Palm Programming Developer's Guide

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: Palm-Why It Works and how to Program It

Chapter 1: The Palm Solution

Why Palm Succeeded Where So Many Failed
Designing Applications for Palm Devices
Elements in a Palm Application
Summary

Chapter 2: Development Environments and Languages

Overview
Handheld Development
Alternate Development Environments
High-level Forms Development
Conduit Development
Conclusion

Chapter 3: Designing a Solution

User Interface Elements in an Application
General Design of a Palm Application
How the Sample Applications are Useful
User Interface of the Sales Application
Developing a Prototype
Design Trade-offs in the Sample Application
Designing for a Small Screen
Designing the Databases
Designing the Conduit
Design Summary

Part II: Designing Palm Applications

Chapter 4: Structure of an Application

Terminology
A Simple Application
Scenarios
Memory is Extremely Limited
Other Times Your Application is Called
Summary

Chapter 5: Forms and Form Objects

Resources
Forms
Form Objects
Resources, Forms, and Form Objects in the Sales Application

Chapter 6: Databases

Overview of Databases and Records
Creating, Opening, and Closing Databases
Working With Records
Examining Databases in the Sales Sample

Chapter 7: Menus

Menu User Interface
Menu Resources
Application Code for Menus
Adding Menus to the Sample Application

Chapter 8: Extras

Tables
Tables in the Sample Application
Find
Beaming
Barcodes

Chapter 9: Communications

Palm OS Communication Types
Serial
TCP/IP

Chapter 10: Debugging Palm Applications

Using the Palm OS Emulator (POSE)
Device Reset
Graffiti Shortcut Characters
Source-Level Debugging with CodeWarrior
Source-Level Debugging with GNU PalmPilot SDK
Using Simulator on Mac OS
Gremlins

Part III: Designing Conduits

Chapter 11: Getting Started with Conduits

Overview of Conduits
Registering and Unregistering a Conduit
Conduit Entry Points
The HotSync Log
When the HotSync Button Gets Pressed
Using the Backup Conduit
Creating a Minimal Sales Conduit

Chapter 12: Uploading and Downloading Data with a Conduit

Conduit Requirements
Where to Store Data
Creating, Opening, and Closing Databases
Downloading to the Handheld
Uploading to the Desktop
When the HotSync Button Gets Pressed
Portability Issues
The Sales Conduit

Chapter 13: Two-way Syncing

The Logic of Syncing
The Conduit Classes
Sales Conduit Sample Based on the Classes
Generic Conduit
Sales Conduit Based on Generic Conduit

Chapter 14: Debugging Conduits

HotSync Flags
Source-Level Debugging
Avoiding Timeouts While Debugging
Conduit Problems You Might Have
Test with The Palm OS Emulator (POSE)
Turn off Other Conduits During Testing
Use the Log, Luke

Appendix: Where To Go From Here

Index