Is the Palm OS dead? (no flames, please. This is serious.)

[mikelove]

I agree completely about Palm - I'd still take it over any other handheld OS, antiquated architecture notwithstanding. I don't think anyone's planning to dumb it down, really the switch to a Linux kernel should do the opposite - provide the same straightforward, efficient interface that it has now for people who want it, but also provide access to a standard Linux command line for extra tweaking.

 

[caesartg]

Hi Mike - You mentioned Styletap. What are the licence issues for running a licenced version of Palm Plecodict on a Pocket PC using StyleTap? It sounds like you're not frothing at the mouth when you mention it, but need to ask anyway. Could provide a nice migration strategy...?

Cheers

Ben

 

[mikelove]

I believe the current version of StyleTap lets you configure your HotSync Username to whatever you want, so there shouldn't really be any licensing issues there. And we don't have any objections to you using our Palm software on your Pocket PC via StyleTap as long as you stick to the one-device-per-license rule (i.e., you're not also using the same copy of PlecoDict on a real Palm).

However, the fonts may render a bit oddly, and in general it's not as nice as the native PlecoDict for PPC experience, and in 2.0 it'll likely be very slow since we're relying heavily on ARM-accelerated code (which StyleTap doesn't currently support, nor are they likely to anytime soon), so as far as a migration path I don't really think it's a good long-term solution.

 

[mikelove]

Just got a note from StyleTap pointing out that their software does actually support ARM code; it still might not do so with our software, since we make use of some slightly unorthodox techniques to get the Palm OS to work the way we want it to, but it seems like there's a good chance it would.

Still, given the font issues and the lack of integration with other Pocket PC programs you'd probably have a better experience with the native Pocket PC version. But it seems likely that the software would be reasonably usable under StyleTap at least.