On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 09:20:43AM -0700, Joe wrote:
>> In the end, the choice of whether to use names like "char"
>> and "int", which are immediately familiar to any C programmer
>> anywhere, ... really comes down to a personal choice of
>> whether to drink Palm's nomenclature Kool-aid.
>
> The only counter argument I have for that is that I have noticed that
> people who think they are C programmers often have a lot of difficulty
> with subtle implementation differences in the Palm API functions (e.g.,
> strncpy vs. StrNCopy, etc.). Those who start using the Palm spelling
> for everything have less difficulty with this because they are
> constantly reminded (by spelling changes) that they are *not* using the
> standard C library functions.
Those who use the standard C spelling for everything also have less
difficulty because they end up using C library functions supplied by
the compiler vendor, who might well choose to implement them with the
Standard semantics rather than mapping them directly to their subtly
different Palm OS equivalents. :-)
The compiler vendor can allow the user to choose their trade-off. For a
programmer used to the standard C library, the trade-off would be:
* Use the PalmOSFunctions() and try to remember how they differ from the
ones you know
* Use the standard_functions() and perhaps accept a little code bloat
Prc-tools supplies a wee libc that tries to implement the library
functions required of a freestanding C implementation. I have heard
from a number of people that they appreciate it: for example, one thing
that they like is that it aids writing code (usually algorithmic stuff
rather than UI) that's portable between operating systems.
It's not all there yet. It's one of the things that I hope to work on
further for prc-tools 2.2 or 2.3.
John
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