Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide (Developer's Guides (Osborne)) (CD-ROM)

~ (Author), Julie McKeehan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide succeeds in documenting both the elegance and the pitfalls associated with developing software for this handy gadget. The authors are experienced palmtop developers, and their wisdom is evident in the level of detail provided. A comprehensive introduction to the evolution of the device and its systems opens the book, followed by a classic "hello, world" example program.

The complexity continues to increase as the reader is introduced to forms design and handling and Palm Databases interaction (the equivalent of the Windows registry). Rounding out the applications-development tutorials is an excellent discussion of event-driven user interface (UI) programming and the widgets available in the Palm toolbox.

A number of development options and platforms are covered. If you don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for commercial software, GNU's Not Unix (GNU) tools from the Free Software Foundation are presented as a viable option. The discussion of conduit development is limited to Visual C++, but only because of the limitations of the official Conduit Developers Kit. --Tim Kohn

Product Description

Emerging as the bestselling hand-held computers of all time, PalmPilots have spawned intense developer activity and a fanatical following. Used by Palm in their developer training, this tutorial- style book is eagerly awaited by developers and experienced C programmers, who, until now, have only had access to piecemeal documentation. Palm Programming shows intermediate to experienced C programmers how to build a Palm application application from the ground up. It's an easy-to-understand book that gives readers everything necessary to create a wide range of Palm applications and conduits, from simple scripts through full-blown applications. Part I provides an overview of the Palm device and the Palm OS. Part II covers programming for the Palm itself. Part III covers conduit programming, which is used to sync the Palm with desktop applications. The book includes a CD-ROM (Macintosh and Windows compatible) with the full source code to the examples in the book, a trial version of Palm's Software Development Kit, and third-party developer tools, including Metrowerks' CodeWarrior Lite programming kit.

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Product Details

• CD-ROM: 478 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565925254
• ISBN-13: 978-1565925250
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,133,395 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent introduction, but a few problems, October 13, 1999

By	Michael Portuesi (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have read the author's previous books on Newton programming, so I knew what to expect from this book. I wasn't expecting a combined tutorial/reference that could stand apart from the Palm docs, nor was I expecting it to cover "cool" stuff like writing Hacks for Hackmaster.

I mostly got what I expected, which was a good introduction to programming for the Palm platform, with fairly detailed technical introduction and programming hints for the user interface, database management, beaming, find, and a few other basic topics.

In a few places, though, the text gets a little hard to follow, and could benefit from a re-edit. Also, the code examples for the book's sample application are frequently presented out of context. You can usually understand how a particular API call is used, but it becomes difficult to see how this code fragment fits into the bigger picture.

Finally, for Linux programmers, the accompanying CD contains packages of development software (GCC, PilRC, and associated utilities). However, one of the packages (the prc-tools RPM) was put together badly, and hence if you install the software you get a non-working development environment. Once you do get a working development environment, the sample code needs some tweaking before it will compile - the Makefiles have DOS carriage-returns in it which confuse gmake, and the code examples themselves have mixed case in the #include directives which do not match the actual files on disk. It's obvious the code was developed on Windows, and the Linux side was never tested. I have tweaked, built, and run the sample application from Linux, so it can be made to work - you just have to be a little resourceful. I have to say, though, that I expected better quality control from O'Reilly.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother -- the DOCS available at Palm, Inc. are better, November 15, 2000

By	J. D. Shaffer (Shimane, Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read the SDK documentation and the SDK Companion before Iever bought this book. I thought it would help clarify some of themore difficult points (as I come from a weak programming background.)But instead, I found that I already know MORE than this book teaches.Many of the examples are pseudo-code, worthless as real examples, andbarely helpful for the calls they make. The authors often gloss overthe more important points like common use, syntax, and definitions;telling the reader to read the SDK documents for THOSE things. Well,if I can read the SDK for everything important, than why do I need thebook? To summarize, it's not worth the money...

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beginner's book in programming., December 11, 1999

By	D. Robert Velez (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After buying a Palm organizer, I knew I had to develop an app for it. This book is not written in such a way to help even a beginner get off the ground. Although it talks about different environments and other software to use, there is no clear thought and organization. The author does stress on good programming design and development, but thats about it. I'm sort of diappointed in this title, especially since its an O'Reilly book. Skip this one and find another Palm programming book!