4 ms·

As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. It's like bringing back MS-DOS, perhaps you have something ready made for that environment and yo

by muyuu 4y ago

As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. It's like bringing back MS-DOS, perhaps you have something ready made for that environment and you want to use it as is because you don't want to relearn some newer interface. That's ok, it can be done with emulation. But other than that why would you want to impose yourself a bunch of anachronistic limitations?

zubiaur 4y ago
For context dmitry was a bit of a legend back wen palm was alive. His patches fixed a bunch of stuff palm never bothered to. His apps were top notch and pushed the limit on what was possible in palmOS. So, in a way, im not surprised he’s done something like this. A work of ¿love? ¿Art?. A testament of deeply knowing the object of his passion. Take a look at his code and admire it for what it is. Read how he explains it. It’s worthy on its own.
dmitrygr 4y ago
> can be done with emulation Funny you should say that. There WAS no emulator for any ARM palm devices. Ever. Until I wrote the only one: https://github.com/uARM-Palm/uARM https://github.com/uARM-Palm/uARM
- muyuu 4y ago
  Well, that does make sense. It wasn't a slight at you. I appreciate good work and also recreational computing. But is reviving Palm a practical endeavour? Nope, sorry. The emulator is a good idea for whatever abandonware people might want to use. I might try it myself.
h2odragon 4y ago
Art can be worthwhile for its own sake, no? This has more value to more people than a painting of an apple, I'd guess. I don't see much point in either of them myself; but I don't have to. I can see the point in them in that they gave their creator joy while making them and even more in that others can appreciate them, even if i can't.
selfhoster11 4y ago
FreeDOS brought MS-DOS back from the dead. Was it useless? In my opinion, far from it. Yes, Palm is useless and archaic of networked features are your #1 use case for a PDA (smartphone) and there’s little use reviving it. However, if you care about old Palm games, or about efficiently organising your life with minimum distractions, then IMO not many modern devices will beat a Palm OS device. Analogously to MS-DOS, there is a huge application base that you can dip into for most tasks that don’t require online access, that can still be used today. The UI is miles ahead of both iOS and Android, IMO (in both responsiveness and look-and-feel), if you are willing to work within its limitations (that include using a stylus). Dmitry is even working on Unicode support. I’m glad that RePalm exists. If it didn’t, all we’d be left with is emulators and devices that are starting to fall apart.
- muyuu 4y ago
  FreeDOS is exactly what I was describing. Makes sense to use that old software, but not to actually develop for these days. Because you'd be imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    > Because you'd be imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason. Learning to count every byte has value today too, and this is practice in that skill
  - troad 4y ago
    > imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason It's worth noting that this also describes virtually all poetry, the rules of all sports, etc. :)
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    The C64 demo scene is still alive and well today. Restrictions sometimes are the point.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
squarefoot 4y ago
> As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. I see a big opportunity should rePalm be ported to generic low cost embedded hardware. ESP32(|ARM|Risc-V) board+LCD+LTE module, all costing a dozen bucks each or less, would make the basis for a powerful dumbphone for when manufacturers will cease any production of them. I would personally love to have such a device. Broadly speaking, PalmOS had filesystems, networking, graphics and interface controls, sound, hardware access and more. Who cares if I can't watch high resolution movies or play AAA games with it, the goal should rather be to use it to do things where Linux is not only overkill but also would require hardware that cost a lot more. Forget about phones and PDAs, if I want to build an I/O panel with buttons and display for some instrument, a light OS like this one could help to lower costs by doing it on much cheaper hardware.
- muyuu 4y ago
  why would you bother with the overhead to make it Palm-compatible though? at most, an emulation subsystem might make sense, but having all things including new development run in a Palm-compatible system right now makes no sense. Note that it wouldn't even be a dumbphone by definition if it has an OS running arbitrarily installed software on it.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    > why would you bother with the overhead to make it Palm-compatible though Not having to design and explain API is a plus
    - muyuu 4y ago
      yes, then you go for the subsystem route as in MacOS Classic or Win32 perhaps worth a shot but I seriously doubt the compatibility is going to be worth enough for enough people, instead of just running an emulator
- aidenn0 4y ago
  FWIW, there was an arm-native video player for the T5, and I was able to watch mpeg4/divx encoded movies on it.

by muyuu 4y ago

zubiaur 4y ago

For context dmitry was a bit of a legend back wen palm was alive. His patches fixed a bunch of stuff palm never bothered to. His apps were top notch and pushed the limit on what was possible in palmOS. So, in a way, im not surprised he’s done something like this. A work of ¿love? ¿Art?. A testament of deeply knowing the object of his passion. Take a look at his code and admire it for what it is. Read how he explains it. It’s worthy on its own.

dmitrygr 4y ago

> can be done with emulation Funny you should say that. There WAS no emulator for any ARM palm devices. Ever. Until I wrote the only one: https://github.com/uARM-Palm/uARM https://github.com/uARM-Palm/uARM

muyuu 4y ago
Well, that does make sense. It wasn't a slight at you. I appreciate good work and also recreational computing. But is reviving Palm a practical endeavour? Nope, sorry. The emulator is a good idea for whatever abandonware people might want to use. I might try it myself.

h2odragon 4y ago

Art can be worthwhile for its own sake, no? This has more value to more people than a painting of an apple, I'd guess. I don't see much point in either of them myself; but I don't have to. I can see the point in them in that they gave their creator joy while making them and even more in that others can appreciate them, even if i can't.

selfhoster11 4y ago

FreeDOS brought MS-DOS back from the dead. Was it useless? In my opinion, far from it. Yes, Palm is useless and archaic of networked features are your #1 use case for a PDA (smartphone) and there’s little use reviving it. However, if you care about old Palm games, or about efficiently organising your life with minimum distractions, then IMO not many modern devices will beat a Palm OS device. Analogously to MS-DOS, there is a huge application base that you can dip into for most tasks that don’t require online access, that can still be used today. The UI is miles ahead of both iOS and Android, IMO (in both responsiveness and look-and-feel), if you are willing to work within its limitations (that include using a stylus). Dmitry is even working on Unicode support. I’m glad that RePalm exists. If it didn’t, all we’d be left with is emulators and devices that are starting to fall apart.

muyuu 4y ago
FreeDOS is exactly what I was describing. Makes sense to use that old software, but not to actually develop for these days. Because you'd be imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason.
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  > Because you'd be imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason. Learning to count every byte has value today too, and this is practice in that skill
- troad 4y ago
  > imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason It's worth noting that this also describes virtually all poetry, the rules of all sports, etc. :)
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  The C64 demo scene is still alive and well today. Restrictions sometimes are the point.
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

squarefoot 4y ago

> As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. I see a big opportunity should rePalm be ported to generic low cost embedded hardware. ESP32(|ARM|Risc-V) board+LCD+LTE module, all costing a dozen bucks each or less, would make the basis for a powerful dumbphone for when manufacturers will cease any production of them. I would personally love to have such a device. Broadly speaking, PalmOS had filesystems, networking, graphics and interface controls, sound, hardware access and more. Who cares if I can't watch high resolution movies or play AAA games with it, the goal should rather be to use it to do things where Linux is not only overkill but also would require hardware that cost a lot more. Forget about phones and PDAs, if I want to build an I/O panel with buttons and display for some instrument, a light OS like this one could help to lower costs by doing it on much cheaper hardware.

muyuu 4y ago
why would you bother with the overhead to make it Palm-compatible though? at most, an emulation subsystem might make sense, but having all things including new development run in a Palm-compatible system right now makes no sense. Note that it wouldn't even be a dumbphone by definition if it has an OS running arbitrarily installed software on it.
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  > why would you bother with the overhead to make it Palm-compatible though Not having to design and explain API is a plus
  - muyuu 4y ago
    yes, then you go for the subsystem route as in MacOS Classic or Win32 perhaps worth a shot but I seriously doubt the compatibility is going to be worth enough for enough people, instead of just running an emulator
aidenn0 4y ago
FWIW, there was an arm-native video player for the T5, and I was able to watch mpeg4/divx encoded movies on it.