Using your Palm Pilot with OS/2, Part I

You need a Palm Pilot. You might not know it, yet, but you do.

For almost as long as I've been able to scribble, I've carried my life around on little scraps of paper. If I had an appointment or was going to a concert or a show, I'd need to write it down on a sheet of notepad and then be sure to bring it -- along with the back-of-the-envelope that had the address of the restaurant where I was to meet my date, plus the ATM receipt where I'd jotted down the title of the book I was going to pick up. Forgetting one of these -- or worse, being unable to read my own handwriting -- was a drag.

Two years ago I thought about getting a Psion, because it came with an impressive little keyboard, and because while having a toy PIM still didn't seem to justify the expense and the time getting used to using it -- something I could slip into my pocket, and then open up and type into at near-secretarial speed seemed a lot more useful. However, a number of posts in the Psion newsgroups contained a distressingly familiar-sounding rancor on the part of users who felt that the superior platform (Psion) was being overwhelmed by superior marketing by the inferior product (Palm), and indifference on the part of Psion. Psion extinction seemed nigh. And prices were falling much faster for the more successful Palm devices.

Then last year not one but two portable keyboards for Palm devices were finally introduced. Maybe best of all, Palm prices dropped to their lowest-ever point: a III could be had for as little as $150, and a IIIxe, with 8 meg of memory, for around $250, also the price of a Handspring Visor.

There was the one last hurdle, though: could a Palm Pilot be integrated with OS/2? The answer was "yes," emphatically. After doing a little research, I discovered numerous ways to connect the Palm with my OS/2 desktop. In fact, I've never once needed to boot to you-know-what in order to perform any desktop-Palm functions. (As for Visors, I'm not sure -- the data transfer cable was designed for USB, and since this kind of USB port use isn't built in to OS/2, the serial version of the Visor cable is said to incorporate something of a kludge. Anyone who knows whether it's possible to sync a Visor with an OS/2 desktop is urged to drop a line.

A Quick Look at the Palm

Before we take a look at the Palm itself -- which is of course a descendent of the Newton, Apple's ill-fated handheld device -- let's get the minuses out of the way, like the screen on the cheaper devices, such as the Palm III series, which is small, but legible enough in good lighting conditions. However, the backlighting on Palm III's is almost useless.

The primary means for inputting is through a shorthand handwriting-recognition system which takes a few days to get used to -- my skills are pretty rudimentary with it, especially since I prefer to use the keyboard for high-volume entry, but it's more than serviceable, if not very fast. (There's also a little on-screen "keyboard" to use for manual peck-"typing" if you prefer.)

Now to the Palm's good points:

• There are no moving parts to speak of -- eg., no disk drive, since everything is in RAM -- so it doesn't require nearly as much care as even the toughest laptop.
  

• The PalmOS UI is plain and simple, which led to one very helpful result: since there aren't that many different ways of doing things, getting up to speed on a new application is instantaneous.
  

• Palm devices only furnish from 2-8 MB of memory out-of-the-box, so applications for it must be lean and to the point -- a welcome answer to modern-day bloatware.
  

• What might be most exciting about the Palm, apart from the usefulness of its native contact, scheduling, and memo-keeping software, is that the new platform has excited developers who've found themselves been shut out of developing commercially for Microsoft OSes. Everything, from golf and baseball scoring to diet tracking to subway maps to databases, word processors, and television remote controllers (using the built-in infrared port), has been developed for the Palm OS. Your excitement at using some of these intriguing, fun apps -- whether it's reading electronic text versions of literary classics or new spy novels while you're waiting on line at the post office, or using a pocket language dictionary or thesaurus while you're writing something on the train, or getting metronome clicks for practicing a sousaphone sonata -- may nearly rival what you felt when you started using a computer, or OS/2 for the first time.
  

• The potential for handheld devices is ever-expanding. Add-ons already include small digital cameras, memory units, and MP3 players, and these, along with the infrared port that comes with even the smallest Palm OS devices, hold great promise for communication with and control of other remote devices.
  

• Finally, if you're deciding what contemporary electronic accessory to weigh down your blazer pocket with, let's not leave out the manifold advantages of the Palm as compared with that other omnipresent toy/tool. Handheld computers, according to my calculations, are ultimately ten times less costly, ten times more useful and productive, and a hundred times less inconsiderate than cell phones.
  

Moving Stuff Back and Forth Between Your Desktop and the Palm

Not long after you've have played with your new Palm for a few minutes, you'll no doubt want to try out some new applications, or bring some files from your desktop machine to read or to carry around as reference on the road.

Before you do anything else, you must attach the HotSync cable (which connects your Pilot device with its cradle) to your desktop's external serial port, and note which COM device -- 1, 2, 3, or 4 -- you're connecting it to.

Next, grab Alexander Wagner's OS/2 port of Pilot-Link -- you can download his latest version, Pilotlink 0.9.3 from his site:

http://www.stellarcom.org/download/pilotlink093.zip

Note that the filename exceeds 8.3 characters -- so do the files it contains, so you'll need an HPFS partition to use PilotLink and all its apps.

Once you've extracted these files (they'll create their own "PilotLink" subdirectory), change to the os/2 directory and execute makefolder.cmd. This REXX routine will ask you which serial port you're using (COM1, COM2, COM3, or COM4), and asks some other questions as well. Then it will create a folder titled "Pilot Link 0.9.3 for OS/2" on your desktop, populated with all kinds of nifty icons representing some very useful gadgets.

I don't pretend to understand what each of them does. But the ones I use most often are "Backup Pilot," and both of the "Install PRC or PDB" icons. (See the note about Palm OS file formats below.)

Say, for instance, you want to install application files you've found on the net. Pilot-Link makes this very easy to do using drag-and-drop: just pick up the Palm program file icon -- this should have the extension "prc" -- and drop it onto that "Install PRC or PDB (Droped [sic] on me)" icon, and if you're connected and configured properly, you'll be prompted to press the HotSync button, and voila, the file will transfer. (If everything's gone okay, the application and its icon will listed next time you call up the Palm "homepage.") Simpler than that it doesn't get.

I've also copied pilot-xfer.exe, which with arguments is used to transfer files back and forth -- to a directory in my config.sys PATH, to enable easy batch use.

The Pilot-Link folder contains some other very intriguing-looking icons, such as "Palm-Pilot Pro -> OS/2 Using OS/2 PPP" (you can apparently set up a PPP connection to your Pilot device under OS/2: directions are included with the Pilot-Link package). I've nearly been able to get "Mail Sync using PMMail" working, but not quite -- yet. And please, for your own good, don't forget "Backup Pilot (Complete)."

I also use several of the Pilot-Link applications in batchfiles. Say I've created a file on the Palm called "Jack," using one of the many word-processors (SmartDoc is the one I use). If I want to fetch Jack from my Palm, I'll open an OS/2 command window, change to the pilot-link.0.9.3 directory, and type:

pilot-xfer.exe com1 -f Jack

The command window will say

Waiting for connection on com1 (press the HotSync button now)...

Then I'll do just that, and the PalmPilot will turn on (if it's not on already), and let me know it's Synchronizing, while meanwhile my OS/2 command window prompts:

Connected
Fetching 'Jack.pdb'... OK
Fetch done.

More on our sample batchfile in a moment.

A note about file formats

Palm OS files are of two kinds: program and data. My understanding is that Palm datafiles are in effect database files -- these have the extension *.pdb, while Palm program files have the extension *.prc. Note as well that Palm OS filenames are case-sensitive: there's a difference between Jack.pdb, JACK.pdb, and jack.pdb.

The simplest sort of pdb files, text files, contain some header info, and of course the text. If you want to automate conversion of these, there are a few DOS/OS2 text-mode applications available -- the one I use is version 7 of Makedoc, available on Hobbes

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/convert/makedoc.zip

Makedoc allows you to convert pdb-files you've retrieved from your Pilot into DOS-variety files with eg, .TXT extensions. (I use strictly ASCII files, so I can't speak to other document conversions.)

Getting back to our batchfile: if you do a lot of writing on your Palm Pilot, not only will you need to retrieve files from your Pilot, you'll also want to convert them to useable ASCII format. To return to our example -- let's call it Retrieve_A_Palm_File.cmd -- we can add in the conversion:

pilot-xfer.exe com1 -f %1
makedoc7.exe -d %1.pdb %1.txt

(By the way, I'd suggest creating and using different subdirectories for each of these functions.) You'll want to create a program object pointing to Retrieve_A_Palm_File.cmd, and then open its Properties notebook. Under Parameters, fill in

[name of the Palm file you want to retrieve]

then close the notebook. Now, if you double-click on the object, you'll be prompted for the filename: if you fill in the name of one of the word processor files you've created on the Palm, it'll retrieve it and convert for use by your favorite OS/2 text editor. For putting text files onto the Palm, use -n parameter with Makedoc and the -I parameter with pilot-xfer.exe.

Next: transferring PIM information between your Pilot and OS/2, plus Plucker.