Comments on: Details and Pictures of the Legend Palm 168

Wow, do you feel special? Do you want a cookie?

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

This Legend with the virtual graffiti area could be sweet. The screen would have to be refelective or better yet trans-reflective. Couldn't go back to an indoor only model.

Agreed, hopefully they can release a patch like Handspring recently did to correct the lack of I/O but it is discouraging to see that it'll be an "incomplete" package out of the box. In my experience, most consumers/newbies here in the US have a pretty hard time even downloading additional apps or games (much less an OS update!) for their handhelds (or PCs for that matter), short of whatever Palm/Sony etc. shovelware is bundled on the instllation CD.

It's disheartening to see that the PDA market is becoming like the PC games industry--incomplete titles rushed to market with consumers having to take a "cross your fingers and wait" approach that hopefully the flaws will/can be remedied via software.

Wow, do you feel special? Do you want a cookie?

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

More in common with the HandEra 330 from my viewpoint (or the unreleased prototype 330c)

Common features:

SD slot without SDIO
Jog Dial
Virtual graffiti
screen 240x320

The unreleased 330c and the unreleased Symbol prototype that had work done on it by HandEra had OS4.1, USB, Li-Ion built-in (rather than optional on the 330), and a color 240x320 screen.

I find it interesting also that part about "the OS is in English version but with CHOS (some special OEM version) build right into the ROM." Since there is High-res chinese input available for the 330.

Maybe HandEra Services is at work here again?

A real teller would be what the graphics co-processor onboard is.

If it's that Epson QVGA chip from Epson and HandEra press releases it would be telling...

Anyway, all just conjecture...

About the problems caused by different resolutions, 160x160, 240x320, 320x320, and 320x480, I do not really see font is a big problem. On my clie N610c, FontHack123 does a terrific job to replace the included crappy thin fonts. I looked at the OS5 fonts used by TT, it is too big and wastes so much screen estate. As to icon and other graphics, 240x320 even 320x320 are hassles to programers. It may be the reason why a lot of games can not run on TT and NX, if programmers do not follow the guidelines exactly.

With OS5's internal support for 1.5 scaling, (it is said the Legend's new palm uses OS5 API), it probably will ease programer's burden in supporting multiple resolutions.

No offense, but if you don't like the resolution confinements of the Palm environment, then don't program for it.

"it's better to be a pirate than join the navy." - Steve Jobs

OK, thanks for clearing that up. I was considering whole screen size (including VG) on the Legend, and just the viewable area on a 320x320. VG tends to confuse me, lol

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My point is - keep it scalable. In other words, 160x160,320x320, or w/virtual grafiti 320x480 - and keep to one API (which is now happening with OS5). All of these are (relatively) easy to work with. As for saying "but if you don't like the resolution confinements of the Palm environment, then don't program for it", no- i just won't support handera or legend (like most software developers don't support handera now). Also - this is my job, so i don't have the choice to not program for it. Having said that I ENJOY PROGRAMMING PALM OS - best job i ever had:) I like how my apps look on Sony hi-res (except for the skinny font thing) and on OS 5. If i choose to not completely re-do all icons and graphics they still look fine 'pixel-doubled' with either of these APIs. Same cannot be said for Handera.

>> I understand the pain in the butt it is. But in my opinion that should mean more people need to hound PalmSource for a non fixed standard for the palm os.

I believe this is also something i suggested in my original post - scalable graphics API.

>>rsc1000, the OS 5 screen API DOES support 240x240 resolution. It's called "one and a half scale mode". Look it up, the API supports 160x160*1, *2, *3, *4, and *1.5.

>>If you're a developer I would have thought you would know about that by now.

I think yr missing the point here. Yes, i am aware of "one and a half scale mode" - somebody brought this up recently (week or so ago) on PIC. However, if it scales the graphics - then we are not taking advantage of the 240x320 are we?? Besides, if i have a 10x10 icon and it gets scaled to 15x15, then a 1 pixel wide line might get scaled to 1 pixel while another (in the same icon) might get scaled to 2 pixels wide. Not pretty.

My whole point is this: YES - we can all write code for 160*160 B&W and it will work with all of the above APIs/screen densities/bit-depths. But do we not want to move Palm OS software development forward so that code actually takes advantage of the capabilities of these expensive new devices?? Adding a 240x320 res to the mix just makes it harder to optimize for all devices. To make it look great - i would have to re-do graphics to support this res or keep the graphics '1:1' and change my form alyout instead. That isnt going to hapopen just for Handera and Legend.

As to the notion that all 'real' developers should know about "one and a half scale mode" - get real.
you seem to think that developers have nothing better to do then to go fishing for undocumented OS features. Paid development in most small Palm dev companies doesn't work like that. The only reason my apps support anything other then 160x160 b&w is because i did the extra work on my own time - my small company would kick my ass if i had put that many hours into making it 'look nice' while at work. We don't do big 'off-the-shelf' apps like docs-to-go, nor do we make games. I wish i worked for Mobile Wizardry who gets to focus on the graphics capabilities of different devices/APis, but most palm jobs aren't like that (and besides, i'm not that good:) ). My company - like many - mostly does database, 'verticle'-type apps. I just like my apps to look nice because i think users who have shelled out big money for color hi-res devices should get a break from stale, eye-straining interfaces. But, if yr seriously telling me that all companies making Palm OS software should be aware of undocumented features utilized by as-yet non-existant devices then you don't understand how most paid development gets done.

next beef/request: REAL FONT SUPPORT

Christ - i hope there aren't any attempts to do a 480x480 device using the current OS 5 API. The absurdity here folks, is that it is not a truly scalable API. For example - imagine if you had to do completely different version of this website for different resolutions. Yes the graphics would be the same, but to make the tables/formatting so that it completely filled the screen (like PIC pages do now) would require seperate html to be executed for each different resolution. this would suck. Fortunately, HTML doesn't force us to do this - you can set width of an object to be a percentage of the available window. So - if the Palm OS API (for say, version 6.0)was to embrace a scalable approach, then all would be cool with the universe. You could keep yr icons/graphics designed for 320x320 - but with relative screen placement, just like on Windows desktop apps. there would be no need for 'pixel tripleing'. Moving from 160x160 to 320x320 is a slightly different matter - graphics / icons (the app launcher icons are a good example) simply suck in their original low-res incarnation. But in the same way that windows desktop icons are fine for multiple resolutions, OS 5 hi-res icons should be fine for future higher res devices - provided it is all handled through ONE(!) API that supports scalable res.