Palm Tipsheet 4.0 =================== Hello All! Welcome to the fourth installment of the PalmTipsheet. As you may notice, I've changed the name of the e-zine from Mike's "PalmPilot Tipsheet" to the "PalmTipsheet" following the lead of 3Com who has adopted "Palm" as the standard name for their organizer product line. I've also decided to change the PalmTipsheet to a quarterly e-zine rather than a monthly due to time constraints. As you may have also noticed, these time constraints have already delayed this 'monthly' issue. :) In this issue of the PalmTipsheet, I have limited contents to Notable Links and a special interview with a Japanese Palm user. "Yoz" will describe how Japanese users and 3Com have both made the Palm platform more effective and friendly and how the Japanese PalmOS system works. In this Issue: =========== **Notable Palm Links **Exclusive Interview: A Japanese Palm user describes how the Japanese PalmOS works Notable Palm Links: =================== ** 3Com Palm IIIe Introduced-- Catering to budget-minded prospective Palm customers, 3Com has released the new $229 Palm IIIe. This new Palm unit sports the improved screen seen in the Palm IIIx and Palm V, the same form factor as the Palm III series but some limitations to help keep prices down. Palm IIIe: One of the drawbacks is that the new Palm IIIe is non-upgradeable to higher memory sizes-- the soldered-in board of the unit has 2MB and no user-accessible Flash memory. There are services that exist which will upgrade a new Palm IIIe though these will void the warranty: Tim Charron's Upgrade Service: For Outlook users, the other drawback is that there is no Outlook conduit included with the Palm IIIe (as with the Palm IIIx and Palm V) though this conduit can be purchased separately. >From commentary I've read, this new Palm unit seems to be focused on first time buyers, with an emphasis on students with limited budgets. As a matter of fact, 3Com is also offering a slick looking "Student" Palm IIIe Special Edition with an iMac-like clear case and brightly colored flip lids in blue, lime and aqua for $12.95 each. Palm IIIe Special Edition: Palm III Color Shades Flip Covers: This seems like a great move for 3Com, allowing them to attract even more users to the platform with street prices on the new Palm IIIe series units running around $199 each. **FUGA eDiary-- a new handheld device on the market. Looks very much like a Palm Organizer but uses its own operating system, costs $150 and comes only in teal green. It appears to be taking an even more simplified approach than the Palm devices. Looks as though it might be a bit larger than a Palm, though I could not find data to support that theory anywhere on the site. With street pricing for Palm IIIe's at $199, I think that many of the low-cost alternates like the eDiary might have a hard time gaining significant market share. FUGA eDiary: ** Foreign 3.1-- Foreign for Palm Organizer, The elegantly simple, yet powerful currency converter program for your Palm has been released. Foreign was reviewed in Tipsheet 3.0 with high 'real-world' praise. New to this version is Euro capability and internet connectivity with software that runs on your desktop PC that allows you to easily update the database on your Palm with the latest exchange rates from the Internet. Foreign is a $10 application and the demo version allows for 30 conversions and then must be registered. Foreign 3.1 Tipsheet 3.0 (Foreign Review) ** IDPalm 1.01-- IDPalm allows you to modify the startup screen stored in the flash ROM of your palm connected organizer (limited to Palm III and V with support coming for Palm VII). The app allows you to put your name, address, email, phone number, or any other information directly in the ROM image, making your changes semi-permanent. The demo version is has a limit of a single line of text and no password protection, while the registered version of IDPalm allows you to protect your altered screen with a password, and the ability to add 3 lines of text to your splash screen. IDPalm: **Per Anum City Guides-- with loads of information at your fingertips for many major cities for $20, a per Anum guide might be just for you. Containing a wide variety of addresses and phone numbers, the guides are updated annually. Per Annum Palm Organizer Guides: A Sample Table of Contents: **Project Planner-- Project Planner enables you to manage the steps in a project, their dependencies, and resources. Build houses, map business processes, or plan software development. Project Planner gives you the tools in your hand to plan, record, and track those projects and is priced at $20. Project Planner: ** iSilo Reader-- This $12.50 reader utility provides Palm organizer users with an alternative means for carrying and accessing documents. iSilo offers more free memory for more documents, uses a document format that saves 20% more memory over the Doc format. iSilo displays documents formatted using HTML, the industry standard supported by many applications for publishing formatted documents. iSilo: **ApptViewer DA & RAM DA-- ApptViewer DA is a DA type plug-in that can show one day in your schedule within any application (no need to launch the Datebook app!). Ram DA is a DA type application that can show your used memory in a graphical popup screen. All freeware. (Note that DAs require a DA launcher to operate.) ApptViewer & Ram DA: DA Launchers: Cute & Funky DAs Page: **Vexed 1.3-- A small logic puzzle game in which you use your stylus to cancel out other blocks by pushing and touching matching block surfaces together, with the goal being an completely cleared screen. It's not as easy as it might first appear! A very challenging, addictive game-- and best of all it's free! Vexed Home Page (Near the Bottom): **SmallWare Games-- for the Palm. Some are freeware and others are shareware-- choices include Solitare and Tangrams and the free versions are level-limited versions. SmallWare: **Palmstock-- a Funky 70's looking Palm website with all sorts of cool Palm related links and information that you may browse. Palmstock: **PDA Dash-- A website run by ConceptKitchen with Palm news, reviews of products, resources, software and hardware for sale. PDA Dash: **Online Originals-- Novels for the Palm. Online Originals, is a publishing company that operates solely on the Internet. They distribute book-length works in digital form, using e-mail for both orders and delivery. This Web site contains synopses and sample chapters of all the works they publish -- each in the language of its origin -- plus access to one complete free work each month. $7 each (average cost). Online Originals: **HandHeldMed Website-- A premiere source of information for physicians, residents, medical students, and healthcare professionals. Handheldmed.com is devoted to clinical handheld computing news, reviews, and informatics in medicine. HandHeldMed: **Palm Organizers Help the L.A Fire Dept. fight fires-- By tracking fire code violations, the process will apparently cut data processing time since data is gathered from the field rather than re-typed from field notes. ZDNet: Exclusive Interview: Masatoshi 'Yoz' Yoshizawa Yoz describes the Japanese PalmOS, and how it works ==================================================== Masatoshi 'Yoz' Yoshizawa has been using his Palm Organizer for several years now and in that time has written several Mac applications for use with Palm units, such as 'MakeDoc' for creating DOC formatted files from plain text files, 'SimpleInstall' for drag and drop installation of Palm files on a Mac, and more recently, 'PD Theme Font Assign' for changing font specs within the new MacPac 2.1 application. I've taken time to ask Yoz several questions about the Japanese Palm operating system (J-OS) and Palm Computing's new PalmOS-J and how they work. Mike: How long have you been using a Palm Yoz? Yoz: I got my first Palm-Device, Pilot5000 at MacWorld EXPO '97 in SF. Mike: How long have you been using the Japanese OS designed by Mr. Yamada? Yoz: I've used the J-OS since the 1st day of my Palm-life. Mike: Yoz, I'm curious-- how does a Japanese Palm OS actually work? I imagine that all of the menus and text uses Japanese characters-- is that correct? Yoz: Well, there are several versions of J-OS. J-OS 1.9 is freeware. Basically, it's a Hack. It needs HackMaster. J-OS PRO (2.0) and J-OS III (3.0) is a stand alone PalmOS extension. It works without HackMaster so, It doesn't need HackMakster. PalmOS-J is a relatively new OS created by Palm Computing. Most important tasks of J-OS are: + Drawing Japanese Characters (Kanji). We have over 3,000 characters for Japanese. Our language needs at least 2 bytes for a character. Also, we use ASCII characters. So, we had to think up the trick to use ASCII characters and Japanese characters at same time. The trick is called 'Shift-JIS'. Shift JIS was developed by Microsoft (boo!) in 80s. Thanks to Shift-JIS, we can use Japanese in Mac, Windows, and PalmOS. But, lately, most of us hate Shift-JIS because of its trickiness. With J-OS, PalmOS's DrawText API understands strings written in Shift-JIS, and it draws Japanese characters well. + Assisting the input of Japanese Characters is the next problem. As you may know, Japanese characters are more complex then roman characters. And there are a huge number of characters. So, It's not realistic to 'write' the characters in graffiti area. So, we've used front-end processor to input Japanese characters. This front-end processor is provided as part of the new J-OS. + On-the-fly localizer. J-OS III has a system called 'Localizer'. The Localizer is a small resource file for each application on Palm Device. The localizer files override the resources for each application. So, the localizer makes use of the menu resource, to show the Japanese localized menu. J-OS III contains localizers for most basic applications and users can install more localizers for other applications. Mike: Further, I'm curious about how you enter Japanese characters into a Palm? Do you write in a grafitti-like Japanese alphabet that generates Japanese characters, or is there a conversion process that takes place? Yoz: Graffiti is Graffiti. PalmOS recognizes only the Graffiti. J-OS does not expand them. We can write Japanese sentence in Roman characters. Like this: "Konnichiwa" = "Hello" But, it describes only pronunciation. There are many homonymic words and characters. So, we have to choose the correct word from Roman-Japanese. J-OS provides the environment for this purpose. For example: 'kyou_ha_yoi_tenki' ( '_' means space ) = 'It's fine day.' Japanese = '' (Note: In reality, we would see Japanese words instead of '<...>'.) We write Roman-Japanese with Graffiti, inserting spaces between syllables. Then, J-OS comes up with a variety of possibilities for each word. From those choices we choose the correct one. This process takes place in a small window for 'Japanese input mode' provided by J-OS. In comparison, PalmOS-J doesn't have such a window 'cause it has no 'Japanese input mode' . In the PalmOS-J, we can do the process in-line seamlessly. It's wonderful! Mike: How long have you been using the Japanese OS designed by Palm Computing? Yoz: Little over 4 months. PalmOS-J was released in March '99. Mike: How much of a difference does this input method mean to the Japanese Palm user? I would imagine that Japanese users would be quite happy with this development. Yoz: Exactly. Most palm users in Japan use either J-OS or PalmOS-J. Mike: Do the Palm applications you use need to be localized to work with Japanese OSes, in order to display menus and so on in Japanese characters? There is no need to translate menu items, messages, etc. It's OK if they are written in English. Many of us read English. (Of course, translated messages are better for us.) And, most applications from US/Europe work correctly in J-OS. Most critical are HI-ASCII characters like the umlaut. If the application depends on them, an error will probably occur. It's a curse of Shift-JIS. Mike: Has the PC desktop application that comes with a Workpad with 3.1J been localized for Japanese? What about the Palm Mac Pac 2.1? Yoz: Partly, Yes. The Palm Desktop for Windows that comes with WorkPad-J is fully localized. But, 3com and IBM doesn't sell MacPac in Japan. So, we Japanese Palm & Mac users, use the English version of MacPac. A dude, Mr. Miguchi, made a patch for MacPac2 to make it capable of handling Japanese. Mike: I see that you have developed a new utility, especially for Japanese Mac users to change their text in the Palm Desktop to Japanese, tell me a little about why you've decided to build this utility. Yoz: Palm Desktop organizer has the font setup pane in its preference dialog. We can assign Japanese fonts to many areas. But, in some areas, the fonts are defined in 'decor' files. If the English font is assigned in an area in decor file, the Japanese characters are shown as garbage. A person who kows how to use ResEdit or Resorcerer can edit the decor files, but ordinary people cannot. This is the reason why I built this utility, so anyone can make these changes. Mike: With all of the PDAs that are available in Japan, including WinCE machines, how popular are Palm machines there? Yoz: In Japan, the most popular PDA is Zaurus from Sharp. Business people like it because it's optimized for business use. But it's a bit tired in my opinion. Since the WorkPad-J was released, WorkPad-J has dominated the 1st spot of the weekly top seller ranking. :-) Mike: Are you aware of any Japanese localization to WinCE machines to match Palm Computing's latest move? Yoz: WinCE? Where are the WinCE machines? :-) I want to extend my thanks to Masatoshi "Yoz" Yoshizawa for taking time to answer some questions and provide a glimpse into Palm usage in Japan. If you are interested in seeing Yoz's website and trying some of his Mac utilities, you can find it at: Yoz's Homepage Wrapup ======== And that concludes issue 4.0 of Mike's PalmTipsheet. I hope that you've enjoyed the exclusive interview with Yoz and that the notable links provide useful information to help you using your Palm Organizer. Most importantly, I hope that you have fun using your Palm! Thanks for reading, Mike | Mike Rohde | pilot@palmtipsheet.com | http://www.palmtipsheet.com/pilot.html Copyright 1999 Rohdesign ePress. All rights reserved. Comments or questions: