[clug] lightweight tool for creating PDA-style Apps

[steve jenkin]

For years I had a PSION 3. Used it so much, I wore the printing off the
keycaps. I even *typed* docs on it when travelling... At least one
person wrote a book on one.

Then I got a PSION 5 and it didn't click for me. Battery life too short.
(AA's. Rechargeables were worse)
The specs were great & it did nice things like 'voice recorder' without
buttons.

PSIONs lost the PDA market and morphed into Symbian.

Which led me to getting a Palm TX - again nice specs, but didn't work
for me...

I've looked at Symbian mobiles, Nokia smartphones and the iTouch and
they lack the things that really made the PSION great for me:
 - multitasking
 - database engine
 - scripting language (OPL) integrated with the windowing system

For a 30Mhz processor with limited memory, these gizmos did a heck of a
lot...

With the advent of cheap/small netbooks - especially with the Google
announcement & ARM processors - I'm thinking I can recreate what I loved
about the PSION :-)

-----------------------------------------------
My Question:
 Do you know of any lightweight tools suitable for creating PDA-style
Apps (good UI tools) on low-powered netbooks??
-----------------------------------------------


TCL/Tk could do it, but I've always found the reverse-polish style of
TCL unintuitive.
Haven't used Lua, but it doesn't come with UI support.

PERL/Python/Ruby - not sure...

I've never been a fan of JAVA - big footprint to both develop & run.

Maybe I need to investigate Javascript & pick up some DB libraries
(Tridge's TDB?)

Suggestions?




One of the meta-functions necessary is 2-way syncing for Scheduler,
Contacts, (email?) ... between 'base' and the portable device.

'rsync' is a partial solution, but only if all changes are restricted to
 separate files in each environment.

Perhaps I should look at Google Gears... IIRC, they solve the off-line
sync problem.

TIA
steve

-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin