phreakonaleash

Hey,

Does alphasmart have an SDK for the apps to take control of the full screen? My friend has a dana and I was fooling with it trying to make a full screen app... and I failed.

i searched Access's crap site, and I tried the OS5 ways of screen expansion (:rolleyes and it didn't work.

Anyone have a link or the actual SDK?

__________________
[b]/*PhreakOnALeash*/
Ryan Rix -- KDE Developer, HomePage

potter

I thought I had remembered seeing such once before on Alphasmart's site, but I am unable to find such now. My assumption would be that it is simply a matter of calling WinScreenMode with the appropriate values to set the device into wide screen mode.

__________________
Palm III -> Visor Deluxe -> Visor Prism -> Tungsten T -> LifeDrive -> Nokia n810 -> Droid

Alphasmart User

I know its a year too late, but there used to be a link on palm sources website, and I forget if it was on alphasmart's _server or palmsources _server, but it's gone now. You can find it if you google hard enough.

(I have it, actualy, I don't know if it is leagal to send it though)

phreakonaleash

Hey Alphasmart User! Glad to see you made it to the source after so long
I actually found the sdk quite a while ago through a goof friend of mine... I can stick a link to it up if someone wants/needs it.

__________________
[b]/*PhreakOnALeash*/
Ryan Rix -- KDE Developer, HomePage

Alphasmart User

Did you get it to work with the 'Garnet' OS Development Suite? (v 1.2) if so how? I tried it and it did not work

madmaxmedia

Man, it would be nice if there was a utility to 'force' widescreen mode for non-widescreen apps- something like CodeDiver for 320x480 Clie's.

Alphasmart User

There is no utility, but it can be done manually, you need a program called RsrcEdit. When you start up RsrcEdit, there is a list of files. Scroll down to the application _database you want, like if you had a program called "example" then you will usually go to the _database "example" (sometimes the app name is different from the _database name). The _database will have the type "appl" rsrcedit will tell you right away the type once you select a _database.

when you have the app _database selected, tap "open", there you will have a list of resources. Open the menu, go to "new" and find "generic", a dialog will appear with "size" "type" and ID" fields. for size, its 4, for type its wTap , and for ID its 1000 .

a resource wTap will be in the resource list, scroll down to it select it and tap "open" . a hex editor will appear. on one side will be the hex, and the other the binary. it will appear like this



tap on the fourth '00' , and a filled rectangle will appear around it, and then type "01" so it appears like this:



after that tap 'ok' then 'done' the App should now be wide. it doesn't work well with some apps, and progress bars tend to get messed up.

If this description was too hard to follow, please tell me

madmaxmedia

You just made my day!!!

I will give it a try with some apps, and post the results.

In particular, I would love to have EudoraWeb in widescreen, it's a great text only browser. Some other stuff too...

madmaxmedia

Your instructions were completely clear, thanks so much.

I tried it with both EudoraWeb and CardTXT. The result was the menubar stretched all the way across the screen, but the main 'body' was still regular width. Do you know if there's some other setting to tweak to change this?

Thanks!
Steve

Alphasmart User

It doesn't work well with some apps. but what you can do is using RsrcEdit to open a _database like I described before, you can edit the Forms (the things that contain the buttons, lists, fields, ect.)

First you need to add a wTap resource to Rsrcedit itself, and wTap to the target app.

Opening a _application _database, like you did before you should see a list of resources. Instead of going to create a wTap resource look in the list, and scroll down untill you see tFRM resources. they describe the layout of forums. Select one (usually you want to go for tFRM 1000, in most apps) and tap open making sure 'Hex edit' is unchecked.

You should see feilds for width, height, left offset , and top offset, and a list of controls, such as Feild, button, pushbutton, and bitmap. (Top offset and left offset appears as 'top' and 'left')

you can change the width of the fourm (usualy from 158 to 558, leaving room for the border) to your liking. (using the forum preview to see if you like it or not) after changing the width, you can edit controls like fields, buttons, ect. tap on a control and tap open. a editor will come up very much like the fourm one with width height, left offset and top offset. You can edit the control size and location to your liking.

Note that with fields it may not work (so it <i>may</i> not work with Eudora...), and some apps have fourm information hardcoded right into them rendering it almost impossible to change them unless you do some extreme hacking. Also note that it wont work when you rotate the screen to Tall mode.

If this is to confusing, or if you would like a description of the UI elements and what they are, just tell me.

madmaxmedia

Hey AlphaSmart User,

I tried out your instructions, again pretty easy to follow.

With EudoraWeb, I increased the width of the main form (tFRM 1100) from 160 to 560 pixels. I then increased the left offset of the main Scrollbar 1101 from 153 to 553. I checked out the other fields and even buttons within tFRM 1100, but nothing seemed to correlate with the main text body.

When I fire up the app, the main text 'body' still only uses 160 pixels width, but now it's on the left side of the screen. Other than that it looks like it is properly set up for widescreen.

Do you think this is one of those instances where the main body field is hard-coded? Or perhaps this value could be found in one of the other databases within Eudora? Any other tips would be appreciated.

I also tried your instructions with CardTXT, and that worked perfectly. I increased the width of tFRM 1045 from 160 to 560, and width of Field 1046 from 153 to 553. Bingo! Now I have a great widescreen text editor for my Dana.

EudoraWeb was my #1 goal (it still amazes me how fast it is for an OS 4 simple HTML browser), but even just hacking CardTXT was a nice plus. I guess I will probably try PalmFiction too.

Thanks again!
Steve

Alphasmart User

I think its very likely that it is hardcoded in Eudora... it would take difficult hacking to change it, more precisely a knowledge of Assembler (machine code). I don't know ASM either, (my guess is that the just the margin is hardcoded, and if one knew ASM, it could be a matter of changing a 1 to a 5, but thats just my guess)

I doubt that this will work but: try finding any tables or gadgets in the tFRM resources, and adding 500 to their widths like you did to the fields...

madmaxmedia

I will give that a try (look at other tFRM resources), and post back with results.

Thanks again!
Steve

madmaxmedia

So far no luck with the other tFRM resources.

About the only thing I can think of, is that there is a control for the scroll bar. Could it be at all possible to 'backtrack' from that control and find the code for the actual main body? I am guessing not, but again that's the only thing I could think of.

-Steve