In message <MPG.1017c7f9b2a04027989...@news.halcyon.com>, goet...@angrygraycat.com.xyz said:
> In article <35ad36cd.178214...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, ali-man...@psion.com > says... > > There is no reason why MS couldn't license OPL from Symbian and create > > a Windows CE version - OPL is a tokenised, runtime-interpreted > > language and is, therefore, platform-independent.
> Very amusing. As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted > languages of its own.
Like what?
Sent using LXTCP and the HP 200LX "A portable solution"
I would suggest that a number of scripting languages would be useful on CE. (Always use the right hammer for the job.) I'm most interested in Tcl/Tk because it works reasonably well on a Win32 platform and allows you to create graphic user interfaces.
Tcl/Tk is written in C and a Win32 port is available. See www.scriptics.com for the sources. The "Tk" part (the GUI toolkit) is used by other languages such as Perl and Python for creating UIs.
What's about porting the great PIM applications of the Psion 5 to Windows CE? I am sure there would be a big market for this. Unfortunately, I don't think this would be the best marketing move at the moment for Psion...
Alasdair Manson wrote in message <35ad36cd.178214...@nntp1.ba.best.com>... >On Tue, 14 Jul 1998 17:01:06 GMT, Christian Morency ><anakins...@geocities.com> wrote:
>>After all, Psion user has their Epoc
>The programming language shipped off-the-shelf as part of the EPOC >application suite is called OPL which stands for Organiser Programming >Language (it's origin is in the Psion Organiser II product - derived >from Psion Archive)
>There is no reason why MS couldn't license OPL from Symbian and create >a Windows CE version - OPL is a tokenised, runtime-interpreted >language and is, therefore, platform-independent.
>It is true that OPL offers a very thin layer to objects which are >stored in the ROM of various EPOC devices (for obvious reasons) but >there is no reason why a CE implementation shouldn't map to suitable >Win API calls.
>Why not send MS mail asking them to license OPL :-) Feel free to give >them my name as a point of contact within Symbian...
>regards
>Alasdair >A Symbian employee in a personal capacity
On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:19:40 -0700, goet...@angrygraycat.com.xyz (Ben
Goetter) wrote: >Very amusing.
I wasn't being flippant
>As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted >languages of its own.
In which case, it goes back to the original, perfectly fair in my opinion, question - why doesn't CE ship with a simple, yet powerful, high-level language out of the box ?
Perhaps the languages you are alluding to aren't appropriate for highly mobile devices ? Is that it ?
regards
Alasdair A Symbian employee in a personal capacity
In article <35ae902d.29936...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, ali-man...@psion.com says...
> In which case, it goes back to the original, perfectly fair in my > opinion, question - why doesn't CE ship with a simple, yet powerful, > high-level language out of the box ?
Presumably because neither the WCE product definition team nor any of the many WCE OEMs who own the actual boxes you're naming thought it was important enough to waste engineer time.
This is a minute market: people who actually want to write programs on their mobile devices, wrists and eyesight be damned. Up to us ISVs to see if there's any market at all.
In article <PNR6884429...@tc.umn.edu>, musi0...@tc.umn.edu says...
> > This is a minute market: people who actually want to write programs on > > their mobile devices, wrists and eyesight be damned.
> Neither do you, it seems. Being able to program the device on the run makes it more > useful.
Well, to you and me, sure. And if it had a blood-gas calculator in ROM, it'd be more useful to a paramedic or ER type. But neither of us make a big enough market to justify the engineering expenditure at the OEM level.
In article <6om39s$2v...@news-2.news.gte.net>, hteb...@navitel.com says...
>What's about porting the great PIM applications of the Psion 5 to Windows >CE? I am sure there would be a big market for this. Unfortunately, I don't >think this would be the best marketing move at the moment for Psion...
And how about you all buy a Series5 ? Then, all your problems to find a build-in easy_to_learn tokenized_and_processor_independent language will end ;-)
Regards -- Amandio J.S. Bacalhau < kr...@mail.geocities.ooops > (To email cut 'ooops' and use 'com' instead)
In message <MPG.10184f87687d7251989...@news.halcyon.com>, goet...@angrygraycat.com.xyz said:
> In article <35ae902d.29936...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, ali-man...@psion.com > says... > > In which case, it goes back to the original, perfectly fair in my > > opinion, question - why doesn't CE ship with a simple, yet powerful, > > high-level language out of the box ?
> Presumably because neither the WCE product definition team nor any of the > many WCE OEMs who own the actual boxes you're naming thought it was > important enough to waste engineer time.
Goes to show the PDT doesn't understand the market their defining for. The OEM's just follow the product definition.
> This is a minute market: people who actually want to write programs on > their mobile devices, wrists and eyesight be damned.
Neither do you, it seems. Being able to program the device on the run makes it more useful.
Sent using LXTCP and the HP 200LX "A portable solution"
> > There is no reason why MS couldn't license OPL from Symbian and create > > a Windows CE version - OPL is a tokenised, runtime-interpreted > > language and is, therefore, platform-independent.
> Very amusing. As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted > languages of its own.
Well Ben, why don't they use it then ?
Given that OPL was developed especially for the likes of the PSION, I would have thought this much easier to port to WinCE rather than playing around with whatever language you're on about (QBasic?) which is aimed at PCs using much larger displays.
A agree that this is unlikely as Microsoft are too self involved to do this - but saying this, they do seem to buy in most of their technology. Seeing as though EPOC32 is making its way as the standard for small scale devices such as smart phones, I don't see a good enough reason why PSION can't do this with OPL as well. Personally though I do find OPL programs a little tedious to write, even though the language is quiet easy to learn. Having to suffix integer variables with a % is one thing that annoys me.
In article <Pine.sol.3.96.980719194042.22269C-100000@laa-laa>, Anthony Hook <a...@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>> > There is no reason why MS couldn't license OPL from Symbian and create
>> Very amusing. As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted >> languages of its own. ... >Given that OPL was developed especially for the likes of the PSION, I >would have thought this much easier to port to WinCE rather than playing >around with whatever language you're on about (QBasic?) which is aimed at >PCs using much larger displays.
If I recall, M$ wrote the Basic that ran on a TRS-80 Model 100, which had a much smaller display in total pixels than any CE handheld.
And both OPL and GWBasic are pretty old fashioned compared to modern embedded languages like jscript.
In article <35AE3D42.80035...@pconline.com>, Eric Foster-Johnson <e...@pconline.com> wrote:
>I would suggest that a number of scripting languages would >be useful on CE. (Always use the right hammer for the >job.) I'm most interested in Tcl/Tk because it >works reasonably well on a Win32 platform and allows >you to create graphic user interfaces.
Aren't *nix scripting languages like Perl, Tcl and Python just a little too big (in terms of memory requirements and cpu cycles) for an inexpensive battery operated handheld. Moore's law will give you more memory next year, but not necessarily more cpu cycles per battery.
You can't have everything from day one! Look at this from Microsoft's perspective. Their development of Windows CE is not intended specifically for PPCs and HPCs but for a vast range of embedded applications which currently use proprietary OS's of one description or another. Many of these devices do not have keyboards or screens which is why CE is licensed in a modular fashion. HPC's are but one portion of this enormous market and why they may be important to us is it really sensible to expect Microsoft to commit new resources to what is currently a very minor portion of their CE marketplace?
I also suspect that whoever tackles this problem is in a no-win situation because we will be looking for different capabilities in a language. Let me anticipate some the complaints that would be received
1) It isn't object oriented 2) Because its object-oriented programs take up far too much memory and run very slow 3) Its too slow because its an interpreted language 4) I can't write large applications because there is no linker and a single monolithic file would be too large to handle 5) I only want to write simple programs, the progam editor, compiler and linker take up too much valuable program space and require large amounts of RAM at run-time. 6) A bug in my program caused the HPC to crash and the only way I could recover it was to remove the power-supply and back-up battery for a few seconds, replace them, re-boot my machine, restore data from my PC which caused problems because wiping all the data from the HPC meant that the user profile had been lost and a new partnership with the PC had to be created....add further nightmare scenarios (and punctuation) at will.
And so it goes. I apologise if this sounds cynical, its not intended to be. As a professional programmer I would love to able to develop programs for my CE device in situ. Like others on this list who have expressed opinions I find it frustrating that I cannot find a suitable language, the real problem is that we have different requirements and expectations.
Alasdair Manson wrote in message <35ae902d.29936...@nntp1.ba.best.com>... >On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:19:40 -0700, goet...@angrygraycat.com.xyz (Ben >Goetter) wrote:
>>Very amusing.
>I wasn't being flippant
>>As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted >>languages of its own.
>In which case, it goes back to the original, perfectly fair in my >opinion, question - why doesn't CE ship with a simple, yet powerful, >high-level language out of the box ?
>Perhaps the languages you are alluding to aren't appropriate for >highly mobile devices ? Is that it ?
>regards
>Alasdair >A Symbian employee in a personal capacity
I don't think you need exe servers for WSH to be useful. You do if you want to script existing apps - but if you just want to use it to write simple programs on the road, dll servers are perfectly adequate.
That said, I think a better way to do this would be to include a Web browser with support for JavaScript (and VBScript). That way your programs could have UI's that are appropriate to a pen-based machine (rather than the command-line-based WSH).
Ben Goetter wrote in message ... >In article <6ol1r2$im...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Benoit_Cerrina@my- >dejanews.com says... >> I think that a realistic expectation would be to have the windows scripting >> host ported to windowsCE.
>Once WCE supports cross-process COM, that would make a lot of sense. As >of 2.0, however, the scripting host wouldn't be able to do much >scripting.
Almost all of this could be done very easily with DHTML+JavaScript. We badly need a Web browser with scripting support. On *both* the HPC and the PSPC.
Tim Nicholson wrote in message ... >Most of the apps that *I* would want to create for CE would be forms-based >database apps -- more powerful than can be created with VisualCE or >mobileForms.
>Including the following capabilities: >* filters -- on status or categories or whatever >* customizable toolbars including "quick search" fields >* multiple screens through the use of tabs >* custom menus which can launch other apps, run "macros", etc. >* Auto-synchronization -- could perhaps be obtained simply by accessing MS >Access tables supported by the new CE ADO product.
>I think this would accommodate most of my needs, but it would be great to >have a more traditional programming language too. This would allow amateur >programmers (or real developers for that matter) to create more robust >programs.
>The problem with the current programming languages like BasiCE are that they >are console-driven not event/object driven and they don't give access to the >CE object store or any other CE/Win32 functions...
>Does anyone have experience with Epoc32? What is it like? What are some >apps written with it? Can you, for example, create forms-based database >apps? Telnet? Browsers? Games?
>---------------------- >Christian Morency wrote in message <35AB8F86.58616...@geocities.com>... >>Hi,
>>As way of knowing what people would like as an on-board programming >>language for Windows CE, I have decided to start this discussion.
>>The lack of support regarding programming language by Microsoft is >>almost a shame. VC++ and the VC++ add-on requires an investment that few >>people can afford. Long time ago, Microsoft started out by creating a >>small Basic, they included a similar Basic on the Model 100 (a small >>handsheld PC partially designed by Bill Gates) and still used by some >>journalist !
>>On the other hand, some developers had good ideas like BasiCE and >>PocketC which are probably to date the only available programming tool >>for WindowsCE. However, BasiCE is somehow lacking a general >>compatibility with standard Basic or, for that matters, anything near >>QBasic. PocketC is, well, C like *smile*, why write 30 lines of codes >>when you simply want to display a line !
>>I hope people will reply to this post so that a developer out there will >>listen to the user. After all, Psion user has their Epoc, TI-8x has >>their TI-Basic and other, Why can't we have our own on-board >>"transparent" programming language !
>>Here's what I would like to have :
>>- Simple programming language that can controls the WindowsCE API >>- QBasic-like would be great... >>- Possibility of compiling .exe file or cross-compiling using VC++ >>add-on for WinCE !!! A MUST.
>>Please continue to talk about this, it might mean something in the end >>*smile*.
In message <OwZ8L67s9GA....@uppssnewspub05.moswest.msn.net>, b...@electrosurf.co.uk said:
> You can't have everything from day one!
Why not?
> Look at this from Microsoft's > perspective. Their development of Windows CE is not intended specifically > for PPCs and HPCs but for a vast range of embedded applications which > currently use proprietary OS's of one description or another. Many of these > devices do not have keyboards or screens which is why CE is licensed in a > modular fashion. HPC's are but one portion of this enormous market and why > they may be important to us is it really sensible to expect Microsoft to > commit new resources to what is currently a very minor portion of their CE > marketplace?
Of course it is. With customers like you I can see why M$ is so rich. Your argument would hold water if M$ was a little startup company that didn't have that much money to spread around.
But its not. Its an enormous corporation with billions behind it. I've made estimates that the CE handheld platform grossed a half a billion dollars. Thats not exactly small change and you know M$ took its share. Plus the fact that software development is not that expensive compared to the profits. Its not like they building the handhelds too. They can afford to have a portion of their CE department set aside to specifically address the needs of palmtoppers even ones the marketing department disagrees with.
I think that M$ plain isn't going to develop this platform much, probably just enough so people can halfway use it and then it'll be see ya, hope you're happy, if not tough. I doubt they ever intended to.
> Alasdair Manson wrote in message <35ae902d.29936...@nntp1.ba.best.com>... > >On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:19:40 -0700, goet...@angrygraycat.com.xyz (Ben > >Goetter) wrote:
> >>Very amusing.
> >I wasn't being flippant
> >>As if Microsoft doesn't have any tokenized, interpreted > >>languages of its own.
> >In which case, it goes back to the original, perfectly fair in my > >opinion, question - why doesn't CE ship with a simple, yet powerful, > >high-level language out of the box ?
> >Perhaps the languages you are alluding to aren't appropriate for > >highly mobile devices ? Is that it ?
> >regards
> >Alasdair > >A Symbian employee in a personal capacity
Sent using LXTCP and the HP 200LX "A portable solution"
I agree that the browser would give you the ui, as a matter of fact wsh is just a host for the same scripting engines which run on the browser, what I mean is that if you have the browser with this ability, making the wsh is very easy and straightforward. On the other end, a full fledge scriptable browser is a lot more complicated than writing a ce version of wsh. In article <6ov1nu$o9...@holly.prod.itd.earthlink.net>, "Eric Eilebrecht"
<eric...@earthlink.net> wrote: > I don't think you need exe servers for WSH to be useful. You do if you want > to script existing apps - but if you just want to use it to write simple > programs on the road, dll servers are perfectly adequate.
> That said, I think a better way to do this would be to include a Web browser > with support for JavaScript (and VBScript). That way your programs could > have UI's that are appropriate to a pen-based machine (rather than the > command-line-based WSH).
> Eric
> Ben Goetter wrote in message ... > >In article <6ol1r2$im...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Benoit_Cerrina@my- > >dejanews.com says... > >> I think that a realistic expectation would be to have the windows > scripting > >> host ported to windowsCE.
> >Once WCE supports cross-process COM, that would make a lot of sense. As > >of 2.0, however, the scripting host wouldn't be able to do much > >scripting.
It seems to me that there are two basic facts evolving from this discussion:
a) most of us want to work with an affordable programming language ; b) due to the different applications, at least two different pl's are necessary:
One could be a C like thing with GUI support, graphics, sound etc. delivering progs with fast execution speed. This would surely be the platform for the developers of games, graphics tools (hell, we still don't have any draw/view software) etc. Don't laugh, but - as one of you mentioned in this discussion - some of the HPCs are a lot more powerful than all those old home computers. Who wouldn't like to run a RPG or an adventure game on a portable machine ???
The other development platform should be something specialized on forms, database programming, RAS support, business graphics output, etc. I'm thinking of an environment similar to VB or MS Access (or a mix of both) with a lot of predefined, easy to use routines and functions.
Case one is already partially covered by PocketC (Kevin Cao is doing great work there), but the stability of the environment is still a bit shaky, so let's wait for improvements. Nice aspect: PocketC can be programmed directly on the HPC, which reduces boredom in the airport lounge ...
Case two is another pair of socks. To my knowledge, VisualCE does part of the job, but is database-oriented only. So here a more open language would be great. Who applies for writing it ? :-)
I hate to beat a deat horse, but all of the forms-based stuff is already covered by HTML technologies, half of which are already present in WinCE. All we need is for the browser to support scripting - and we need that anyway just for general Web browsing.
And I think Java is the obvious answer for the more performance-critical stiff, but that's certainly debatable. :)
>It seems to me that there are two basic facts evolving from this >discussion:
>a) most of us want to work with an affordable programming language ; >b) due to the different applications, at least two different pl's are >necessary:
>One could be a C like thing with GUI support, graphics, sound etc. >delivering progs with fast execution speed. This would surely be the >platform for the developers of games, graphics tools (hell, we still don't >have any draw/view software) etc. Don't laugh, but - as one of you >mentioned in this discussion - some of the HPCs are a lot more powerful >than all those old home computers. Who wouldn't like to run a RPG or an >adventure game on a portable machine ???
>The other development platform should be something specialized on forms, >database programming, RAS support, business graphics output, etc. I'm >thinking of an environment similar to VB or MS Access (or a mix of both) >with a lot of predefined, easy to use routines and functions.
>Case one is already partially covered by PocketC (Kevin Cao is doing great >work there), but the stability of the environment is still a bit shaky, so >let's wait for improvements. Nice aspect: PocketC can be programmed >directly on the HPC, which reduces boredom in the airport lounge ...
>Case two is another pair of socks. To my knowledge, VisualCE does part of >the job, but is database-oriented only. So here a more open language would >be great. Who applies for writing it ? :-)
> And I think Java is the obvious answer for the more performance-critical > stiff, but that's certainly debatable. :)
are you working for sun? The java concept is pretty nice and there are good things to say about it but I never heard anybody praise java for its performance!!!
Who really wants to develop application while out in the streets? What kind of concentration do you get to write a full fledge software while riding the subway? Get real, maybe what we want is a basic scripting language like the WSH, JavaScript or VBScript and of course those should be present and supported in ROM. Also, don't forget about the aim of CE in general. It is made for all sort of CPUs and hardware. Who would want to program their point of sale booth? I think MS made a great job in having most of its development tools available to the CE platform. However, we might want to ask them for a:
* better web browser with ActiveX, Java and scripting along all the CE platform (H/PC, P/PC, A/PC and the embedded system) * Runtime libraries for MFC and Visual Basic build standard in all devices of course those should be in ROM.
I hope Microsoft hears us especially when MFC and a decent web browser are missing in the PPC.
Christian Morency wrote in message <35AB8F86.58616...@geocities.com>... >Hi,
>As way of knowing what people would like as an on-board programming >language for Windows CE, I have decided to start this discussion.
>The lack of support regarding programming language by Microsoft is >almost a shame. VC++ and the VC++ add-on requires an investment that few >people can afford. Long time ago, Microsoft started out by creating a >small Basic, they included a similar Basic on the Model 100 (a small >handsheld PC partially designed by Bill Gates) and still used by some >journalist !
>On the other hand, some developers had good ideas like BasiCE and >PocketC which are probably to date the only available programming tool >for WindowsCE. However, BasiCE is somehow lacking a general >compatibility with standard Basic or, for that matters, anything near >QBasic. PocketC is, well, C like *smile*, why write 30 lines of codes >when you simply want to display a line !
>I hope people will reply to this post so that a developer out there will >listen to the user. After all, Psion user has their Epoc, TI-8x has >their TI-Basic and other, Why can't we have our own on-board >"transparent" programming language !
>Here's what I would like to have :
>- Simple programming language that can controls the WindowsCE API >- QBasic-like would be great... >- Possibility of compiling .exe file or cross-compiling using VC++ >add-on for WinCE !!! A MUST.
>Please continue to talk about this, it might mean something in the end >*smile*.
I probably shouldn't say who I work for, but it's definately *not* Sun. :) And I wasn't exactly praising Java's performance - but I bet it would be at least as good as Pocket C (which was someone else's suggestion)....
>> And I think Java is the obvious answer for the more performance-critical >> stiff, but that's certainly debatable. :) >are you working for sun? The java concept is pretty nice and there are good >things to say about it but I never heard anybody praise java for its >performance!!!
On Tue, 21 Jul 1998 23:32:12 -0400, "Franck D Rougier"
<{remove_this}de...@technologist.com> wrote: >People Get real!!
>Who really wants to develop application while out in the streets? What kind >of concentration do you get to write a full fledge software while riding the >subway? Get real
You get real !
Don't slip into the solipsist state where you assume that because you don't want to develop an application while mobile, nobody else does. That attitude devalues your contribution almost entirely.
These devices are mobile devices and, just as some people want to schedule or manage contacts while mobile, other people want to send messages and write applications while mobile.
Still, with the CE based machines, out of the box, the decision is made for you - you should be delighted.
regards
Alasdair A Symbian employee in a personal capacity
