Palm OS 4.1 Bug Fixes List

Posted By: Ed Friday, October 19, 2001 12:55:43 PM

When Sony released the N760C, it ran Palm OS 4.1, the first model to do so. Many people wondered what were the differences between OS 4.0 and 4.1. A Sony spokesperson said the only changes were to fix some bugs and there were no new features. Recently, a list of bug fixes was posted on the Palm Developer's Forum. For the most part, these are quite technical and none of the bugs fixed appear to be major problems with the OS.

The OS 4.1 update can't be applied as a patch; the entire ROM needs to be overwritten. Palm gave the updated code to the licensees but it is up to them to distribute it.

Below is a list of the most important bug fixes:

  • WinPaintPixel did not draw properly with custom pattern. If the custom pattern was active, calling WinPaintPixel caused the pixel to always draw using the background color.
  • 3rd party Alarm sound databases using a different database name than the standard but with a lower version number displayed as options in the datebook's alarm picker, but would not actually play. Changed to not display in such a case.
  • Leading spaces of URL in OpenURL menu crashed the device.
  • CtlNewSliderControl did not set the graphical attribute on the slider controls it created.
  • If you have a slider control with a non-exact background bitmap (i.e., the bitmap is not exactly the same width as your slider), you almost always got "Background must be at least half as wide as slider" whenever the OS attempts to draw the slider.
  • Sliders with non-zero minValues did not work properly.
  • Graphics filling rectangles using solid patterns with some transfer modes did the wrong thing.
  • Resizing a file on a peripheral card for the first time by an amount that is larger than the space available on the peripheral card resulted in the rest of the space on the card being "lost."
  • If two files are created on a peripheral card with filenames longer than 27 characters, and all characters after the first 13 are the same, the second file could not be accessed
  • Strings that contain a Hiragana/Katakana vowel followed by a Cho-on (a bar that extends the sound of the previous vowel) don't sort correctly.
  • TsmSetFepMode did not work if a numeric field has the focus in the form. It also did not work if there is no form being displayed.
  • Calling ATSmsGetMessageCount with a message type "MA" caused Fatal exception
  • RxEnable, RxDisable op codes for SrmControl did not work for virtual drivers.
  • Could only dismount 1 file system.
  • Could only mount 4 FAT file systems.
  • INetLib filled in DeviceID in the CTP Header extension by calling the network interface directly.
  • The stdFont for Japanese had incorrect glyphs for the Box drawing characters (and the kg and mg glyphs).
  • A "bad window" error popped up on debug ROMs if the window bit depth was greater than that of the screen.
  • The character height for Symbol7 font was incorrect.
  • From Clipper,m a button labeled with Japanese text in an <a> anchor tag with 'button' attribute was not displayed.
  • Long volume name support was not compatible with peripheral card implementation (/palm/volinfo.txt vs. /Volume.nam)
  • With some devices, 255 character volume names did not work.
  • When opening a file for exclusive read access, a "File permissions denied" error was returned. When opening a directory, permissions were not ignored.
  • When FSFileCreate was called to set the filename which has "space" character after 8th letter, the extension of alias name (DOS or legacy name) was wrong.
  • VFSFileRead did not return vfsErrFileEOF when reading past the end of a file.
  • sysNotifyEvtGotEvent notification was a significant performance drain for games because it went out for every event. This was fixed to limit the notification to a subset of events.
  • LmGetLocaleSetting returned invalid characters for currencies in Japanese ROM.
  • Using the dynamic UI creation routines did work properly when there was a list on the form with static entries created in Constructor.
  • Using dynamic UI on a form with graphical or slider controls would corrupt which bitmaps are drawn unpredictably.
  • Invalid pointer sent to TelPhbGetSelectedPhonebook resulted in crash
  • Tapping on links that invoke a "palmcall" results in the title bar being temporarily frozen to reading, "Connecting...", with the hypnotic circle/meatball displayed.
  • Shortcut .. 6 always displays the Palm OS 4.0 ROM compile date versus the device-specific ROM compile date.
  • TCP window size is not updated when the window size drops below the maximum segment size, but is greater than zero.
  • Netlib settings were improperly updated on disconnect.
  • If web clipping isn't installed, viewing the contents of a card that includes a .pqa that uses the default icon, resulted in a fatal alert.
  • Intermittent secure transaction error 1428 "The server has updated the security sequence number" when loading pqas
  • "Hidden" peripheral card with no start.prc still caused switch to Launcher.
  • Repeatedly inserting unformatted peripheral cards resulted in stacked format dialogs.
  • HotSycing after adding a FAT file system to a device results in a Fatal Exception.
Thanks to nXt for the tip. -Ed

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He he.

Davy @ 10/19/2001 1:13:35 PM #
The stdFont for Japanese had incorrect glyphs for the Box drawing characters (and the kg and mg glyphs).

Ah yes. I was always concerned about that when using my m505. Glad to see that problem was resolved. Lol.

RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 1:27:39 PM #
Gees - if the bugs don't affect you personally Davy, why do Palm bother fixing them at all?

RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 1:51:45 PM #
Uhh... I think Davy was making a joke. 4.1 has lots of very minor bug fixes. That's the point.

RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 1:52:20 PM #
Thank God Davy isn't affected by the bugs! Sure, screw all the thousands of Japanese Palm users, now that I know Davy is ok, I can sleep in peace!!

RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 2:02:31 PM #
See, there is this thing some of us use sometimes... it's called humor. Davy's comment wasn't offensive, I have a feeling he understands that these things are important to some people. Just because you don't get a joke, it doesn't make it wrong.

-Jon

P.S. Long live Political Correctness!

(For those who made the previous comments, this is an example of the afforementioned "humor" and its close cousin "sarcasm.")


RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 2:14:00 PM #
I agree with Jon.
For your information, "lol" stands for "laugh out loud."

A joke. That's all. Chill out.

If you don't like personality, don't use yours, but allow other people to.

RE: He he.
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/12/2002 12:34:59 AM #
Great, thanks for the update. Now if someone would just fix the stupid Birthay Minder on the Palm Desktop 4.0 for Mac. Every single contact's birthday is on my To Do list for the entire freakin' year! Before, the Minder would just create a To Do item five days prior to the birthday. Imagine finding the important To Do items for today among about 150 birthday reminders!!! Customer Service at Palm isn't even answering my emails anymore!!!!!!

Is there an update fpr the M505?

I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 2:24:40 PM #
Am I missing something or is there no update for the M505? So Palm updates their OS for their vendors but no update for their own customers? If so that doesn't seem right. Am I missing something?

RE: Is there an update fpr the M505?
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 5:18:56 PM #
What do you expect, Palm is allways late at getting out things. Look, after, what, 2-3 years, they finally put expansion capabilities. The Clie and TRG Pro have had it for years.

RE: Is there an update fpr the M505?
I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2002 7:52:23 PM #
So does this mean that we will FINALLY see OS 4.1 for the Handera 330? I mean come n it has benn over a year now since OS 4.0 came out and I am still plowing allong with a hobbled 3.5.3

OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it

I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 2:41:25 PM #
It does not recognize the "a" and "1" symbols when you hit them. I wonder why they fixed all this minor stuff in OS4.0 and added a noticeable one.

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
SilliconMan @ 10/19/2001 3:22:28 PM #
Isn't that your messup? Graffiti is fuzzy logic...Ie it recognizes different drawings as the same letter....

I have NO trouble getting an A and a 1 on my Clie.

Palming away.....

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 3:22:34 PM #
just tap a little below the symbols and it should work

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 3:24:10 PM #
It also has some kind of USB problem that keeps it from playing nice with Macs.

SilliconMan: pls READ the message, it's not the recognition
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/19/2001 4:16:50 PM #
problem, it the silkscreen symbols... "when you hit them" not try to input the text.

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
tychay @ 10/19/2001 4:39:44 PM #
The m505 plays nice with MacOS 9, but not OS X. I suspect that it's a Palm m50x USB cradle issue, not a Palm OS 4.x issue. This is because 1) The synch routine isn't carbonized and works only through the classic compatibility layer; and 2) Sync Buddy (formerly Palm Buddy) has trouble recognizing the Palm USB connection layer sometimes, it has no problem with any other one (Handspring USB, serial, IR, etc).

It is a pity because in a week, the Palm m505 will be the only reason for me ever to boot into MacOS 9.

--
terry chay http://org.qixo.com/tychay/m505dis/

http://www.qixo.com- Righteous Travel Deals in Record Time

san jose, ca, usa

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/20/2001 12:43:59 AM #
While you're waiting for palm to de-wedge itself on the OS-X issue, you could check to see if Pilot-link, the basic CLI utility for Palms under UNIX compiles for you: http://www.pilot-link.com/ Nothing incredible, but it lets you back up/install stuff to your pilot. From there, you can see if one of the GUI front ends will install - I personally like J-Pilot http://www.jpilot.org.

Good luck.


RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
I.M. Anonymous @ 10/20/2001 10:29:16 AM #
I don't have any problems syncing my m505 with my G4 running Mac OS 10.1. The HotSync Manager launches Classic and performs faster than when I boot up in 9.2.1, everything is synced to Entourage and AvantGo. SyncBuddy works great too (assuming you do things in the right order). Granted, it will be great to have at least a Carbon HotSync Manager.
So it is possible to stay with Mac OS 10.1 and I hope you figure out how to get working on your system.

-ttr

RE: OS4.1 has a Graffiti bug in it
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/3/2001 11:44:51 AM #
I think the OSX sync problem and M505 is fixed in 10.0.1 My 505 syncs fine, every time, with the update.

Version Numbering

ktran @ 10/19/2001 6:33:09 PM #
Isn't it commonly accepted software engineering practice to reserve an incremental decimal number like this for new features? So this release should be something like 4.01 or something like that. Might just be a minor quibble, though.


K. Tran

RE: Version Numbering
Ia3n @ 10/19/2001 8:01:39 PM #
Yeah, it should be 4.01. Then again, I think 4.0 should be called 3.6, so really ir should be 3.6.1

RE: Version Numbering
SilliconMan @ 10/19/2001 9:42:02 PM #
This is PalmOS were talking about...it should be PalmOS 5!

Palming away.....

Only minor bug-fixes?

Christian @ 10/21/2001 4:11:26 PM #
So, Dear Ed, how come, that you think all of these are minor bug-fixes?

"VFSFileRead did not return vfsErrFileEOF when reading past the end of a file."

Did you ever try to write a correct-working programm on an operating-system which is not delivering you eof-information while processing a file?

There are so many problems (even msmount, mcfile and power-run) with files on the expansion-memory (sd-card) that the only solution to repair them (which I found) was to buy a desktoppc-sd/mmc-cardreader-writer.



Greetings from Switzerland
Christian Stocker

Does it fix the USB sync problem?

I.M. Anonymous @ 7/11/2002 8:11:31 PM #
Does it fix the USB sync problem? Supposedly that was a problem with a driver in the Palm itself. Any body know?
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