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Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide (Developer's Guides (Osborne)) 1st Edition

by Neil Rhodes (Author), Julie McKeehan (Author)

3.8 34 ratings

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Palm OS Programming: The Developer's Guide
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PalmPilot's popularity is growing and with over a million units sold, the Palm OS dominates the hand-held market. Wired has astutely described Palm's position in a recent article: "On its way to becoming the bestselling hand-held computer of all time, the 3Com PalmPilot has spawned an intense, emotional, and fanatical developer following not seen since the glory days of the Mac." (Wired, 20 Feb. 98).Palm Programming should be eagerly accepted by programmers because the authors worked closely with Palm to ensure that the book is tailored exactly to the needs of the ever-growing group of Palm developers. As nothing but some piecemeal documentation exists currently, this book provides a much needed solution to the Palm developers. In fact, Palm uses this book as their official developer's guide and will be using it in the future as a key part of their training materials for developers.There are currently no books on Palm programming (and we know of none that are planned). The only way to learn is by using the reference material published by Palm (available freely on their Web site), the tutorial they provide, or various Palm programming FAQs compiled by third parties.Palm Programming shows intermediate to experienced C programmers how to build a Palm application from the ground up. Using an easy-to- understand tutorial approach, this book gives readers everything necessary to create a wide range of Palm applications and conduits, from simple scripts through full-blown applications, and in the process provides thorough coverage of Palm programming. It 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.OutlinePart 1: Overview of Palm OS and devicesChapter 1: The Palm SolutionChapter 2: Developing for Palm OSChapter 3: Designing a solutionPart 2: Programming for the handheldChapter 4: Structure of an ApplicationChapter 5: Forms and Form ObjectsChapter 6: DatabasesChapter 7: MenusChapter 8: ExtrasChapter 9: CommunicationsChapter 10: DebuggingPart 3: Programming for the desktop: conduitsChapter 11: Getting started with conduitsChapter 12: Uploading and Downloading DataChapter 13: Two-way Syncing Appendix: Where to go from here

ISBN-10

1565925254
ISBN-13

978-1565925250
Edition

1st
Publisher

O'Reilly Media
Publication date

December 11, 1998
Language

English
Dimensions

7 x 1.02 x 9.19 inches
Print length

482 pages
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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

About the Author

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. Neil has been a UNIX programmer (his fingers still know vi commands), a Mac programmer (shipped several commercial products), a teacher (of programmers for Apple Developer University), a Newton programmer (several commercial products, including some for Apple), and an author (of Newton books, a C++ book, and a Macintosh programming book). Neil has been working with Palm Computing on developing their training strategy and training materials for programmers. He works closely with many of the developer support engineers at Palm (many of whom he also worked with previously when they did Newton developer support).

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).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (December 11, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 482 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565925254
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565925250
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.02 x 9.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,995,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,719 in Personal Computer Books
- #10,470 in Computer Programming Languages
- #12,977 in Microsoft Programming (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.8 34 ratings

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Julie McKeehan
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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5

34 global ratings

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Amazon Customer

just what I ordered!

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2022

Verified Purchase

got the book in a previous order and now I have the CD!
Thanks!

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2007

Verified Purchase

I got it for my son and h seems to be really pleased with it.

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Albegadeep

A disappointment - particulary for an O'Reilly!

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2009

Verified Purchase

Really not worth it, especially new. Despite O'Reilly's excellent reputation, this one volume is not particularly useful to either beginning Palm coders or experts. It discusses a number of possible programming languages and software, but all examples seem to be with their own specific setup, complete with their custom "stationery". (Yes, you can download it from their website.) The examples do not include many common tasks - like working with dates - and in some cases do not even function as written! Truly a disappointment.

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W. J. Vovil

Excellent - Latest Edition will always be on my bookshelf

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2003

After dabling with a Palm for awhile, and browsing the 1st ed of this book, I decided to get serious about Palm programming. So I obtained the latest edition, 2nd edition and wondered why there isn't a 3rd edition; as the second edition does not cover higher than Palm OS 4.1.
However, given that, I find now that I am reading this 2nd edition from cover to cover. It is truely excellent. Yes there are areas it would be nice to cover in more detail; but there are also specific books such as Palm Database Programming that go into these areas in more depth.
I have lectured at college, and am planning to give a semester course in Palm Programming, and I intend to have each of my students buy this book as the major text.
I shall always buy the latest most current edition of this for my bookshelf.
Excellent work and praise for the two authors! Where is the awaited 3rd edition?

6 people found this helpful

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J. D. Shaffer

Don't bother -- the DOCS available at Palm, Inc. are better

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2000

Verified Purchase

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 people found this helpful

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Michael

Concise collection of information

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2002

Verified Purchase

This book provides a good concise collection of the basic information needed to develop a complete application including a custom conduit. You could download most of the same information from Palm but you would be left digging through vast amounts of dry documents to extract what you need. O'Reilly press has done what it does best and extracted the most useful information for you and put it together in an interesting format. It won't answer every question you have but it is a good place to start.

5 people found this helpful

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Michael Portuesi

Decent introduction, but a few problems

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 1999

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.

78 people found this helpful

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Rick Price

Excellent Palm programming book

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2003

Have you ever wanted to get into Palm programming, but were unsure about
how to go about it?
Well wait no more, O'Reilly (I'm sure you know about them) has a really
great book on Palm Programming called "Palm OS Programming - The
developer's guide".
This is one of the best programming books I have ever read, and I read
them daily. The content is clear and even though it includes extensive
source code examples is not boring - a typical problem with programming
books.
The book starts with the special requirements of programming for mobile
organizer devices, and proceeds to develep a reasonable sized application,
right through to writing a desktop conduit. By the time you have finished
the book, you should be ready to create your own Palm program.
The only thing I would change about the book is that it does not go into
handling categories in database items (IE GUI and coding examples), I'm
sure these are available from PalmSource, but I would have liked to have
it all in the book.
I've always liked O'Reilly books, but this is absolutely the best I have
read yet.

2 people found this helpful

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Palm Programming: The Developer's Guide (Developer's Guides (Osborne)) 1st Edition

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Editorial Reviews

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Julie McKeehan

Neil Rhodes

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