All, A seeding version of Palm OS 5.3 is now up in the seeding area. The OS 5.3 Simulator has an English version as well as a Simplified Chinese version. In addition, it supports a QVGA mode as well as a dynamic/collapsible input area.
When you first start the Simulator it will default to a 320x320 screen. You can right click on it to bring up its options and choose Settings->Display->Resolution to change this. If you choose a non square resolution the input area will be collapsible. Applications will have to be written to take advantage of the collapsible input area. Unmodified applications will run with the dynamic input area locked in the up position. The built-in PIM applications are not yet modified, but the launcher is. There is a sample application in the seeding area demonstrating the platform collapsible input area API. Documentation for the dynamic input area as well as the necessary header files are in the R3 SDK, also available in the seeding area. For QVGA there is a knowledge base article (http://kb.palmsource.com article 495) that covers the basic concepts as well as some common mistakes we have seen with 3rd party testing. As with double density, fonts (as long as you are using system fonts) are automatically optimized for the new density screen without the application doing any work; and Constructor supports adding 1.5 density members to your bitmap families. The layout of the form is generally preserved. However, unlike with double density, developers do need to take care how they layout a form such that it is best converted to the 1.5 density QVGA screen. Multiplying by 1.5 leads to rounding errors so it is a good idea to plan for this. The above mentioned knowledge base article covers how to go about this in much greater detail. Coding such that your application runs smoothly on a Simplified Chinese OS is similar to doing it for Japanese. We use a GB based character encoding for Simplified Chinese. GB is a standard character encoding for simplified Chinese. It is multibyte and works much like the Shift-JIS character encoding that is on our Japanese OS. If you are using TxtMgr calls to manipulate/traverse your strings and are avoiding high ascii characters in your resources you are most of the way there. You can include Chinese text strings in your resources using the version of Constructor in the R3 SDK (or the R2 version for that matter). There is a KB recipe on creating overlays that you may find useful if you are looking to localize your applications into Chinese. As always, we can not comment on when, where or in what form an OS 5.3 device will ship. This is a licensee decision. Note: If you are not already signed up for the Seeding Area and or the Developer Program you can visit http://www.palmos.com/dev/programs/pdp/ to join online. Once signed up for the developer program you will have to wait a day or two (for a human to verify your record's validity) and then return and log on to the Developer Program page. During this time we will verify the profile information you submitted and make available a link to an online license to sign up for the Developer Seeding Area. -Ezekiel Sanborn de Asis PalmSource DTS Engineer PalmSource Developer Support -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
