More Zoomer and PalmConnect stuff
starnet!apple!trantor.harris-atd.com!chuck (Chuck Musciano)
Message-id: <9311301640.AA29420@trantor.harris-atd.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 11:40:56 +0500
From: starnet!apple!trantor.harris-atd.com!chuck (Chuck Musciano)
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Subject: More Zoomer and PalmConnect stuff
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Status: OR
First, the really cool stuff:
* PalmConnect and the Zoomer allow *bidirectional* file linking!
That's right, start up a copy on one side, and you can use the
other side to your heart's content, including starting up a *second*
file transfer! I recently backed up my Zoomer files on my PC while
copying the 150K System Spell Check library from the PC to the
Zoomer. I didn't check to see if the transfer rates are affected,
but I would hope that the data rates wouldn't degrade considerably.
After, all during a file transfer one wire is loaded with data and
the other just has an ACK every so often. By loading the other
wire with data, you get two transfers with only a moderate drop in
speed.
* Pocket Quicken does a really nice job of generating reports. Unlike
the other apps, which produce a "page shot" of the screen, PQ
actually produces full 8.5x11 reports of your account activity.
Very nice!
* There is something pleasant and satisfying about dialing into AOL
and having your Zoomer say "You have mail!"
* The AOL interface is really very nice and useful. I had a lot of
fun reading the news and checking my stocks and such. Deferred
mail works great, too! One nit: it is possible to get *way* ahead
of the system tapping on the little keyboard. I got about 100
characters ahead, and got a message warning me that system
resources were getting low. If you get too far ahead, the Zoomer
can only absorb one character every two seonds or so until it
catches up.
And some disappointments:
* The O and 0 (that's oh and zero) are identical in the text entry
boxes, making it difficult to detect writing errors. They are
different in the actual windows, so you have to exit the dialog,
check your text, and possibly re-edit to fix the problem.
* A biggy: there is no way to get data *out* of Palm Connect. Data
can go in, in a variet of ways, bt once data is on your Zoomer,
its in there forever. I had hoped you could take pages of notes
at meetings and such, and upon returning to your PC, upload the notes
and export them to other apps. This is not the case.
I imagine Palm will say that we need to buy IntelliLink to convert
the data, but that is unacceptable. First, it's another $80.
Secondly, it is a separate tool that runs under Windows! For those
of us who run Geoworks, that is unacceptable. Imagine booting
into Geoworks, dropping out to launch Palm Connect (since it won't
run directly under Geoworks), exiting Palm Connect, firing up Windows,
running IntelliLink, and exporting your data. Even worse, I'm betting
IntelliLink doesn't understand GEOS file names, so your "Note Book"
under Palm Connect will look like note_boo.000 under IntelliLink.
Bleah!
* Page send/receive of notebook pages doesn't send the page title!
So if I have a dozen pages to give to a friend, I can zap over the
pages, and have him write in the titles by hand? Really tough if
the titles are captured as ink!
A gross workaround would be to make a copy of the notebook, delete
the pages you don't want to send, and then link over the notebook.
Not a very nice workaround, and prone to much scoffing by Newton
owners!
And some odd behavior:
* When you print an address book, it asks you to specify the pages
to print by *page number*! Since address book entries do not have
page numbers, this is completely useless. It is impossible to print
out just the A's for example, or M-Z. This probably qualifies as a
bug, but I'll classify it as a user interface error.
* In an amusing coincidence, when you print a notebook page, it *doesn't*
print the page number! Here we have objects with page numbers that
don't print, and objects without page numbers that want you to
specify page numbers to print! As I UI designer myself, I feel
qualified to chastise whoever designed this part of the user interface.
* This was weird. I was trying to turn off my Zoomer, and it always
seems to take longer than I think it should, so I pressed the button
again, and the Zoomer shut down. I had an appointment a little
later, and the Zoomer tried to pop up the window and play the
alarm tune, that goes "dee-dee-dee dee-dee-dee dee-dee-dee".
Well, this time, it popped the window, played "dee-dee-dee
dee-dee-dee dee-" and turned off! When I turned it back on, the
popup was still visible, and the Zoomer finished playing: "dee-dee"!
And finally the bugs:
* I configured Palm COnnect to have an HP LaserJet 4 (PCL mode) on
LPT1. When I asked Paco to print to a file, it worked for a while and
came up with a SL-23 error: insufficient memory or missing port
driver. Since Geoworks can print to a file with no problems in the
same configuration, this must be a bug in Palm Connect. In fact,
I ran the Paco apps under Geoworks 2.0, and was able to print to a
file without trouble.
* The NoteBook lost the last group of pages in my notebook. The last
item in my notebook is a group of three pages, with the last two
indented beneath the first. All of a sudden, I noticed they were
missing. Fortunately, I had backed the document up on Paco and
could recover the data. Very odd, and not reproducible (yet).
* If you print to "HP LaserJet 4 (PostScript)", the titles of notebook
pages that are in ink are not rendered correctly. They turn out as
a bunch of horizontal lines. If you print to "HP LaserJet 4 (PCL)"
they print fine. This was all done by printing to a file under
Geoworks 2.0 and then spooling the file to my printer attached to
a network of Sun workstations. Before you pooh-pooh my bizarre
configuration, could someone try shooting a notebook page with an
ink title directly to an attached LJ 4 in PostScript, either from
Paco or the Zoomer?
* I have a notebook page that I keep track of rainfall in. I created
a template of dates by typing
1
2
3
4
5
and so forth, until I had 31 entries. Then, each morning as I
read my rain gauge (don't you wish you led the exciting life that
I do? :-) I write the rainfall as ink next to the appropriate date.
If you print this page, everything lines up. If you open this page
in PalmNotes under Paco, the text and ink are out of alignment.
Basically, the text is taller in Paco than on the Zoomer, so that
the ink that used to be next to "4" on the Zoomer is next to "3"
under Paco. Looks like a font metrics problem to me.
* The print drivers use the wrong corner mitering options when printing
ink, resulting in very pointed, instead of round, corners on your
ink. When you print ink, especially writing, it looks nothing like
what it does on the Zoomer screen. The Zoomer renders ink with
rounded corners, and the print driver should, too. This is true
for both PCL and PostScript output, and is especially noticable on
sketch pages. Page titles use a thinner line weight, and the mitering
is not as obvious.
* When you import Casio BOSS data into Paco, not all special characters
are mapped correctly. Casio uses ISO-Latin-1 encoding, I think,
but Geoworks must use something different. In any case, I had an
e with two dots over it in my Casio, and Paco imported it as an a with
the little hat. (I believe that's an e with an umlaut, and an a
with a circumflex).
* On a notebook page, I have this text:
" oo<tab>No deferred recognition on the sketch<cr><tab>pages"
(The quotes are not part of it, they're just included as delimiters.
The string begins with five blanks, and the two leading "o"
character are actually the hollow bullet/degree symbol, typed as
shift-ctrl-alt-8.
When displayed on the Zoomer or under Paco, it looks like this
oo No deferred recognition on the sketch
pages
When printed (both in PCL and PostSCript), "pages" starts on the
left margin correctly, but overlays the line above it. It's as if
the printer did a carriage return but no line feed. It prints like
this:
pagesoo No deferred recognition on the sketch
Now, I have other lines wrapped in this exact manner that print fine.
* When you open the datebook in the Todo view, and switch to another app
and come back without getting the "Activating" message, it remains in
Todo view. But if it got swapped out, and you get the "Activating"
message, it always returns in Event view. I would have thought the
entire state of the tool was saved when it swapped, but this doesn't
seem to be the case.
Whew! That's all for now! :-)
Chuck Musciano ARPA: chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
Harris Corporation AOL : CMusciano
PO Box 37, MS 16/1912 AT&T: (407) 727-6131
Melbourne, FL 32902 Fax : (407) 729-3363
A good newspaper is never good enough,
but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever. -- Garrison Keillor