Steve Sabram wrote:
[clip]
> In defense of Palm, please remember that original OS was running on a 128K, 68000
>device.
> Supporting every nuance of printf has significant overhead for a CPU of this speed.
>This
> is why all the Unix <stdio.h> is not in the API.
>
> Remember, "The only thing worse than a Palm user expecting speed as a Pentium is a
> developer that expects the compatibility of a Sun workstation."!
That would excuse them not putting the function in ROM, but it does
not excuse offering nothing in a library function that will only
be used by an application that needs it.
I'm not advocating building a "full" C implementation into the Palm OS
ROM, just supplying a full compliment of tools so that the casual
developer is not forced to continually reinvent functions that
are standard in "off the shelf" C implementations.
If I were writing in FORTH, I would expect to have to reinvent
the mid-level primitives in order to do just what my application
wants to do. Writing in C, I don't expect to have to search out
code for a sprintf function that supports %f, just to display a
floating point value on the device in something other than
scientific notation. Speaking of which, how stupid is that! Why
offer a float to string conversion function at all if what it
does is create a string expression that the average user will
not even comprehend. This seems like unneeded bloat to me.
Additional functionality can be added to the development
environment without bloating the Palm device, or forcing it
on applications that don't use it.
-Tim
--
Tim Hewitt
Principal Software Engineer
Fairchild Semiconductor
