Concerning switching to WinMo: I heard on a different forum that the new OS coming out by the end of the year will be following the trend set by the iPhone, i.e. touch-centric, and a very different beast. So will Pleco support devices running the new WinMo OS? Seems to me that this could be just as much a can of worms as WebOS.
Palm webOS and Pleco
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
Windows Mobile 6.5 is a negligible architectural change from Windows Mobile 6; it uses the same version of Windows CE (the underlying operating system), all they've really made touch-friendly is the shell for browsing / launching applications. (also improved Pocket IE a bit, supposedly, though lots of people have already switched to Opera) So other than possibly making it difficult to launch Instant Access from something other than a hardware button press, it shouldn't have much of an impact on Pleco.
Windows Mobile 7 is still largely rumor at this point, but supposedly that too will retain largely the same internal design. Windows Mobile 8 is when they're really changing things, I think - Steve Ballmer recently suggested that Windows Mobile may eventually converge with desktop Windows (the catalyst for this will be a new mobile-phone-friendly version of the Atom processor that Intel's cooking up), which would be fine with us since it should be easy to port the Windows Mobile version of Pleco to that.
But it's impossible to promise anything about future versions of any operating system at this point - it's not inconceivable that Microsoft might eventually release a .NET-only version of Windows Mobile, which would require something close to a ground-up rewrite of Pleco, and if at that point 95% of our sales are on iPhone we might not necessarily be able to justify doing that rewrite. The Windows Mobile version could get cast into the dustbin in a few years just like the Palm OS one. The mobile phone industry moves way too quickly to purchase any device as a long-term investment - if you want to always be running the latest version of Pleco you may need to be prepared to buy a new handset every 2 years or so.
Windows Mobile 7 is still largely rumor at this point, but supposedly that too will retain largely the same internal design. Windows Mobile 8 is when they're really changing things, I think - Steve Ballmer recently suggested that Windows Mobile may eventually converge with desktop Windows (the catalyst for this will be a new mobile-phone-friendly version of the Atom processor that Intel's cooking up), which would be fine with us since it should be easy to port the Windows Mobile version of Pleco to that.
But it's impossible to promise anything about future versions of any operating system at this point - it's not inconceivable that Microsoft might eventually release a .NET-only version of Windows Mobile, which would require something close to a ground-up rewrite of Pleco, and if at that point 95% of our sales are on iPhone we might not necessarily be able to justify doing that rewrite. The Windows Mobile version could get cast into the dustbin in a few years just like the Palm OS one. The mobile phone industry moves way too quickly to purchase any device as a long-term investment - if you want to always be running the latest version of Pleco you may need to be prepared to buy a new handset every 2 years or so.
Wouldn't be anything like a 10-second lag, though - this would be using AJAX, so we're not fetching a whole page, we're just sending out a little packet (XMLHttpRequest) with the search term and getting a few hundred bytes of data back which our (JavaScript) code then inserts into the appropriate page element, no reload / reformatting required. The transfer / processing time is negligible so most of the delay would be in network latency, but as long as we had a couple of appropriately-geographically-distributed servers it should be possible to get that down to an acceptable level.
I wonder how you're going to be able to secure the web version of Pleco in such a fashion that someone can't come along and point their own code at your web service, send through a bunch of queries, and effectively acquire the dictionary definitions in plain text. There's a bunch of other issues I can think of regarding a web-enabled Pleco, but that's the one that I think will present the most risk for you.
Part of that's just the price you pay for having a web-based dictionary; heck, people have extracted the full text of the ABC from Wenlin by copy-and-pasting. We may have to start loosening up about that anyway - I had an incredibly cool idea last night for a new flashcard feature which could potentially involve similar exposure to automatic data extraction.
But there certainly are some protections we could add - scrambled entry IDs, for example, so that you can't go through and fetch every entry from the dictionary sequentially, combined with something to block user accounts from querying the database with too many invalid IDs (or just fetching too many entries in a short period of time). We'd just have to be careful to design these in such a way that they wouldn't create any problems for legitimate users.
But there certainly are some protections we could add - scrambled entry IDs, for example, so that you can't go through and fetch every entry from the dictionary sequentially, combined with something to block user accounts from querying the database with too many invalid IDs (or just fetching too many entries in a short period of time). We'd just have to be careful to design these in such a way that they wouldn't create any problems for legitimate users.
Well, it seems that there will definitely be at least one PalmOS emulator for WebOS!
http://www.motionapps.com/classic/
and see http://www.precentral.net/palmos-emulation-webos-confirmed-will-be-done-motion-apps.
Also, Engadget has some info for potential developers:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/palm-announces-webos-sdk-availability-palm-os-emulation-for-pre/
http://www.motionapps.com/classic/
and see http://www.precentral.net/palmos-emulation-webos-confirmed-will-be-done-motion-apps.
Also, Engadget has some info for potential developers:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/palm-announces-webos-sdk-availability-palm-os-emulation-for-pre/
Yeah, that's a promising development but it remains to be seen whether it'll be robust enough to run Pleco - of the other emulators available, both StyleTap and GarnetVM can only run 1.0 and even for that they're somewhat less-than-optimal, so I wouldn't get my hopes up for running a full-featured version of Pleco on Pre yet. (it'd certainly be nice if people could, though)
And a link to register for access to the WebOS SDK Early Access stuff: http://sdkapplication.palm.com/sdkapplication/
Also, the fact that they can run an emulator seems like it implies that it'll be possible to run native code on the Pre, since they presumably didn't write the emulator in Javascript. Though they are probably being given privileged access to the low-level stuff so maybe that's still not an option for everyone else.
The emulation announcement means Pre just got a lot more attractive to me, but if it can't run Pleco it is probably not an option.
The emulation announcement means Pre just got a lot more attractive to me, but if it can't run Pleco it is probably not an option.
ipsi - Already registered, given the thousands of Tungstens and Treos we've sold for them over the years I'll be somewhat ticked-off at Palm if they don't let us in 
Jim - A lot of bugs could probably be worked out on our end, actually - some features might be flat-out impossible (like audio, unless they support ARM code like StyleTap sort-of does) but hopefully most of them could be made to work. If they just get us an early copy of the emulator we can do the rest
koreth - Palm have said that they did indeed give Motionapps privileged access, so it may be a while before it's possible for us to do a native Pleco port.
Jim - A lot of bugs could probably be worked out on our end, actually - some features might be flat-out impossible (like audio, unless they support ARM code like StyleTap sort-of does) but hopefully most of them could be made to work. If they just get us an early copy of the emulator we can do the rest
koreth - Palm have said that they did indeed give Motionapps privileged access, so it may be a while before it's possible for us to do a native Pleco port.
MotionApps (who are developing the Classical Palm OS Emulator for the Pre) have given an April 10 Deadline for contacting them if you want a shot at being a 'Launch Partner' - http://motionapps.blogspot.com/2009/04/ ... -news.html
Palm OS emulation announced for Palm Pre release
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/palm ... n-for-pre/
http://www.motionapps.com/classic/
this is said to be being developed to be ready for the pre's release. even if pleco is done on palm, at least one could hopefully be able to use 2.0 on a pre. Thoughts????
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/01/palm ... n-for-pre/
http://www.motionapps.com/classic/
this is said to be being developed to be ready for the pre's release. even if pleco is done on palm, at least one could hopefully be able to use 2.0 on a pre. Thoughts????
Re: Palm OS emulation announced for Palm Pre release
a video of the emulator in action.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/palm ... e_engadget
looks like a tight squeeze for finger touches...
a video of the emulator in action.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/palm ... e_engadget
looks like a tight squeeze for finger touches...
See this newly-merged thread for the thoughts on it so far - we're hopeful that we'll be able to get it working, but since I think it's unlikely Motionapps will give us access to Classic before the Pre is released, and since I'm not necessarily taking time off from iPhone development to stand in line for 4 hours at a Sprint store the day the Pre is released only to find that they're sold out of them for weeks, it may be a while before we actually know
Based on the newly-posted FAQ at http://motionapps.blogspot.com/, things are looking pretty good for Pleco 2.0 on webOS - according to that, it does in fact support ARM native code, emulates an SD card, lets us read out the device's serial number (so no need to retool the unlocking / activation system), and seems to support all of the APIs we need - the things they say they don't support (like the built-in audio codecs on some Palms) aren't things that we use anyway. No support for larger than 320x320 resolution, though, so that's a bit of a bummer, but hardly makes the software unusable.
So the main potential problem area is if there's some sort of specific bug / conflict between Classic and Pleco - hopefully that bug would be fixable, though the lack of a built-in debugger may make that a little more complicated / time-consuming than it would be otherwise (and since we haven't heard back from them, it doesn't seem like we're likely to get into the pre-release compatibility testing pool, meaning we wouldn't be able to even start working on it until after the Pre is released).
So the main potential problem area is if there's some sort of specific bug / conflict between Classic and Pleco - hopefully that bug would be fixable, though the lack of a built-in debugger may make that a little more complicated / time-consuming than it would be otherwise (and since we haven't heard back from them, it doesn't seem like we're likely to get into the pre-release compatibility testing pool, meaning we wouldn't be able to even start working on it until after the Pre is released).
We haven't been given any access to Classic, so we probably won't know about compatibility until after the Pre is released. (possibly a while after, since stock is supposed to be tight and we won't necessarily be able to get our hands on one the first day they come out, though perhaps a customer or two will chime in with unofficial reports on / shortly after launch day)