Palm webOS and Pleco

[ipsi]

Palm has outright stated (can't remember where, but I'm pretty sure they have) that there will be no backwards compatibility, at least officially. At best, Styletap may bring out an emulator, assuming they can get it working in Javascript.

Pleco won't come natively to WebOS unless Palm opens development to native apps. Once they do that, you can start pestering Mike again .

 

[mikelove]

But there's certainly some hope, at least for full (non-script) Java development (which would be enough to run Pleco) - there've been a bunch of murmurings about the possibility for a more-powerful-than-J2ME Java environment on the Palm developer mailing lists. If webOS, BlackBerry and Android were all Java-only that would probably force us to consider a Java port, in spite of the painful amount of work required to rewrite all of our cross-platform engine code. But Android especially has a pretty strong likelihood of opening things up to native C development within the next year or so (if for no other reason than to stay competitive with Apple on games), and if that happens we probably wouldn't do a Java version anytime soon.

And there certainly could be a server-dependent version of Pleco for webOS - if there's an online version of Pleco at all it would almost certainly make sense to offer a version of that for the Pre. It just wouldn't have all of the features of the WM/iPhone versions, and would rely on an internet connection in order to run. As I suspect will many of the best webOS applications - there's a whole lot of stuff that's either impossible or incredibly difficult to do with HTML5/JavaScript but quite easy on a server. So if your cellular coverage is spotty you'll probably want something other than a Pre anyway.

 

[lemur]

Mike, I just love Pleco. I will buy a new phone/PDA combo some time this Summer or early Fall at the latest. One of the major issues for me is being able to run Pleco on that device. (I'm already running Pleco on my old Treo 650.) Based on what I'm reading on the forum and this thread specifically my choices should be:

1. A Windows Mobile device, if I want Pleco on my device NOW.

2. An iPhone, if I want Pleco running on my device soon. (Or is "soon" too optimistic? I have to say I have not been following the development of Pleco on the iPhone in great detail.)

3. An Android device, if I'm willing to live in the hope that maybe someday Pleco will run on my device.

4. A webOS device, if I'm willing to live with even less hope.

(PalmOS devices are out of the running entirely. No way I'm gonna endure that obsolete technology any longer.)

Is the relative ordering of Android and webOS reasonable?

 

[mikelove]

Yes, that order makes sense - Android would be ahead of webOS at the moment, though of course since Palm's SDK hasn't actually been released yet there's still the possibility that might change. And neither of them is actually very likely to happen anytime soon, absent a dramatic shift in the market that would make iPhone+WM no longer adequate to reach a decent number of people; once the iPhone version's out I think our focus will mostly be on desktop/online sync stuff for a while as far as new platform support. There's a pretty good chance we'll do a server-based version of Pleco for webOS at some point, though.

"soon" for iPhone depends on your definition of "soon," but if Apple gives us a hard time about approvals and we have to wait months after the software is finished for it to actually be released that by itself could make it somewhat less "soon."

 

[goulniky]

It's a matter of priorities. For me, Pleco is the key application that will dictate what device to buy, other aspects being form factor, screen size, GPS, etc. (and yes, phone capability). I would sacrifice one over the other but not the ability to run Pleco now, and I did when I switched from Palm/Clie to WM with all the grumbling about WM5 . I wouldn't trade my new HTC Touch HD (WM) for anything right now, despite the learning curve in U/I and virtual keyboard, but it's a lucky coincidence. Pleco 2.0 was long in the making and made me wait for WM6, I'm not questioning why and it was more than worth it, iPhone will most likely come faster but still uncertain, so then again, what's most important to you? I think statements such as I would NEVER get a windows mobile phone unless it were the only PDAphone left on the earth. are simply fanatic.

 

[PietStevens]

to Goulnicky: I have been using Plecodict on a Treo650, which is slowly dying on me. I am considering HTC Touch HD, but am very reluctant to give up the keyboard. I do a lot of e-mail & SMS on my phone. What is your experience with the Touch HD virtual keyboard?

Regards, Piet

 

[goulniky]

Hi PietStevens, I went from a Clie UX50 to an HTC TyTN before buying the Touch HD. The TyTN was a step back from the Clie in terms of resolution, so I was on the lookout for as large / hires a screen as possible. To tell you the truth, I was waiting for the SonyEricsson Xperia to come out, which had the same form factor as the TyTN. I came across the Touch HD when reading the reviews for the Xperia, the keyboard of which didn't impressive reviewers. I decided to go for the HTC based on screen size and resolution, after checking the various virtual keyboards available.

My experience after 3 months : you get used to it, but you can't compare with a physical keyboard. One of the advantages of the virtual keyboard mechanism is it works in portrait mode. In fact, the whole device is geared to be used that way, and it really is more convenient than constantly switching and pulling the keyboard (TyTN / Xperia). There are also many options to choose from, such as built-in compact QWERTY with 2 letters / key, an iPhone-like freeware or the various Chinese IME. But that also means the keys are small and you don't get the physical feedback of a keypress. I don't have large fingers but I still make mistakes and find it somewhat frustrating. I also find that I hardly ever use the virtual keyboard in landscape mode, which doesn't seem to offer any real advantage.

On the whole, I have no regret, the device is amazing, the lack of configurable buttons and interface takes some getting used to, but there is no match for the screen (iPhone lovers notwithstanding), lack of keyboard makes for a thinner device and the feel is extremely nice, no regret whatsoever. But heavy text entry still will be easier with a keyboard, unless you can get used to T9 predictive input which I can't (beyond English I also write in French so that complicates things). No such difference for Chinese text entry though.

 

[ipsi]

Plus side for the Pre - seems that the App Store is not compulsory, which I consider to be very good news (http://www.precentral.net/palm-ceo-ed-c ... -investors).

 

[PietStevens]

How about setting up an e-mail campaign to Palm in order to press for a solution for PalmOS5 software such as Plecodict?

 

[mikelove]

ipsi - that is good news, though there's still not much information about what exactly an "app" consists of - if all this means is that you can put your unencrypted collection of JavaScript code and HTML5 files in a bundle and copy that to a Pre without Palm's help, that still wouldn't do much good for commercial developers. But nice to see as a philosophical approach at least; perhaps eventually they'll open up native Linux development a bit more too, at least to well-established developers.

PietStevens - I'm not sure how effective that would be; even if they did get Palm OS 5 software running on the Pre it might be kind of limited. The Pre, like the iPhone but unlike any previous Palm phone, uses a capacitive touchscreen, which means it's designed for finger input and has considerably lower sensor accuracy (so it'll only work with a "special" stylus and even that won't let you point at things very accurately). And for our purposes, there are things we rely on that most other Palm programs can run quite happily without, like support for memory expansion cards - emulating one of those is really tough, GarnetVM for the N800s doesn't bother with it, but without that functionality there's no way to install large dictionaries (or audio files, though emulating audio would be tough too).

 

[Dr.Grace]

It's true that the character input would rely on a fingertip or capacitative stylus, but the screen may be big enough. Also, the Pre comes with 8GB of built-in memory, so perhaps it wouldn't be necessary to emulate an external card.

 

[mikelove]

Memory capacity isn't the problem, actually, it's the limitations of Palm OS 5 - it only seems to support 128 MB of "internal" memory. Devices with more memory than that, like the LifeDrive and the Tungsten T5, treat most of their memory like a fake memory expansion card, so I don't know if it would be feasible to write a Palm OS emulator that had enough simulated internal memory capacity to fit a full set of Pleco data files. (though I guess 128 MB would be enough as long as you skipped audio and one or two dictionaries)

The capacitive touchscreen might be OK for handwriting recognition, but I'd still worry about hitting buttons / list items and selecting text reliably with it - I guess that could be worked around, though, or if this really proved to be a popular solution we could consider a specially-customized 2.0.x build with the interface tweaked for the Pre.

 

[Dr.Grace]

You're right: these are problems that authors of an emulator would certainly need to address. I'm sure that Pleco is not the only PalmOS program to need such things. Any Garnet emulator would have to create a space in the 8GB of flash memory that looked like an external card. I'd guess that would be possible. It would be something like the emulation of Windows on Macs, where you have to set aside a partition on the hard drive that "looks like" the PC's hard drive. An emulator would also have to provide a way for users to "tap" on small buttons, lists etc. which are ubiquitous in PalmOS software. Not trivial, I guess. I wonder how the Access emulator does these things?

 

[anchan42]

There is an very interesting excerpt from a book that gonna be release together with the SKD.

http://developer.palm.com/webos_book/book1.html

 

[mikelove]

Interesting, but it pretty much confirms that webOS at least initially won't be robust enough to support an offline version of Pleco - no means of local data storage except HTML5 SQL databases, and while that might be sufficient for somebody putting together a cheap little CEDICT-based dictionary it wouldn't be fast or copy-protectable enough for us.

I think we could do a nice little online version of Pleco on webOS, though - the licensing groundwork for that still hasn't been laid yet, but once it is, between webOS and the possibility of also supporting Symbian / Android / BlackBerry with an online version of Pleco through their embedded web browsers (or a little shell app on BlackBerry, I guess, at least until they improve their browser) there'd be a lot of arguments for moving ahead with that ASAP.

 

[Dr.Grace]

Right, it seems that the WebOS engineers have not yet really thought deeply about those key requirements for software designers. But I think they'll have to soon, if they want a robust community of developers for the platform.

And absolutely, I could see using an online version of Pleco on the Pre. Before I found Pleco, I tried to use the mobile version of the MDBG website with my Centro, but it's not really up to the task.

Has there been anything said about Unicode support on the Pre?

 

[Jim]

It seems that Palm is making an effort here to make webOS attractive to hardware providers. While the current Palm OS was picked up by a few hardware providers such as Samsung the number was always quite small. I think this may have been because by the time smart phones started to become popular Palm OS was already too long in the tooth. It will be very interesting to see how many hardware companies develop a webOS product and if Palm can make much of a dent in Windows Mobile market share. As always it would be nice to see a variety of phones to drive innovation and some real competition to keep prices down.

If Plecodict were eventually developed for the webOS I doubt Mike would have the old Palm OS nightmare of having to tweak for each individual platform.

 

[gato]

I think we could do a nice little online version of Pleco on webOS, though - the licensing groundwork for that still hasn't been laid yet, but once it is, between webOS and the possibility of also supporting Symbian / Android / BlackBerry with an online version of Pleco through their embedded web browsers (or a little shell app on BlackBerry, I guess, at least until they improve their browser) there'd be a lot of arguments for moving ahead with that ASAP.

Cell phone data connections in China are often not very reliable yet and fade in and out. Before spending too much time on it, some prototyping should be done to see how usable it is. The lag might be bad enough in many places as to make it unusable.

 

[radioman]

Just two cents on my own experience with China cellular service. I have had overall good luck with access online in China. There have been huge investments within the network in recent years so it is sure not like the '90s... I'm sure there are areas where you will just wind up out of luck due to lack of reliability or coverage, but my personal experience is that data is cheap and at least in the major areas it seems as good as my U.S. experiences. Like choosing a cellular service, the question will be "for where you need to use it, do you get good service?" - that is... 1) is the signal decent and 2) is the network delivering data on that signal reliable?

In the US, in my house basement, Verizon just does not make it, but AT&T does due to tower placement, etc. But when driving the main roads, Verizon is just better.

As for me, I would love to see a web optimized version for the iPhone.

 

[mikelove]

radioman - That's good to hear.

A big part of the appeal of a web-based version for me is simply cutting down on all of the "when will you support Platform X" talk - we'd be able to offer something to people with almost any modern smartphone platform while our really good native software was reserved for just one or two.