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Software Development for your Palm

The "traditional" way of developing applications in C, using either the free GCC development tools or the commercial CodeWarrior for PalmOS is still regarded the most efficient way of rolling out your killer-app to the Palm. The following list contains some valuable resources on that topic, including documentations and FAQs.

• Palm Development Tools, the main page of the official Palm Developer program.
• PalmOS Programmer's FAQ provides HowTos, tutorials and general information on the development process, such as "Where to get ROMs for POSE".
• Resources on Pilot Software Development, although not updated anymore. Still has a huge archive with most of the links located at the bottom of the page.
• Palm Programming Tutorial that goes through all the steps (download, installation, configuration, "Hello World") in detail, and also has some more advanced stuff.
• More Palm development resources, with a focus on Linux and Unix.
• Development frameworks (with source), provided by Tilo Christ, the author of the famous Pilot-Xfer.

• Official Palm Developer Documentation and Books
• Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide, the online version of the famous O'Reilly book.

Did you ever have the problem that your program would offer a functionality that would be useful to the user while he is already running one application? With the "traditional" PalmOS philosophy, this would mean that the user has to exit his current program, start your program, and then change back to his first application...using "Desktop Accessories", a concept developed by by Yamada Tatsushi, you can avoid making the user exit and restart his current application.

Read more about this fascinating concept in the explanation for developers, or the general introduction, provided on the DA home page.

• Getting started with KVM is a good source for your first steps in programming the Palm with the Java 2 Micro Edition.
• Sync-Builder Framework allows you to develop Java applications that can connect with Palm devices, without using the Hotsync technology.
• PersonalJava Runtime Environment for Windows CE 2.11. When I found this the other day, I was quite amazed that PersonalJava ever reached such an implementation state...

• LispMe, a GPL'ed Scheme interpreter for PalmOS. You can even implement programs that have a graphical UI (buttons, windows etc).
• OrbWorks PocketC for PalmOS
• Pocket Toolbox, a PocketC Palm native library that is oriented (but not limited) towards game development.

Achim J. Latz, achim@latz.cc , 13.02.2021

Palm: Hardware · Software · Development · E-Books · More Stuff