Palm OS Programming: The Developer’s Guide

Neil Rhodes and Julie McKeehan are experienced authors who, through their company, Calliope Enterprises, work closely with Palm Computing to develop new training materials, materials that are based on this book. They are both programmers with many years of experience working with hand-held systems. Neil and Julied authored several books on C++ and hand-held systems, and now bring their skills to the Palm Computing Platform. Julie has been a systems administrator, a director of software development at a successful Macintosh software company, a teacher (of programmers for Apple Developer University), and author (of Newton books, a C++ book, and an Internet book).

With more than 16 million PDAs shipped to date, Palm has defined the market for handhelds, having dominated this class of computing devices ever since it began to outpace competitors six years ago. The company's strength is the Palm OS, and developers loyal to this powerful and versatile operating system have created more than 10.000 applications for it. Devices from Handspring, Sony, Symbol, HandEra, Kyocera, and Samsung now use Palm OS, and the number of registered Palm Developers has jumped to 130.000.
If you know C or C++, and want to join those who are satisfying the demand for wireless applications, then "Palm OS Programming": The Developer's Guide, is the book for you. With expanded coverage of the Palm OS--up to and including the latest version, 4.0 - this edition shows intermediate to experienced C programmers how to build a Palm application from the ground up. There is even useful information for beginners.

Everything you need to write a Palm OS application is here, from user interface design, to coding a handheld application, to writing an associated desktop conduit. All the major development environments are discussed, including commercial products such as Metroworks CodeWarrior, Java-based environments such as Sun KVM and IBM VisualAge Micro Edition, and the Free Software Foundation's PRC-Tools or GCC. The focus, however, is C programming with CodeWarrior and PRC-Tools. New additions to this edition include: - A tutorial that takes a C programmer through the installation of necessary tools and the creation of a small handheld application - A new chapter on memory, with a comprehensive discussion of the Memory Manager APIs. - Greatly expanded discussions of forms, forms objects, and new APIs for the Palm OS. - Updated chapters on conduits that reflect the newer Conduit Development Kit.

Preface;
What's New in This Edition;
The Source Code Web Site;
Whom This Book Is for: C/C++ Programmers;
What This Book Is About and How to Read It;
How to Read This Book;
Conventions Used in This Book;
How to Contact Us;
Versions of Tools;
Who We Need to Thank;
Overview of the Palm OS;
Chapter 1: The Palm Solution;
1.1 How Palm Succeeded;
1.2 Elements in the Magic Formula;
1.3 Easy to Carry;
1.4 Inexpensive;
1.5 Expandable;
1.6 Effortlessly Connects to a Desktop Computer;
1.7 Works Great and Is Simple to Use;
1.8 Designing Applications for Palm Devices;
1.9 In Conclusion;
Chapter 2: Technical Overview and Development Environments;
2.1 Palm OS Overview;
2.2 Conduit Overview;
2.3 Handheld Development Environments;
2.4 Alternative Development Environments;
2.5 High-Level Forms Development;
2.6 Handheld Development Recommendations;
2.7 Conduit Development;
2.8 In Conclusion;
Chapter 3: Designing a Solution;
3.1 User Interface Elements in the Palm OS;
3.2 Designing with a Particular User in Mind;
3.3 The Well-Designed Form;
3.4 Other Design Issues;
3.5 How the Sample Applications Are Useful;
3.6 User Interface of the Sales Application;
3.7 Designing the Sales Application;
3.8 Designing the Conduit;
3.9 Design Summary;
Programming a Palm Application;
Chapter 4: Tutorial;
4.1 POSE;
4.2 CodeWarrior;
4.3 PRC-Tools;
4.4 Installing OReilly Sample project;
4.5 Installing a PRC on the Handheld;
4.6 Installing PRC on POSE;
4.7 Modifying the Sample Application;
Chapter 5: Structure of an Application;
5.1 Terminology;
5.2 Palm OS Conventions;
5.3 The Palm OS and an Application;
5.4 A Simple Application-OReilly Starter;
5.5 Other Times Your Application Is Called;
5.6 Examples;
5.7 What to Remember;
Chapter 6: Memory Manager;
6.1 Types of Memory;
6.2 Dynamic Memory Allocation;
6.3 Stack Space;
6.4 Handling Large Amounts of Data;
6.5 Owner IDs;
6.6 Cards and Local IDs;
6.7 Using Memory Effectively;
6.8 MemoryTestAPIs Example;
6.9 What to Remember;
Chapter 7: Debugging Palm Applications;
7.1 POSE;
7.2 Graffiti Debugging Shortcuts;
7.3 Source-Level Debugging;
7.4 Gremlins;
7.5 Error Manager;
7.6 Palm OS Sources;
7.7 Low-Level Debugging with PalmDebugger;
7.8 Device Reset;
7.9 Using Simulator on Mac OS;
7.10 Release/Debug Targets;
Chapter 8: Resources and Forms;
8.1 Resources;
8.2 Form Characteristics;
8.3 Form Events;
8.4 Form-Level APIs;
8.5 Modeless Forms;
8.6 Alerts;
8.7 Modal Dialog Boxes;
8.8 Forms in the Sales Application;
Chapter 9: Form Objects;
9.1 Form Object Characteristics;
9.2 Form Object Events;
9.3 Form Object APIs;
9.4 Types of Form Objects;
9.5 Sales Application Forms and Form Objects;
Chapter 10: Databases;
10.1 Overview of Databases and Records;
10.2 Opening, Creating, and Closing Databases;
10.3 Working with Records;
10.4 Examining Databases in the Sales Sample;
10.5 Summary;
Chapter 11: Menus;
11.1 Menu User Interface;
11.2 Menu Resources;
11.3 Application Code for Menus;
11.4 Adding Menus to the Sample Application;
11.5 Summary;
Chapter 12: Extras;
12.1 Find;
12.2 Exchange;
Chapter 13: Communications;
13.1 Serial Communications;
13.2 TCP/IP Communications;
Designing Conduits;
Chapter 14: Getting Started with Conduits;
14.1 Overview of Conduits;
14.2 Using the Backup Conduit;
14.3 Registering and Unregistering;
14.4 Using Desktop APIs;
14.5 Conduit Entry Points;
14.6 The HotSync Log;
14.7 When the HotSync Button Is Pressed;
14.8 Using Conduit Inspector to Verify Your Conduit;
14.9 Syncing from POSE;
14.10 Creating a Minimal Sales Conduit;
Chapter 15: Moving Data to and from the Handheld with a Conduit;
15.1 Conduit Requirements;
15.2 Where to Store Data;
15.3 Creating, Opening, and Closing Databases;
15.4 Moving Data to the Handheld;
15.5 Moving Data to the Desktop;
15.6 Keeping the HotSync Progress Dialog Box Alive;
15.7 When the HotSync Button Is Pressed;
15.8 Portability Issues;
15.9 The Sales Conduit;
Chapter 16: Two-Way Syncing;
16.1 The Logic of Syncing;
16.2 MFC Conduit Framework;
16.3 Generic Conduit Framework;
16.4 Generic Conduit Classes;
16.5 Using the Wizard to Create a Minimal Generic Conduit;
16.6 Custom File Formats;
16.7 Handling Categories;
16.8 Sales Conduit Based on Generic Conduit;
Appendixes;
Where to Go from Here;
Palm Programming Book Web Site;
The Official Palm Developer Site;
Palm Programming Mailing Lists;
Third-Party Palm Programming Resources;
Sales Source Code;
Source Code;
Headers;
Resources;
PRC-Tools Build Files;
PilRC Manual;
Usage;
Understanding the Manual;
Resource Language Reference;
FORM (tFRM);
MENU (MBAR);
ALERT (Talt);
VERSION;
STRING (tSTR);
STRINGTABLE (tSTL);
CATEGORIES (tAIS);
APPLICATIONICONNAME (tAIN);
APPLICATION (APPL);
LAUNCHERCATEGORY (taic);
ICON (tAIB);
SMALLICON (tAIB);
BITMAP (Tbmp) (tbsb);
TRAP (TRAP);
FONT (NFNT);
FONTINDEX;
HEX;
DATA;
INTEGER (tint);
BYTELIST (BLST);
WORDLIST (wrdl);
LONGWORDLIST (DLST);
PALETTETABLE (tclt);
FEATURE (tfea);
GRAFFITIINPUTAREA (silk);
COUNTRYLOCALISATION (cnty);
KEYBOARD (tkbd);
MIDI (MIDI);
International Support;
Known Bugs;
Colophon;