Review of Advanced Palm Programming: Developing Real-World Applications (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

Frequent questions I encounter while developing for the Palm platform include, how do I work with floating point numbers? How do I do graphics? How do I add an appointment or address book entry into the Palm database?If you've gone past the basics of Palm programming and have these kinds of questions, "Advanced Palm Programming" is for you.

For example, when I wrote a calculator program, I wish I had the chapter on floating point conversion and formatting. The PalmOS is designed to be compact and efficient and therefore, doesn't support floating point very well.Mann and Rischpater present routines with 15 digit precision, localization, and left and right alignment.

Regarding graphics, the authors discuss bitmaps, and panning and zooming techniques.If you're looking for sample video games, you'll have to look elsewhere.The authors frame their discussion with mapping software.

The chapter on reading from and writing to Palm's native databases (address, datebook, todo, memo) is interesting.While some developers have done this by studying Palm's source code (like myself), the authors offer an alternative API they call a property interface.This API hides the internal details, simplifies the task, and generally saves time.If Palm changes the underlying database schema, the API will isolate those changes and prevent your code from breaking.But you will have to depend on the authors to update their API, or know enough of the internals to update it yourself.I haven't worked with the API enough to render a verdict.There is one other way to write to Palm's address, datebook, and todo database that the authors did not mention: use the vCalendar and vCard format.These public formats, however, are no help when it comes to reading the databases.

The book covers many other advanced topics so be sure to check out the table of contents. Most of the examples require Palm OS 3.1, Codewarrior 6, and the Palm SDK 3.5.Unix and the gcc toolchain are not used in this book.Nevertheless, the writing is clear, as are the examples, so developers on Unix can still benefit.

Product Description
Graduate to the next level of Palm programming

Advanced Palm™ Programming Professional Developer's Guide

If you've been looking for an expert guide to Palm programming that goes beyond the basics, here it is. This book shows you how to create real-world applications that will put you at the forefront of development for the most rapidly growing OS in handheld computing. Pioneering Palm software developers Mann and Rischpater walk you through the source code for their programming examples, teaching you both about algorithms that solve problems specific to the Palm OS and more general purpose application-level programs. In stand-alone chapters designed for easy reference, they provide:

• A practical modest-precision trigonometric library
• Routines for floating-point data entry, formatting, and conversion
• An application to create Palm database (PDB) files on the desktop
• Map display applications with rich graphics support
• Simple yet powerful global searching techniques for Palm devices
• Guidance for building a transport-independent communications API
• Solutions for quickly accessing records in large databases
• Debugging techniques for the Palm OS

The CD-ROM contains complete source code for all the programming samples in the book.

Professional Developer's Guides The Professional Developer's Guide series provides the first in-depth look at recent or emerging programming technologies. Experienced programmers and developers will find comprehensive coverage of new programming standards as well as code, sample programs, developer's tools, and applications that will make learning a new programming language much easier.

About the Author
STEVE MANN, bestselling author of Programming Applications with WAP (Wiley), is President of Creative Digital Publishing, a leading provider of technical information and software for the handheld and mobile computing industries. Mann released the first freeware application for Palm and is the creator of the most widely distributed Palm travel application, WorldFAQ .™ He is also the former publisher and editor of Handheld Systems magazine. RAY RISCHPATER is a consultant and writer formerly at Sun and Spyglass who participated in the development of Internet technologies for the Palm OS and other handheld devices. Rischpater has written for such publications as Handheld Systems, CQ VHF, and Apple's Develop.

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