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For the latest development information on AppView, including binary and source releases and CVS access, go to the project's Forge page with the link on the left. What's AppView? - AppView is a simple PalmOS application I wrote to learn the basics of PalmOS programming. When run, the application provides a list of the applications on the Palm device, and allows the user to view the database flags, and resources of each, and to change some things. Since I've learned about all I can learn from AppView, the project is pretty much at a standstill. However, it is my hope that occasional refinement the code will be made more organized, and hence more useful to other developers as an example resource. What can I learn or use from the AppView source? - AppView is licensed under the Public Domain in the hopes that other developers will find it useful, and not hesitate to use its code to boost their own development efforts. AppView contains a few nice sample implementations of UI and database access methods, including, but not limited to, A nice "About" box - Add a bit of style, and a bit of bloat, to your app with this informative (and somewhat graphics-intensive by default) module. Iteration through databases - While there are simpler ways to do it, AppView gets its list of applications by iterating through all the databases on the device. Iteration throug resources - Handling Resource Databases is often glazed over in tutorial texts. AppView includes a Resource Profiler, which examines all the resources in an application and sorts the different types in order of total size. Selection lists with icons - Give those pop-ups some nice visual cues by adding small bitmaps to each list item. Writing to app resources - Again, a topic that's not thoroughly covered in texts. AppView uses it to change application name and version data. What features will be added in the future? - AppView development is slowing as other (better conceived and organized) projects begin to take precedence, but a few more new features are still planned - Icon Editing - This one will be a cinch now that the Bitmap Editor Widget is complete (see the Projects page) - This feature was, in fact, the original goal of AppView. Of course, actually including the (GPL'ed) Bitmap Editor into (Public Domain) AppView would compromise BmpEd's license, so it will likely be an optional feature when building the package. Database Views - If a reasonable design adaptation can be established, I'd like to extend AppView to include views (and edits) of the databases associated with each application. Refinement - Make the code more legible and better organized, so it will really be useful to other programmers. Miscellany - Polish. This includes things like support for beaming/launching/deleting applications, sending them various commands ("Find" for instance), and the like. Limitations on re-use of AppView - AppView is in the public domain, so there really are none. However, a few requests for the sake of order. If you redistribute a modified version of AppView, register it under a different Creator ID. All binaries with the creator ID 'AppV' go through me. Give credit where credit is due. AppView is public domain, so it's free of any copyright limitations on its adaptation - but that is not a license to plagiarize. Giving credit where it's due will also help peiple who use derived works to find the original AppView, so they can maybe learn from it, too. Share it. If someone's trying to learn PalmOS, let them know there's some free example code they can use and tinker with. Do not misrepresent yourself. Give credit where it's due, but do not claim to be me. If you re-use the AppView code, or distribute a modified AppView, distinguish it from my distributions, make sure that the program is identified as a derivative branch of some kind, and change the About box text and graphics as necessary. If you distribute a copy of AppView you compiled yourself, be sure that the AboutBuild.txt file generated identifies you as the builder and your system as the build system.

George Caswell
E-Mail: tetsujin@users.sourceforge.net
GAIM/AOL IM: Tetsujin0

Last modified: Thu Mar 23 03:19:13 EST 2000