Hacks Not Going Away in OS 5
One of the areas people are concerned about in the new Palm OS 5 is that all the current hacks will no longer work. For a while there was some confusion over whether OS 5 would supports any kind of hacks. Fortunately, this isn't the case.
Hacks are small applications that change the way the operating system works which, with the rewrite of the OS to move to ARM-based processors, will no longer function. However, these are too popular to be allowed to go away so PalmSource has created a new system-extension mechanism that can be used to create mini-apps that perform many of the same tasks as hacks and developers are working to come up with replacements.
TealPoint Software is going about this in a different way. It plans for the next version of TealMaster to allow many current hacks to run without modification under OS 5.
Hacks require a sort of "parent" application to allow them to work. The original one of these was HackMaster, though development stopped on it years ago. Another is X-Master and, of course, TealMaster.
The next version of TealMaster running under OS 5 will work with major classes of current hacks, but only if those hacks don't do things which are otherwise incompatible with the new operating system. Still, according to TealPoint, many current hacks will still work with their app.
However, Andreas Linke, head of LinkeSOFT, developer of X-Master, believes that trying to get OS 4 hacks to run under OS 5 is futile. According to Linke, most current hacks are totally dependent on the internal structures, memory layout, and order of events used by the current operating system and OS 5 changes almost all of that. "I believe only a small, well-defined minority of the 400+ existing hacks will work on OS 5," said Linke. His company has no plans to create a version of X-Master that will let current hacks run in OS 5.
He recommends that developers rewrite their hacks as notification applications, which is what hacks are called under OS 5. Linke believes this is the best solution for end users, as it will be the most stable. He says LinkeSOFT was able to rewite its ScreenShotHack as a notification application "without too much effort" and the resulting app is shorter and cleaner.
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RE: PLEASE rewrite Phlegm Hack!
RE: Disagree with Mr. Linke
Even if notification works you can not guarantee that your app will be the first to receive the notification or even worst if it ever receive the notification.
RE: PLEASE rewrite Phlegm Hack!
--
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (1819-1892)
d r. a. c h a r l e s
barbados
Speed Tweaker
-----
Silence is Golden
Love my hacks, but...
The Hack I Want
There's space in the display that can be used, and the information is in the call database, which is amply documented.
RE: The Hack I Want
RE: The Hack I Want
What are hacks?
RE: What are hacks?
Hold on, the community will be sending someone to that nasty dirty apartment you call a home but is really a condemned closet to explain to you what you want to know because you are too lazy to RTF article. Have a nice day.
Higgy
RE: What are hacks?
Hacks are basically a "system extension" that you can install on your PalmOS handheld and manage them with a program such as HackMaster or X-Master. These "hacks" make it able to do many things with the system that a normal program cannot do. They can go into the core of the system and edit even some of the main functionality by bypassing main system functions and rewriting their own. Some examples are a "recently used" program menu(McPhling), TealEcho, which displays your graffiti stroke on the screen, and TealFlag, which displays an American flag on the screen on power-down.
Programmers---forgive me if that is incorrect in any technical aspect and please correct me, but i think that is the general idea.
RE: What are hacks?
RE: What are hacks?
not to mention, what kind of newbie dip**** doesn't know what a hack is?
RE: What are hacks?
Even with notifications, a ''Hack'' manager is still necessary
Do you want a separate Launcher icon for each Hack? Sounds cluttered.
Do you want to run each Hack separately to enable or to disable them? Sounds tedious, especially if you want to turn all on or all off.
Do some Hacks behave better when run before other Hacks? You need a manager to control the notification priorities.
The trap-patching-based Hack system is on its way out, and even though Hack managers were a necessity for well-defined behavior in previous versions of Palm OS, they're still a good idea.
What we need is for developers to agree upon some standard that notification-based "Hacks" should follow. It could even be a revision to the original Hackmaster specification; it's not too difficult to have the same PRC file support both notifications and trap-patching.
RE: Even with notifications, a ''Hack'' manager is still necessary
If PalmSource whats to eliminate all hacks then they should add more notifications or write their own manager to handle this.
I want hacks back in OS5!!
RE: Even with notifications, a ''Hack'' manager is still necessary
The notifications does not always equal to hacks.
In hacks, you can supress or bypass the original system functions. With notification, it broadcasts the notification to every registered program who is interest in this system function, including the system itself in sequencial order. And this is not every hacks out there are convertable.
Be careful when you say I can convert my hack to notification...
RE: Even with notifications, a ''Hack'' manager is still necessary
Of course, it might break security, etc., but that's exactly what we're talking about, right? Doing things that were not intended. Just depends on some developers going out and doing it.
RE: Even with notifications, a ''Hack'' manager is still necessary
Kevin Phelps
Hacks or security?
In the old system, a hack is a diversion of an operating system call. In former Palm OS versions, you could map *your* code to any system call. Usually, you would take advantage of this to be notified (because your code is called when the system call is performed), and then to perform some operation, and finally to give back control to the initial implementation of the system call. Or else, your code could do anything you wanted, even the worse...
With the newer version of Palm OS, your code can ask the operating system to notify it when some condition occurs. This is very different. First, you no longer divert the system call. Secondly, you get less information than before, since a notification is just an event, whereas a system call was not only an event, but also parameters, memory context, variables, etc. Moreover, the conditions which can trigger a notification are quite seldom (a dozen, compared to hundreds of system calls).
As a result, what do you get ?
1) Fewer features, as the newer mechanism is far more limited and restricted than the former one.
2) Better security, as the newer pseudo-hacks will be somehow restricted to their "sandbox" and won't be able to mess around as easily as they would before.
As far as I know, PalmSource has been concerned about hacks for a very long time, especially when users expectations went to better security, digital wallet, electronic payment, cellular phone integration, etc. PalmSource had to choose between keeping hacks (and allowing big security holes), eradicating hacks (and frustration of many users and developers), and a compromise. They opted for the latter, which led to notifications.
Even if two apps of mine will die with Palm OS 5, because they rely of a deep (and fair) use of hacks which is in no way compatible with notifications, I do think that PalmSource made the right choice. I only regret they didn't made notifications wider and more flexible: more events and more information provided. However, I still expect they will in a further version.
RE: Hacks or security?
The notification manager has been around well before OS5 - it was not invented to replace hacks - it's simply the best way to handle the most common most hack scenarios which are/were "when something happens tell me". So now you get a notification instead of a trap call... From my perusal of the available notifications I'd say if you can't make your existing hack work with them then you were probably either a) doing it the wrong way to start with, or b) doing something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
Treo 300 Requested hack
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PLEASE rewrite Phlegm Hack!