Is Java for Palm/PocketPC/Zaurus a solution

[anton]

Hi,

does/did somebody write a java app which
runs on PocketPC (2003) and Palm OS 5.x?

I passed some time in google, on the sun homepage, and and and..
in different forums, but at sun.com I saw only palm 3.5 mentioned,
otherwise the *concrete* information ... I simply didnt find it.

I need to write a small gui app on a portable device which communicate
with a PC with bluetooth or wlan, I will see.

Why java? Because Sun told all the time write once run everywhere,
but I do not find on sun.com any concrete details like:
- on what PDA can I run java
- what java
- what are the tools

or is java obsolete for PDA's (my feeling).

So I simply would like to know, if some of you had the same
problem and what he did.
(or its better to code in C/C++)??

Thanks

Stephane

 

[Andreas Rueckert]

Hi,

does/did somebody write a java app which
runs on PocketPC (2003) and Palm OS 5.x?

I passed some time in google, on the sun homepage, and and and..
in different forums, but at sun.com I saw only palm 3.5 mentioned,
otherwise the *concrete* information ... I simply didnt find it.

--<snip>--

Is there any difference between 3.5. and 5? I worked on the J2ME
version of java-chess ( http://www.java-chess.de ). It worked on a
emulated Nokia 3650 device just like it worked on Pose emulating a
M100. And we are aware of one guy running the J2SE version on a
Zaurus. But that's 2 branches in the source-tree, although it should
be feasable to merge them via conditional compilation.

Ciao,
Andreas

 

[stephan]

--<snip>--

Is there any difference between 3.5. and 5? I worked on the J2ME
version of java-chess ( http://www.java-chess.de ). It worked on a
emulated Nokia 3650 device just like it worked on Pose emulating a
M100. And we are aware of one guy running the J2SE version on a
Zaurus. But that's 2 branches in the source-tree, although it should
be feasable to merge them via conditional compilation.

Ciao,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

My main problem is:
- I never had (and still don't have) a PDA
- I never programmed in java (only a hello world, I ama C++ programmer)

And an example of problem is the sun website:
They say there is something for palmos 3.5, fine but in my head
the following questions appear:

- is this product no more actively developed?

- does it mean it run also on newer palms like palmos 5.x ?

- or does it mean it runs only on palmos 3.5, nothing else?

- if it runs also on palmos 5.x, have I access to all new
features? (like bluetooth,wlan or not)

- or should I ask palmone for java?

- and what about other PDA's with OS like Linux or PocketPC 2003
(somewhere in the internet I found alist of vm's
some run on wince but what *exactly* is wince,
there is as far as I understood, wince 3.0,4.0,4.1,4.2,
there is pocketpc 2002,2003 or mobile windows 2003
some comes with .net compact others not)
I spent some time reading but I didnt see the wood
between all the trees.

- what development tools can I use (websphere microedition
seems to cost nothing but its IBM... I didn exactly understand
what the runtime cost means, the runtime on my pc, or
the runtime delivered with all pda you sell with your soft).

Perhaps you must pay runtime fees if you sell something,
but I didn't understand it exactly.

One thing which I find strange:

If java is "write once run everywhere" then it should
be easier to find *concrete* information with examples,
exact product names, versions, prices.
(Sun and IBM are the *masters of inconcrete* IMHO)

Today it seems a philosophy
"search your information everywhere, run on one, and
perhaps on more"

There should be at least one portal where you can download
in the way like:
- java sdk for zaurus xx (price: xx $ or free)
- java runtime for zaurus xx
- java sdk for palm xx
- java runtime for palm xx
- java sdk for pocketpc xx
- java runtime for pocketpc xx
- and and and...
even if these products are not from Sun
all the links to the products should be one one place.

Ciao,

Stephane

PS: it seems you must buy a pda+developer tools and then find out
if it can do what you want

 

[Enrique]

There should be at least one portal where you can download

in the way like:
- java sdk for zaurus xx (price: xx $ or free)
- java runtime for zaurus xx
- java sdk for palm xx
- java runtime for palm xx
- java sdk for pocketpc xx
- java runtime for pocketpc xx
- and and and...
even if these products are not from Sun
all the links to the products should be one one place.

I think java.sun.com has a j2me section that lists resources. Also,
see if Savaj (may be misspelled) is a possible solution.

 

[Chris Mays]

There should be at least one portal where you can download
http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/java/

 

[Darryl L. Pierce,,,]

does/did somebody write a java app which
runs on PocketPC (2003) and Palm OS 5.x?

I passed some time in google, on the sun homepage, and and and..
in different forums, but at sun.com I saw only palm 3.5 mentioned,
otherwise the *concrete* information ... I simply didnt find it.

Sun released the MIDP4Palm interim solution a while back to allow MIDlets to
run on Palm 3.5 and later. Currently, Palm has licensed IBM's WME
environment for running MIDlets on Tungsten handsets.

I need to write a small gui app on a portable device which communicate
with a PC with bluetooth or wlan, I will see.

Why java? Because Sun told all the time write once run everywhere,
but I do not find on sun.com any concrete details like:
- on what PDA can I run java
- what java
- what are the tools

or is java obsolete for PDA's (my feeling).

It's not obsolete, but I believe the market has shifted somewhat. Today,
there is a higher demand for mobile phones and many of them are coming out
with the MIDP. So, focus is currently on the mobile phone market and
providing solutions there. IBM has the resources and has taken the time to
produce the J9 platform which is a viable MIDP platform (though it
technically cannot be called that).

Unfortunately, there *is* a version of the Personal Profile for the iPAQ but
it has not been released yet by Sun. IBM's WME can be used on the iPAQ as
well, and can be downloaded for free with their Websphere development
bundle.

So I simply would like to know, if some of you had the same
problem and what he did.
(or its better to code in C/C++)??

If you want *portability* then Java's the way to go. If you're going for a
single handset, I don't see a reason not to use native code, especially if
a viable Java platform's not available.

 

[stephan]

http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/java/

I went here (I was already there):

Comments:
1. The link "Kada Mobile Platform, from Kada Systems" is broken.
What does this mean: no more supported....??

2. I follow the link "MIDP for Palm OS, from Sun Microsystems"
on the sun site I see no date which tells me from what time
this information is.
So I download the mipd for palmos 3.5 (no comment if it
runs on other palms like tungsten .. as I said)
I look in the midp4palm-1_0.zip and see that the files
have the date october 2001 (AHA, at least i found
out that this is perhaps no more supported)

3. I follow the link
"IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer, from IBM"
here I follow the link
" WebSphere Micro Environment System requirements "
(http://www.ibm.com/software/wireless/wme/sysreqs.html)

I see entries like:
- Palm OS:
Myriad wireless/mobile devices that are based on the 68k processor and the
Palm OS operating system.

(OK, but what os exactly ... is the 68k processor in the actual tungsten?
I don't know exactly but I know one tunsten use a
Texas Instruments OMAP 1510 144MHz (ARM) processor )
No version of PalmOS mentioned anyway :-(
- WindowsCE - PocketPC... bot no exact version mentioned


So ... I should give them all (sun,ibm,palm) the "award of the inconcrete"

Stephane

 

[stephan]

Sun released the MIDP4Palm interim solution a while back to allow MIDlets to
run on Palm 3.5 and later. Currently, Palm has licensed IBM's WME
environment for running MIDlets on Tungsten handsets.

aha, thanks.

It's not obsolete, but I believe the market has shifted somewhat. Today,
there is a higher demand for mobile phones and many of them are coming out
with the MIDP. So, focus is currently on the mobile phone market and
providing solutions there. IBM has the resources and has taken the time to
produce the J9 platform which is a viable MIDP platform (though it
technically cannot be called that).

hmmm.
Here a sarcastic questions appears in my brain:

how can something be "write once run everywhere" if it depends on
a market/vendors/... which changes constantly?

(its perhaps easier than native coding, but if one day your app
doesnt run on something it needs to run on, then you have to recode it anyway?)

Unfortunately, there *is* a version of the Personal Profile for the iPAQ but
it has not been released yet by Sun. IBM's WME can be used on the iPAQ as
well, and can be downloaded for free with their Websphere development
bundle.

I just looked for a:
"Asus Pocket PC MyPal A620 BT "
which has a good price.

If you mention only iPAQ ... does it not work for the MyPal
or does it mean I have to make a difference
between all PocketPC's (even if they run all the same version of PocketPC)

If you want *portability* then Java's the way to go. If you're going for a
single handset, I don't see a reason not to use native code, especially if
a viable Java platform's not available.

Thats what my first idea, so I could switch between Palm/PocketPC/Linux
depending on what is the cheapest on the market.

But ... I thing I have spend too much time now trying to find out
if java is the best choice. I suppose in the same
time I could have bought a pda and written my app in native code
(and i suppose that native code is still much faster than a java app)

My resumee is for now: java seems to be etablished for Server/Web Services
and all that stuff, but for PDA and mobile market there seems to
be a lot of movement...lets see.


Thanks for the info

Stephane

PS: I just looked on your "Infobahn" homepage, very nice

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

Hi,

does/did somebody write a java app which
runs on PocketPC (2003) and Palm OS 5.x?

Yes, sort of.

I wanted to port a Java applet I had written to a Palm app, so I could
use it on the go. I spent several days investigating my options,
including trying to figure out how to get started programming with
J2ME, and getting it installed on my Palm device. Results were not
encouraging, and I never did figure out if it was even possible to put
it on my device. From what I was able to figure out, Sun's J2ME
license doesn't allow you to redistribute the runtime without paying
them royalties, so you'd have to rely on the user's device already
being J2ME-ready. I guess they're targetting the J2ME runtime at
device vendors, not at end users. So I gave up on that option, and was
considering learning native Palm development, and thus porting my
program to C.

Then I discovered SuperWaba (http://www.superwaba.com.br/). SuperWaba
is a Java-like runtime, distributed under the LGPL, which runs on Palm
OS 2.0 and up and Pocket PC. They can't legally call it Java, but the
language is the same, and the API is more or less a subset of the
standard Java API. Long story short, I ported my applet in a day or
two, and it now runs on my Palm PDA. So I would highly recommend
SuperWaba for any Java programmer who wants to write cross-platform
PDA programs.

(BTW, both the applet and the PDA version of my program are available
at http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/Zendomizer.html, but unless you
play the game Zendo (http://wunderland.com/icehouse/Zendo/index.html),
you probably won't find it very useful or interesting.)

 

[stephan]

Then I discovered SuperWaba (http://www.superwaba.com.br/). SuperWaba

is a Java-like runtime, distributed under the LGPL, which runs on Palm
OS 2.0 and up and Pocket PC. They can't legally call it Java, but the
language is the same, and the API is more or less a subset of the
standard Java API. Long story short, I ported my applet in a day or
two, and it now runs on my Palm PDA. So I would highly recommend
SuperWaba for any Java programmer who wants to write cross-platform
PDA programs.

Thanks a lot

I will look at this

Stephane

 

[Darryl L. Pierce,,,]

I wanted to port a Java applet I had written to a Palm app, so I could
use it on the go. I spent several days investigating my options,
including trying to figure out how to get started programming with
J2ME, and getting it installed on my Palm device. Results were not
encouraging, and I never did figure out if it was even possible to put
it on my device.

The first thing to do is to differentiate the different technologies under
the J2ME umbrella. J2ME is not itself a product or technology but is a term
to refer to the set of all Java technologies for smaller-than-desktop
platforms. What you want to install is the Mobile Information Device
Profile, or MIDP. Search for that and you'll have better luck.

From what I was able to figure out, Sun's J2ME
license doesn't allow you to redistribute the runtime without paying
them royalties, so you'd have to rely on the user's device already
being J2ME-ready.

IBM already has an implementation of Personal Profile *and* the MIDP for
Palm Tungsten devices and for PocketPC.

<snip>

 

[George N. White III]

Thanks a lot

I will look at this

Take look a few simple open source Java/Waba apps that run on
Palm/PocketPC/Zaurus. I'm sure there are many more, but the ones I
have encountered were:

jscl-meditor -- simple editor with symbolic maths
WaJEi -- Japanese-English dictionary

If you look at jscl-meditor you will see that while the java source may be
the same for all the platforms, the build process is not. To get
something that runs on Zaurus you can use a conventional build.xml with
target="1.1" and no extra tools. The .jar file runs with either cvm or
evm (the latter is installed by default), and it isn't hard to package
things for the Zaurus installer. For use with PalmOS, wabajump is used to
get a .prc file so you can't just use the same build.xml. You need a
number of tools specific to SuperWaba/PalmOS.

 

[David McCallum]

George

OT. There is a big Celtic festival held in Nova Scotia each year, can you
tell me the dates

TIA

David McCallum

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

The first thing to do is to differentiate the different technologies under
the J2ME umbrella. J2ME is not itself a product or technology but is a term
to refer to the set of all Java technologies for smaller-than-desktop
platforms. What you want to install is the Mobile Information Device
Profile, or MIDP. Search for that and you'll have better luck.

Yes, I read about MIDP while digging for info at Sun's site. IIRC, it
wasn't entirely clear what devices were already supported.

IBM already has an implementation of Personal Profile *and* the MIDP for
Palm Tungsten devices and for PocketPC.

That's great for people who have Tungstens, but I have a Handspring
Visor Edge. And I wanted to make my app available for other users, who
may have other Palm OS devices.