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RePalm

dmitry.gr

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Re: RePalm

#81

Post by acyou »

nerdponx wrote: post #58
troad wrote: post #41

This is an incredibly cool write-up, demonstrating a level of technical skill far beyond me. Kudos! I am a little confused by all the "but why" comments here. Because it's fun! Because it's cool! Because it's full of weirdness, archaisms, and edge cases - working through those is a playful challenge, and conquering them all gives a wonderful feeling of mastery. It doesn't need to be any more 'useful' than any other h…

I think there are two kinds of "but why" questions: 1. Derisive, insinuating that the project is silly or a waste of time. 2. Inquisitive, actually wanting to know what motivated the creator to do something that most people don't see a value for, and/or would never have thought to bother with. We should discourage the former, but IMO we should encourage the latter.

I think the "Motivation" section is the most important section of documentation. Why is this great and why should we keep reading?

Re: RePalm

#82

Post by nerdponx »

acyou wrote: post #81
nerdponx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two kinds of "but why" questions: 1. Derisive, insinuating that the project is silly or a waste of time. 2. Inquisitive, actually wanting to know what motivated the creator to do something that most people don't see a value for, and/or would never have thought to bother with. We should discourage the former, but IMO we should encourage the latter.

I think the "Motivation" section is the most important section of documentation. Why is this great and why should we keep reading?

Also true, but I don't think we need to enforce that kind of standard for personal hobby projects. You're not under any obligation to convince people that your project is worth being interested in, unless you specifically want other people to start using it.

Re: RePalm

#83

Post by MikusR »

michaelhoffman wrote: post #39
tgmatt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, and a genuine question, why do you use PDAs when smartphones exist? Surely they do everything the PDAs did but better?

I don't use non-smartphone PDAs anymore, but I really miss: 1. Their ability to do absolutely everything offline. No need to worry that I won't be able to access something because somewhere without data service 2. The ability to have all the PDA features at my fingertips without being hooked up to the world's biggest attention-killing distraction network.

you just described an ordinary smartphone with wifi/data turned off.

Re: RePalm

#84

Post by muyuu »

squarefoot wrote: post #78
muyuu wrote: post #37

As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. It's like bringing back MS-DOS, perhaps you have something ready made for that environment and you want to use it as is because you don't want to relearn some newer interface. That's ok, it can be done with emulation. But other than that why would you want to impose yourself a bunch of anachronistic limitations?

> As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. I see a big opportunity should rePalm be ported to generic low cost embedded hardware. ESP32(|ARM|Risc-V) board+LCD+LTE module, all costing a dozen bucks each or less, would make the basis for a powerful dumbphone for when manufacturers will cease any production of them. I would personally love to have such a device. Broadly speaking, PalmOS had filesys…

why would you bother with the overhead to make it Palm-compatible though? at most, an emulation subsystem might make sense, but having all things including new development run in a Palm-compatible system right now makes no sense.

Note that it wouldn't even be a dumbphone by definition if it has an OS running arbitrarily installed software on it.

Re: RePalm

#85

Post by aidenn0 »

squarefoot wrote: post #78
muyuu wrote: post #37

As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. It's like bringing back MS-DOS, perhaps you have something ready made for that environment and you want to use it as is because you don't want to relearn some newer interface. That's ok, it can be done with emulation. But other than that why would you want to impose yourself a bunch of anachronistic limitations?

> As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. I see a big opportunity should rePalm be ported to generic low cost embedded hardware. ESP32(|ARM|Risc-V) board+LCD+LTE module, all costing a dozen bucks each or less, would make the basis for a powerful dumbphone for when manufacturers will cease any production of them. I would personally love to have such a device. Broadly speaking, PalmOS had filesys…

FWIW, there was an arm-native video player for the T5, and I was able to watch mpeg4/divx encoded movies on it.

Re: RePalm

#86

Post by devbent »

As an aside, I would love a brand new Palm device, with modern tech it could be obscenely tiny and have good battery life.

Palm devices had physical buttons, one of which immediately (0 perceivable lag) opened a todo list

When I used to be have a palm, anytime I was feeling idle I'd pull out my palm and press the Todo list button and see what was next on my schedule. It was literally life changing and every smart device since is a laggy piece of shit when it comes to physical Todo lists.

The Samsung Note series could have been great if it allows for replacing the lock screen with a Todo list that you can interact with, but no, the Note cannot be used as a fucking note pad.

I once burst into the office of the PM in charge of the Tasks ui for Windows Mobile and asked him why we did such a shitty job, but because he had never used a palm before, he didn't even realize what we were shipping was garbage.

Ugh.

Re: RePalm

#87

Post by lampiaio »

ttctciyf wrote: post #57
ckz wrote: post #7

Side note: Dmitry (creator of RePalm) is a treasure and his impact on the Palm community cannot be understated. He has a world-class depth of knowledge of the inner workings of these things and is one of the key players in extending PalmOS device capabilities today (patching ROMs, new hardware, etc.). He also contributes regularly to apps the community is developing, teaching us hobby devs new tricks. :) As someone w…

> cannot be understated Seeing this a lot recently[1]. I guess you mean the opposite of what this implies ("his impact is less than you could state"), but I'm curious how this has ended up being almost as commonly used as the "correct" form[2]. Is it an in-joke or reference I'm not getting? 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22cannot+be+understated%22+... 2: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22cannot+be+overstated%22…

I parsed "cannot be understated" as "must not be understated", or "we cannot allow it to stay understated". I took it to mean a call to action, "this cannot be x!".

Re: RePalm

#88

Post by e-_pusher »

dmitrygr wrote: post #54
bioemerl wrote: post #5

This is amazing. I would leap at the chance to build a simple palm device with a 3D printed case, modern hardware that lasts an absolute eternity.

Working on it. Standby. Sadly might be months. Hobby project takes back seat to job and life…

What a teaser! Can't wait to see it. Anything you can share right now about what you are building?

Re: RePalm

#89

Post by ckz »

walterbell wrote: post #9
ckz wrote: post #7

Side note: Dmitry (creator of RePalm) is a treasure and his impact on the Palm community cannot be understated. He has a world-class depth of knowledge of the inner workings of these things and is one of the key players in extending PalmOS device capabilities today (patching ROMs, new hardware, etc.). He also contributes regularly to apps the community is developing, teaching us hobby devs new tricks. :) As someone w…

Is there a recommended Palm device for modern use? What software do you use on Linux/Mac/Windows to sync the PDA?

Palm Desktop still works fine today on modern Windows, just have to grab USB drivers: https://palmdb.net/help/hotsync-setup

On Linux there's pilot-link (command line) or J-Pilot (GUI on top of that). I don't love the UI for J-Pilot, admittedly, which feels a little rougher than Palm Desktop. A Windows VM is also a common approach.

For devices, there's a dividing line between 68k and ARM.

A 68k will feel more "classic" and will often get you things like AAA batteries and LCD grayscale screens with a bit of an e-ink vibe. Some models like Handsprings are expandable with more "modern" (for 2001) capabilities like extra storage, a camera, or GPS. Some Palm/Sony devices have SD slots too. Most devices of this age involve feature tradeoffs, however. You'll often find color, or AAA, or 16MB of RAM, but not all 3. For a 68k daily driver, you probably want something running OS3.5 or OS4 to avoid the limitations of the super early versions.

ARM models (Tungstens, various Cliés, Treos, etc.) close the gap with smartphones much more--and some literally were. Color, higher resolutions, lithium, media support, SD, bluetooth, wifi, etc. These run OS5+ and having ARM under the hood unlocks an additional class of apps the older ones can't run.

A reminder also to definitely tune one's expectations to the era. Truly modern connectivity requires fiddling and having no-to-rudimentary HTTPS support can make these feel more disconnected today than they originally were. Still, you might also be surprised at how many daily tasks today were achievable 20 years ago in a way that's generally familiar to us now.

Re: RePalm

#90

Post by causality0 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #40
causality0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow using it was far more pleasurable than Pocket PC. I could certainly do more things with my beastly 640x480 624mhz ipaq, but everything about the UX was better on Palm. Apps saved state automatically. I didn't have to open a start menu to launch something and I didn't have to open two menus and manually close them because Windows Mobile doesn't close anything when you hit the X button. The buttons, d-pads,…

Yeah, it's a shame, Microsoft had the better kernel and SDK (by a long shot) but their UX was crude and relied too much on old Windows paradigms. They should have kept the kernel and ditched the Shell to build something tailored for the form factor and usage.

They're still addicted to marketing-first design. Imagine what users before 20110 would say if you told them every PC now comes with a splash screen that doesn't do anything that you have click past to then get to the login screen.
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