From: Niklas Frykholm <r2d2@...>
Date: 2002-04-21T18:12:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Q: Possible Palm OS port?

[Hal E. Fulton]:
> Several people have expressed interest in a port
> of Ruby to the Palm OS...
> 
> Are there any thoughts on what it would take to 
> make this work?

I have done my share of programming for PalmOS. I don't think it would
be _that_ hard. Just throw out the things that doesn't make sense for
the Palm and write a module to access the most important functions in
PalmOS.

Of course, keeping it up to date requires an ongoing effort.
Currently, I have no real interest in this, since I don't use a Palm.

> 2. File access and IO would be radically different,
> I think... does the Palm even have the concept of
> a "file"?

No it uses databases, but you can simulate a file or a filesystem if
you want to. Not sure if that is the best way to go about...

> 3. Isn't there a gcc version which cross-compiles
> for the Palm? I know there's PocketC, but that's
> not a true C compiler AFAIK.

Yes there is, and it works fine.

> 4. I suppose there should be an add-on library to
> interface to the rest of the Palm... a way to read
> from the Memo app, a native GUI, and so on...
> 
> Anyone have ideas on this?

Take a look at PLua -- Lua for Palm. They have created a simplified
interface to the Palm (i.e., not a direct translation of the API).
Quite nice. It won't work for all serious projects, but those who need
to do that will probably write in C anyway.

There is also a Smalltalk cross-development environment for the Palm
that might give some ideas on how an interface can be constructed. I
have forgotten its name.

// Niklas