[SWLUG] Closed source systems an example

[Neil Jones]

I recently got a cheepish Pam Z22 on Ebay. I am learning some foreign 
languages and I was looking to use it to help me learn vocabulary and 
grammar.

There is some software available called Jmemorize which will run under 
windows and Linux on a PC and is very useful you supply it with some 
simple files which I can create quite easily with perl scripts and 
easily available information.

It is a flash card program that gives you a word or a piece of grammar 
and you can tell it if you know it or not and it remembers which ones 
you got right and wrong and retests you. I don't need all of its 
functions but it is superb for my uses. I can learn a hundred new words 
in half an hour with it. They do need revision afterwards but it is just 
a matter of reimporting the file  and running the program again. I have 
about 85% retention a day later which then improves.

However I needed something I could carry around. I spent six hours on a 
train recently and a palmtop version of the program was useful.
I can use it waiting for a train or standing in a supermarket queue and 
time when I have some spare moments.

This is where closed source gives problems. Palm provided ( used to 
provide) a Software Development Kit. but a search and a question on 
their forum seems to show that it isn't available. Without it I could 
not program the machine. My palm was just an organiser, a glorified 
diary and phone book, but not a computer that I could program.

Fortunately someone else has produced PocketC a programming language 
with some examples and looking at the examples I was able to produce a 
limited flash card program that would read all my existing data files. 
The missing SDK was still a problem because it contains an emulator for 
a Windows machine which you can use for development. Without it you have 
to type on the palm itself and I found that I was forced to program the 
palmtop lying on my side in bed because siting up doing it for a few 
hours gave me a bad neck.

It occurs to me that this is exactly the problem with closed source 
stuff. If a manufacturer withdraws something or disappears older 
equipment becomes unusable,

Incidentally if anyone does know where to find a copy of the SDK  I 
would be grateful.

Neil