Sony Clie Development is a pain.

[Reality]

Sony Clie Development is a pain.

Is it just me or is it almost more trouble than it worth, developing application
that work on all the Clie family.

1) The Sound API is inconstant, as it is not Palm OS standard… looks like it going to be obsolete from UX_ on.

2) IR, ??? What API

3) SilkMgr, Actual seems to be implementing okay. But well this go the way of the ba1Lib, and be replaced by some Palm OS standard API….

4) etc

Sony seems to be very weak on consistence.

And there not very forthcoming on the API front, sorely if lost of cool app were
Being developed for they PDA it would increase sales.

What’s going on……

[CliePet]

I concur, but to generalize, PALM development is a pain. Lots of 68000 history, lack of memory, threads, etc.

The CLIE-specific difficulties arise when you are trying to exploit the CLIE specific features (like camera, old-style sound, hires screen, IR etc). Sony has blazed the trail for many of those features which are now being formalized by PalmSource (and are finally appearing in PalmOne devices)
The CLIE devices have always done quite well in supporting the lowest common denominator. If you are writing a general Palm application, then most likely it will run on the Clie family (considering the version of the API used and the version of the PDA you own of course)

There are other advantages to the higher-end CLIE (like lots of system heap storage, high resolution displays, ...).
BTW: The SilkMgr already has an official replacement in Palm OS 5.x, as well as a migration module written by the PalmSource folks. IR has never been standard. The SoundAPI is now standard for all current model CLIEs, ...

> Is it just me or is it almost more trouble than it worth, developing application that work on all the Clie family.

IMHO: The CLIE (and PalmOS devices in general) are easier for the consumer to use, but harder for the developer to deal with.
So like all things, it is up to you for considering your customers.

There is no need to make a CLIE-specific version. Depending on your program, most can be adaptable to the features available on the device (and don't forget the 160x160 monochrome devices that have no sound...)

[Reality]

I guess you right Sony have lead the way, with multimedia functions on they PDA.
That’s what makes developing application for them So Very interesting.

But many other brands, are catching up……..

Sony need to a lot more open with software development community. So you can
Get down to creating, them kill apps.

[MegaManXcalibur]

Yeah developing for the Clie can be a pain in the ***. Luckily the Palm OS does have a lot of functions that check for certain features so you can enable only the features that are found on a particular device. But the Clie isn't the only PDA that is a pain to program for, almost all PDA's (be it Palm or Windows based (I'd say Linux but very few platforms currently use it)) have loads of custom hardware that you much program for.

You have ran into this with the Clie, if you want to use the sound utility you have to pray that the user is using one of the Clie's with the correct sound utilites. Now the silkscreen isn't so bad, but with Palm OS 6 (Cobalt) there is going to be a native API that will work with a silk screen and will be incompatible with Sony's API (thank Palm Souce for this one) so you will have to rewrite any silk screen enable program for Cobalt.

As for Infrared it's a standard Palm OS item so you don't have to use any special Clie files to use/abuse it.

It's getting harder and harder to make cross device Palm apps because of all the custom hardware and software that companies are throwing on. I try to keep my programs as portable as I can but this does restrict you to Palm API's. You can only hope Palm Source will create their own API's for things such as cameras, voice recorders, sound utilites, ect. so that there is a unified way of using them some day.