Personal Digital Assistants
Personal Digital AssistantsThe Palm Organizer doesn't have a keyboard and is pocket-sized. It doesn't require an electrical outlet (it uses batteries) and could easily be used for a month or more without needing batteries changed. Users can write on a designated portion of the screen as one method of data input. Alphabetical and numeric keyboards may be displayed on the screen and data may be input that way as well. The more common manner of intensive data input is through synchronizing the hand-held device and its corresponding applications on a PC. Palm Computing provides its Memo book, Address book, To Do list, and Schedule as Palm programs as well as PC programs, and data from both the PC and the Palm Organizer can be synchronized easily through the use of a connection included with all required software when a Palm Organizer is purchased.
One significant challenge in beginning to use a Palm Organizer is learning the Graffiti method of writing. Graffiti is a particular defined way of writing letters, numbers, and other graphical elements. Graffiti is at times a simpler way of writing. Yet several of the letters written in Graffiti (a, f, q, and t) could not be called completely written English letters. Even more of the letters (g, k, x, and y) may be written conveniently (in Graffiti) though in a way that could not be called completely written English letters. These differences, plus the fact that one is moving a stylus on a glass tablet and the letters and numbers do not appear where written (instead elsewhere on the tablet) can make written input into a new skill that one must practice to learn. Palm Computers include an application called Giraffe that changes writing practice into a computer game. Perhaps the person working with product will find the application useful.
The Palm's immediate input method is not a keyboard; it doesn't have a mechanical keyboard and is not suited to touch-typing. One may think of it as a notebook or notepad.
mailing lists -- ultraviolet.org, pilot-unix
starting Palm programming protect
better editor than memopad
JPF