At 1:41 PM +0100 14-03-00, Roger Chaplin wrote:
>I found that, and have been using it. I just didn't want to be using
>something that is going to disappear in some future version of the OS.
It's worse than that. Pretty much anything you see with "Hwr" in the
beginning is now a HAL call. HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer.
What that means to you is that each device may have a different
implementation of the HAL routine. E.g. on the IIIc, HwrBacklight is a
no-op, because you can't turn the backlight off.
In this case, note that we might have been able to leave it in, since it
would have been sort of cool to briefly flash the display off to get
attention or in some kind of game... but there was enough code out there
that assumed the display would be readable with the backlight off that we
HAD to no-op this out to make the device useable. <sigh>
So now the cycle continues, and people writing cool hacky games for the
IIIc will have to find some other way to flash the backlight. Then we'll
have to figure out what THEY did and make sure IT doesn't break the NEXT
product. The wheel of life turns on...
Anyway,
The thing to remember is: If you do start using Hwr routines, you may not
even have to wait for the next OS release for your code to break. It could
break as soon as some new licensee releases some new device that uses
different hardware.
--Bob
________________________________________________________________________
Bob Ebert, Consulting Engineer, Palm Computing Europe V: +33 4 9952.4354
77 rue Samuel Morse, 34935 Montpellier Cedex 9 France F: +33 4 9952.4397
--
For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see
http://www.palm.com/devzone/mailinglists.html
