together. They did win the m1xx series law suit after all, didn’t they. And the Treo 600 does develop orange blotches, doesn’t it?

If Palm wants to keep the excellent reputation it once had for sturdy machines(necessary for any kind of selling-to-business), moves like the one they made on the Find vulnerability will not be helpful. Not at all.

If you have a security vulnerability(especially one thats easy to patch, no matter how petty it may be) - fix it. If a independent developer can fix it in no time, so should you. In fact, I would love to see how GSPDA or HTC would react if such a flaw popped up in one of their devices….

Once again, to all Palm employees reading TamsPalm - sorry for the harsh words. But TamsPalm is not a cuddly-wuddly blog for apologists - this is, last but not least, a brain dump. and these thoughts and stories are percolating my noggin at the moment.

It would be too cool to hear some opinions - click on the post tile to get a permalink that can conveniently be sent to your manager =).

The OnBoardC compiler was recently released in version 2.6. This version added better Multisegment support, and really starts to become a viable compiler for Palm OS(Daily Quote for Palm OS was created entirely with it).

However, the product lacks support for many Palm OS API’s, as it misses headers. I thus decided to gather user-submitted headers for OnBoardC here - if you have some more to add, send them to Tamog AT gmx DOT at!

AlarmMgr.h.pdb
AttentionMgr.h.pdb
Day.h.pdb
highdensity_h.pdb
IntlMgr.h.pdb
NetMgr_h.pdb
NotifyMgr.h.pdb
OBLHiRes.h.pdb
PenInputMgr.h.pdb
SelTime.h.pdb
SoundManager.h.pdb
SystemMgr_c.pdb
SystemMgr_h.pdb
TextMgr.h.pdb
VFSmgr.h.pdb

Astraware is a fixed name in the Palm OS/PDA game market. Astraware’s Chief Executive Officer launched a blog post looking at the future of Palm OS games, and also takes a “stab” at titles like Zap Evolution.

In short, Howard’s message is that hardcore gaming freaks have died out and made way for casual gamers - but get the full scoop here:
http://www.astraware.com/company/blog.php?entry=38