From: Martin Maciaszek <mmaciaszek@...>
Date: 2002-04-30T20:45:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and PalmOS

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002 21:22:26 -0000, "M. Norton"
<mnorton@otaku.freeshell.org> wrote:

>I recently read an article on Ruby in Linux Magazine and have since done
>some poking around Ruby documentation.  Would it be possible to use Ruby
>to create a PalmOS program?  All of the PalmOS libraries are in C, but
>they're a pain to use and it seemed to me like the object oriented
>nature of Ruby might be an ideal wrapper for doing quick and dirty
>PalmOS programs.  On the other hand, as far as I know, Ruby is an
>interpreted language, so the Palm device would have to have a Ruby
>interpreter onboard to be called to run the aforementioned program.
>
>Is there a way to have Ruby compiled into a stand alone PalmOS program,
>or would I have to port the interpreter to PalmOS?
>
According to the PalmOS documentation PalmOS has only very limited
heap space. The space is so limited that parsers generated with lex
and yacc are almost unusable. A port of ruby to PalmOS < 5 would be
probably a bit harder than to other platforms. (Unless you like such
challenges)

Cheers
Martin