From: tavares at connix.com (tavares at connix.com)
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 13:31:16 GMT
Subject: Python and "Hand held" computers
References: <318D8A1FC77AD211A3110080C83DFC6403139F@comsrv.sowatec.com> <7g1opt$9li$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Message-ID: <7g1pr5$an8$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Content-Length: 1307
X-UID: 1543                                                  

In article <7g1opt$9li$1 at nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
  aaron_watters at my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
>
> > What about Palm Pilot ?
>
> I think the answer still is "It should be possible, but in
> practice the Palm Pilot doesn't have enough memory to make
> it an interesting proposition, unless you upgrade it to non-standard
> sizes."

"It's worse than that, he's dead Jim!"

Even if you do upgrade a pilot to have more RAM (the new Palm IIIx comes with
4 MB, and you can get an 8 MB upgrade), the Pilot OS's memory architecture is
also a problem. Palm apps typically get a very small heap - 64k or less, if
memory serves me correctly. The rest of RAM is accessed using the "database
manager" functions, which chops RAM up into records defined by the app.

This is very useful when writing an address book or shopping list program. It
is significantly LESS useful when you're trying to implement an interpreter.

I'm sure that this can be worked around (heck, someone's implemented Smalltalk
on the pilot) but I suspect the amount of changes to the core Python sources
would be significant enough to discourage the attempt.

[ ...Remainder snipped... ]

-Chris


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