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Thursday, February 26, 2004 |
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OK, so I've got a new name for the weblog; I'm going for simple, so I'll be using palmos.combee.net. This won't be ready until Monday; over the weekend, I'll be archiving the current palmoswerks.com site and putting up a static copy on another server. Then, I'll redirect my blog site under the new name and post articles there from now on. This should allow the palmoswerks content to remain available, but new content will be under the new name.
I guess its time to reveal my reason for doing this. Friday is my last day here at Metrowerks. I'm starting a new role as a senior DTS (Developer Technical Services) engineer at PalmSource on Monday, March 1st. In this new role, I'll be responsible for doing knowledgebase articles, recipes, and conference presentations; I'll also be presenting feedback from the developer community to groups within PalmSource and its licensees. It's likely that any major articles I do will be hosted in the PalmSource KB, but I'll post pointers to anything we publish in the group that I think will be interesting to people.
I cannot disclose any information about Metrowerks's future plans for the CodeWarrior for Palm OS product, or any other Metrowerks product, so please don't send me email on this issue. If you would like to send feedback to Metrowerks, please use their "contact us" webpage at http://www.metrowerks.com/mw/About/Contact.htm.
I would like to thank my colleagues at Metrowerks for their support; I've been part of their family since 1998, and I've enjoyed working there. I'd also like to thank the Palm OS developer community; they've been great to work with and I've made a lot of friends. I hope to continue my interactions with all of you in my new position.
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Friday, February 20, 2004 |
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PalmSource 2004 DevCon Presentation
I've just posted the PowerPoint show from my presentation at the PalmSource 2004 DevCon last week. I'd planned on getting this posted sooner, but kept putting it off.
There are a lot of tips on using CodeWarrior for Palm OS in this slideshow. Some of the slides require a bit more context than is on the page, but I hope that you do find this useful.
I'm not sure when PalmSource will be posting all of the presentations from the conference. They said they would be available, but I've not seen anything yet.
By the way... I'm going to be renaming this site in the near future to something that doesn't clash with the trademarks of either PalmSource or Metrowerks. I'd love to get ideas from you all about a good name that reflects that this weblog is all about Palm OS PDA development. The focus will also be shifting, with frequent but short updates pointing to discussion threads, knowledgbase articles, and webpages, something similar to "Scripting News" but centered on Palm OS development. Please send me mail with any ideas.
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Thursday, February 19, 2004 |
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CW for Palm OS 9.3 Now Available
The CodeWarrior Developer Studio for Palm OS Platform V9.3 update is now available on metrowerks.com. You must have version 9.2 of the tools to apply the update, so download V9.2 first if you've not installed that.
The direct URL to the CW Palm OS update page is:
http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/download/updates.asp?did=find&vers=CWPP9
This update includes:
- UPDATED 68K Compiler and Linker
- UPDATED 68K Command-line Tools
- UPDATED Palm OS 68K Debugger
- UPDATED Object Library for Palm OS (v. 4.04.03)
- UPDATED PilRC resource compiler (v. 3.1)
IMPROVED PACE Native Object (PNO) Tools
- updated math library for PNO projects
- support for assembly of large PNOs that have been split into multiple resources
- support for compressing PNO files using GZIP
- better support for the Palm OS Debugger
- improved PACEInterface library
- support for the Tapwave SDK version 1.1
Get it while its hot! Full release notes are included in the package.
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Monday, February 9, 2004 |
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Using .seg Files to Segment Your Application
Several people at PalmSource 2002 asked me for a better way to specify segmentation for their projects. In looking at the 68K linker source, it looks like the linker supports this already using .seg files added to your project.
The format, as described in the comments is
{ "<segment_name>" [= <hex>] "<name1>" ... "<namen>" }
"<segname1>" = "<segname2">
The brace delimited areas specify segment names and list all the functions/symbols that will be allocated to that segment. The optional hex value (with no leading 0x) is used to set segment attributes, so it won't be too useful on Palm OS. The other notation is used to rename a segment -- this looks useful for pulling in code from a static library that has been build with "#pragma segment" calls.
I'm not sure if this code works, but it looks like its been in the tools for a while, so I assume this was a key feature back when the 68K toolset was a primary tool of MacOS development. I've dug up some old manuals, and this file format was mentioned in CW11 and CWPro1, but not in CWPro3. However, all the support is still there.
This should work for both the Mac OS 68K Linker and Palm OS 68K Linker, as they share code that deals with segmentation.
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Saturday, December 27, 2003 |
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PilRC-based Form Design Tip
If you're using the Palm OS 68K linker and hand-editing RCP files, it is sometimes hard to tell how your form will look on the device. There's an easy way to get a preview of the form, however, using the utility PRC Explorer.
After compiling your RCP file, open an explorer window and look at your project's "_Data" folder. If you navigate down into that folder, you should find the .ro file that PilRC created that stores the resources that get linked into your app. For one of my projects, this folder was "sxsw_Data\SXSW_-_Debug\ObjectCode". You can open that .ro file up in PRC Explorer and view the forms and other items immediately, as .ro files are just "resource-only" PRC files. Then, if you modify and recompiled your RCP file, just go and hit F6 in PRC Explorer to have the resources reloaded. If you're viewing a form, you'll see the updated view of the form. This isn't quite as immediate as using PilRC Designer or Constructor, but it is a lot quicker that reloading the app onto a device or emulator. |
