[Tfug] OT: RFC about Android and ebook software

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 09:13:27AM -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 05:25:04AM -0700, John Gruenenfelder wrote:
>
>[snip]
>> So, I'm contemplating getting some sort of Android device (presumably there
>> will be more than one to choose from by the time I actually make a purchase).
>> I don't intend to stop reading or stop working on my project, so that also
>> means creating an Android version of Weasel Reader.
>
>As I'm looking at Android stuff for a different reason, know what's so
>nice about it for 3rd party app people such as yourself?  You don't need
>a device to develop and test with, you can work in the virtual machine
>:)

Oh, I'm quite a fan of this, believe me.  :)

This was one of the great things about working on PalmOS.  PRC-Tools let me do
all of my development in Linux and POSE (the Palm OS Emulator) did an amazing
job emulating OS 4.x and below devices in virtually every detail, even low
level hardware hacks.  I did nearly all of my testing with POSE and you could
even plug GDB into it for debugging.

Then the ARM-based PalmOS 5.x was released.  Instead of POSE, we got the Palm
Simulator.  Horrible software.  1/10 the features, crash happy, and Windows
only (never could get it to run under WINE).  Even worse, it was "natively"
compiled, which meant that the OS code the Simulator ran was compiled for an
x86 architecture.  All these differences made it far less useful for testing.
The POS testing tools are a big reason why my PalmOS coding slowed
significantly after OS 5.x came out.

Working with Android ought to be a breeze after that.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://weaselreader.org
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max