PalmVDT Documentation
Author:Mike Andrew: mikea at Norfolk dot nf.
PalmVDT is a Visual Design Tool (VDT) for the Palm Pilot and equivalents.
It has been developed on, and for, the Linux OS, and uses the FLTK (fulltick)
C++ widget set. Because of fltk, it can be readily ported to any OS that supports FLTK:
Windows, Mac and OS/2 are examples. All development work however has been targeted to Linux and equivalents.
For further info on Fltk visit www.fltk.org
The primary goal of PalmVDT is to provide an intuitive, quick and easy tool
for designing palm dialogs and other visual 'objects'. Ie, the resource compiler
side of any Palm application. The widgets created are displayed on
a mock up lcd of a given palm skin. The popular M100 eg. Where possible, the
widget (field, button, slider etc), behaves interactively with you as it
would on a real palm device. Every effort has been made to faithfully generate
the exact shape and pixel sizes as they would appear on the real thing.
PalmVDT is not an IDE, it does not assist to any great degree in the programming
of the Palm, that is left to the developer.
Required Supporting applications:
PalmVDT relies on:
- the fltk widget set (www.fltk.org)
- the m68k cross compiler: prc-tools (www.palmos.com)
- the Resource compiler: pilrc from www.adari.com
- the Palm OS SDK (www.palmos.com)
- and, a useful extra Pose, the palm emulator. (www.palmos.com)
These are the standard tools required for any Palm OS development and are
all freely available from their respective sites.
www.linux-sxs.org contains detailed information on how to obtain and deploy
the above tools. PalmVDT is an added extra.
In addition to above, you will need a useable text editor, and, separately, some means of editing
icons and images. PalmVDT has default settings for both of these, but allows you to choose
your own.
Kaveats, Kautions and Koronaries.
PalmVDT is a work in progress, and Beta. It is not bug free, but is probably crashfree at this
progressed stage of it's development. No serious attempt has been made to 'pretty up' the
image and icon buttons of PalmVDT. This comes later.
Installation
0)
download PalmVDT.zip
1)
move the PalmVDT.zip into it's own directory and type
unzip PalmVDT.zip
This will expand all necessary source files and folders.
In addition to the source files, two extra zip files are extracted.
IconImages.zip
This contains a collection of primitive Icons for your use. They are not part of the compilation,
simply the beginnings of your own library of images for any buttons (eg) you choose to create
for the Palm application itself. Unzip this file into a suitable $HOME directory for future use.
PalmImages.zip
This file contains images which PalmVDT requires during it's compile.
These files must be place in /usr/share
2)
As root
move the zip file into /usr/share and type
unzip PalmImages
This will create and expand into a /usr/share/PalmVDT tree
3) Compile
PalmVDT consists of it's own library of widgets, and separately, the gui wysiwig. As such, two Makefiles
are involved. As a mere mortal enter the directory you expanded PalmVDT into and type
(dot)(slash)build
at the end of the process, you will have a PalmVDT binary for your enjoyment. It is not necessary
to install this binary as a super user, unless you intend others on your computer to make use of it
4)
Make sure you read the README file for any tips n tricks required for your system.
Enjoy.
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