David Fedor wrote:
>... prior to 3.1, that is. In Palm OS 3.1 and higher, there's a new
>function SelectOneTime(). See the new docs.
Let me put in a request that the documentation be improved to add
information about which versions of the PalmOS support each function.
For SelectOneTime, the docs say "Implemented only if 3.1 New Feature Set is
present." which gives me a clue that I can't use this function with pre-3.1
systems. However, in other cases, such as SerReceive, there is nothing that
tells me that this function does not exist prior to PalmOS 2.0. This sort
of information is REALLY important for those of us that try to support any
version of the PalmOS other than "latest only".
<SOAPBOX>
I am also going to take this opportunity to complain LOUDLY about the
naming convention for OS functions. It causes enormous misery when Palm
introduces a new operating system function and then gives it the same name
as a previously existing function.
For example, all my code that used SerReceive broke when PalmOS 2 was
released. Why? Because the definition of SerReceive was changed completely,
but the function was given the same name as the PalmOS 1.0 SerReceive
function. The new function should have been named SerReceiveV20 or
SerReceiveEx or NewSerReceive ... anything other than SerReceive.
As an extreme example, we now have CategoryEdit which has been defined
THREE different ways. Looking at source code which is a year old is now a
nightmare since you don't know how CategoryEdit was defined at the time the
code was written. Should I be looking at CategoryEditV10? CategoryEditV20?
CategoryEdit? Since my code just says "CategoryEdit", the odds are pretty
good that I'm going to look at the wrong description in the SDK.
Note that this also causes severe problems if you want to link existing
code against the older simulator libraries for testing and debugging
purposes. If you write your code to use the new names, it no longer links
with the old libraries.
This is only going to get worse with each new release of the PalmOS. There
is NO benefit to using this naming convention and it causes many problems.
PLEASE change the naming convention to something more sensible.
</SOAPBOX>
Bill Goodman
Cyclos
