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
The Palm Pilot series of Personal Digital Assistants are the most popular electronic organiser so far, with a user base of well over a million and growing, so this is a timely book.
It also includes a CD with a trial version of the Palm Software Development Kit, Metrowerk's CodeWarrior Lite kit and all the example code.
CodeWarrior is the preferred Palm development system and most of the examples use it.
The book starts with an overview of the Palm devices, moves on to creating a Hello World program, uses this as a springboard for a discussion of the internal Palm environment and the resources it makes available to the programmer before going on to a more serious example.
Roughly half the book consists of code segments used to create an example sales application which reveals and explains the basics of Palm development. There's also extensive discussion of communications between Palms and Mac, Windows and Linux systems. This takes up much of the rest of the book.
This isn't a title you'll while away winter evenings reading, but it is a title anyone new to the Palm programming environment will want to have close by. Working real world code will take you up the learning curve fast. --Steve Patient
