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Applications written in SF versions < 4.1 will not open
on the Sony Clie PEG NR70.
It seems that the basic problem related to the fact that
prior versions had the launcher icon written in straight assembly language, and
starting with 4.1 it was written in C.
This turned out to be a good thing, as the newest Sony seems to require
C, but it caused some backward compatibility issues.
The solution was
proposed by David Thacker and posted on SF Talk 5/21/02.
It turns out that the
problem is the app icon prc file.
Versions of SF
prior to 4.1 produce an icon
prc file that does not work on the Sony NR70
(but works fine on everything
else).
As a test, I took an EE 4.1
icon prc file and modified it to launch a large
EE 4.0.1 RDK app, and that
did solve the problem. I also tested a
modified
version launching a large SE
3.1 app, and that worked too. If you
have a
deployed SF 3.1 or 4.0 app,
and you need to support the Sony NR70, then this
might be a solution for you.
It's messy to make, but the
end result is transparent to the user.
Take an
SF 4.1 icon prc file, then
use RsrcEdit to modify the tSTR 1000 resource to
list the proper program pdb
filename for your app. Modify the tSTR
1100
resource to list the proper
RDK engine filename (the true database name, eg
"Sat. Forms EE RDK
4.0").
Change the tAIB 1000 and
1001 icon bitmap resources as needed (remember to
do both color and mono
depths), as well as the tAIN resource (app icon name
as shown in the App
Launcher). Use the resulting icon prc
file instead of
the
one that SF 3.1/4.0 creates.
Another
way to obtain the launcher prc, of course, would be to recompile your app in
4.1 or greater and use that the file that is created with your old application,
either distributing it with the app or as a 'patch'.
I placed a
generic 4.1 launcher prc on my site that can be modified for your application.
Jon Blackman, MD, MS
www.pocketinformatics.com
David Thacker
www.palmdatapro.com
Revised 2002-05-21