About This Document

Palm OS Programmer's Companion is part of the Palm OS^® Software Development Kit. This introduction provides an overview of SDK documentation, discusses what materials are included in this document and what conventions are used.

Palm OS SDK Documentation

The following documents are part of the SDK:

Document	Description
Palm OS SDK Reference	An API reference document that contains descriptions of all Palm OS function calls and important data structures.
Palm OS Programmer's Companion	A guide to application programming for the Palm OS. This volume contains conceptual and "how-to" information that complements the Reference.
CodeWarrior Constructor for the Palm OS Platform	A guide to using CodeWarrior Constructor to create Palm OS resource files.
Palm OS Programming Development Tools Guide	A guide to writing and debugging Palm OS applications with the various tools available.

What This Volume Contains

This volume is designed for random access. That is, you can read any chapter in any order. You don't necessarily have to read some before others, though the first few chapters are designed for programmers who are new to the Palm OS. The first four chapters help you learn necessary tasks and possible features for your application.

Note that each chapter ends with a list of hypertext links into the relevant function descriptions in the Reference book.

Here is an overview of this volume:

• Chapter 1, "Programming Palm OS in a Nutshell." Provides new Palm OS programmers with a summary of what tasks and tools are involved in writing a Palm application and provides pointers to where to look for more information.
  
  
• Chapter 2, "Good Design Practices." Provides new Palm OS programmers with guidelines for creating a well-designed Palm application with a well-designed user interface.
  
  
• Chapter 3, "Application Startup and Stop." Describes how to use and respond to launch codes to start and stop an application and perform other actions. Describes how to implement the PilotMain function, the entry point for all applications.
  
  
• Chapter 4, "Event Loop." Describes the event manager, events, the event loop, and how to implement the event loop in your application. Discusses how your application and the system interact to handle events.
  
  
• Chapter 5, "User Interface." Describes the user interface elements that you can use in your application and how to use them. Also covers related topics such as drawing, dynamic UI, receiving user input, and the application launcher.
  
  
• Chapter 6, "Memory." Describes the memory architecture, memory use on the Palm devices, and the memory manager.
  
  
• Chapter 7, "Files and Databases." Describes the data storage system, the data manager, resource manager, and the file streaming API.
  
  
• Chapter 8, "Palm System Features." Describes features unique to the Palm hardware and OS such as alarms, the feature manager, preferences, the sound manager, system boot and reset, the microkernal, time, and floating point arithmetic.
  
  
• Chapter 9, "Serial Communication." Describes the serial port hardware, the serial communications architecture, the serial link protocol, and the various serial communication managers.
  
  
• Chapter 10, "Beaming (Infrared Communication)." Describes the two facilities for beaming, or IR communication: the exchange manager and the IR library.
  
  
• Chapter 11, "Network Communication." Describes the net library and Internet library and how to perform communications with networking protocols such as TCP/IP and UDP. The net library API maps very closely to the Berkeley UNIX sockets API.
  
  
• Chapter 12, "Internet and Messaging Applications." Describes the Palm.Net system and how to use the Clipper and iMessenger applications to access and send information using the wireless capabilities of the Palm VII^™ device.
  
  
• Chapter 13, "Localized Applications." Discusses how to make your application localizable. Includes information on the text and international managers, as well as dealing with alternative character encodings, strings, numbers, and dates.
  
  
• Chapter 14, "Debugging Strategies." Describes programmatic approaches to debugging your application; that is, using the error manager and the Palm OS try and catch mechanism for debugging.
  
  
• Chapter 15, "Standard IO Applications." Describes how to create a command line application. On Palm OS, command line applications are typically used by developers for debugging purposes only.