======================================================================== Read Me for the Palm OS Emulator Copyright (c) 1998-2000 Palm, Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. Please send bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. to devsupp@palm.com ======================================================================== This document is the Read Me for the Palm OS Emulator (formerly known as Copilot). Palm OS Emulator is an application that emulates the hardware for most Palm Computing Platform Hardware devices (e.g., Pilot, PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, etc.). The Emulator runs on most standard desktop computers, includes those running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Mac OS, and several flavors of Unix. With the Palm OS Emulator, you can emulate the functions of a Palm hardware device, including running the built-in application, as well as installing and running 3rd party applications. Palm OS Emulator is an Open Source project. That means that the source code is available for you to peruse and modify. If you make any changes that you think might benefit others, we urge you to consider sending them back to Palm Computing for inclusion in the main source code base. You can find the Palm OS Emulator at: Stable: Latest: You will also find this URL in the About Box for the Emulator. The URL is an active hyperlink; you can usually just click on it to launch your Web browser and have it automatically access the Emulator home page. We have much planned for the Palm OS Emulator. For descriptions of some of the changes to appear in future releases, see the ERS (Engineering Resource Specification -- or something like that) in the Docs directory. See also a couple of Emulator-related articles that appeared in the May/June 1998 issue of the Handheld Systems Journal (www.cdpubs.com -- also included in the Docs directory in PDF format). Guide to the documentation files: --------------------------------- UsingPOSE.pdf The official Poser documentation. The current version documents features up to Palm OS Emulator 3.0a3. See the _News.txt or _OldNews.txt files for changes since that version. Bugs.txt A small set of bugs that we think you need to know about. Not all known bugs are listed here -- just fairly relevent ones. Building.txt Instructions on how to build (compile) the Palm OS Emulator on the various supported platforms. Contributing.txt Guidelines to follow (or at least consider) if you are thinking of contributing to this Open Source project. Credits.txt List of people who have contributed to the Emulator project. GPL.txt Palm OS Emulator is an Open Source project distributed under and protected by the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. The text of the license is included in this file. News.txt Blow-by-blow descriptions of changes made to the emulator as it evolves over time. OldNews.txt News.txt was getting too big, so older entries have been archived to this file. ReadMe.txt The document you're currently reading. ToDo.txt A short list of To Do items, for people wondering what features are planned or for people wondering how they can contribute to the project. 12rollin.pdf Handheld Systems Journal article written by the current Palm OS Emulator engineer. Covers the differences between the Palm OS Emulator and Copilot, the program from which it was derived. 13hewgil.pdf Handheld Systems Journal article written by the original author of Copilot. Notes on the version number: ---------------------------- Palm Computing uses the following numbering scheme for versioning its products. The version number has the following format: ..[dab] The "dab" appearing after the bug fix revision indicates the pre-release stage of the product. The "d" means that it is currently under development. Once all features have been added and it has undergone enough testing to ensure that it is not DOA, its pre-release stage is advanced to "alpha", and the version number is suffixed with "a". Once all known critical bugs (crashers or bugs that prevent meaningful work) are fixed, the pre-release stage is advanced to "beta", and the version number is suffixed with a "b". Finally, after all designated bugs have been fixed, the product is released, and the version number no longer includes a pre-release designation. This version of the Palm OS Emulator is 3.0a8. This means that the product is pretty much feature complete, but may have some known bugs in it. Even so, during its development stage, the Palm OS Emulator has been in constant use by the Palm OS engineering team in the development of future versions of the Palm OS. Thus, it should be pretty stable for use by 3rd party developers. Notes on the Profile version: ----------------------------- Some Palm OS Emulator releases include a profiling version (indicated by its having "Profile" appended to its name). This version of the emulator allows users to turn profiling on and off, and to save the results to disk in a format compatible with the CodeWarrior Profile application, or in a tab-delimited text file suitable for spreadsheets. Because the extra code involved with profiling an application slows down all program execution (even when profiling isn't currently being used), profiling support is provided only in this special version. If you don't intend to profile your application, you should use the normal version of the emulator.