PHP on Palm based computer

[ChronoFish]

I know this topic comes up every so often - so I thought I would annoy
everyone and ask again.....

I am looking for a way to write PHP apps on a Palm based computer.
Why? Because I like PHP, and the whole Palm OS paradigm is very
web-server like (from a user point of view).

If the you envionsion a plam screen as a web browser and the Palm DB as
either a database or file system, you could easily and quickly build
PHP apps for palms.

I have several apps I would like to crank out - however cranking out
C/C++ code is no longer my specialty and the nuances for Palm involve a
learning curve that I never have enough time to conquere (I have put
together several Palm apps in the past - and now it seems I struggle
with "hello World". Why would you create a system that is so difficult
to change strings of things like labels? The entire UI is string
based!)

Anyway the bottom line is this: Has anyone done it?

I imagine creating a LAMP stack (uclinux, apache, php, mysql) is harder
than it sounds or else I would have found examples already. And
actually just a file system would be suffice (no real need for mysql).

-CF

[Colin McKinnon]

ChronoFish wrote:

I am looking for a way to write PHP apps on a Palm based computer.
Why? Because I like PHP, and the whole Palm OS paradigm is very
web-server like (from a user point of view).

I guess you've got two options:

1) write a PECL for interacting with the screen as per the curses or GTK
extensions. This will require specialist knowledge of both PHP and the Palm
API - and a significant amount of C programming
2) use a web browser on the device to access a webservr on the device (there
are at least a couple of webservers written in PHP).

It *should* be possible - last time I compiled PHP5 with SQLite and Mysql,
the output was about 5Mb but stripped, it came out at 1Mb.

HTH

C.

[Lisa Pearlson]

I used to be a big time palmOS developer, used CodeWarrior version 3 up to
version 7 or so.. then gave up on PalmOS all together because it lacked
mature development tools, CodeWarrior being the least cumbersome of all.
And, what database? a palm database always used to be just a binary file.
Calling it a database is absurd, unless any binary data file is a database.

So unless a lot has changed since then, I don't see the similarity between a
high level web browser/html/scripting and low level palm device that have
been most favorite by Motorola assembler programmers.

Satellite Forms was the most high level RAD tool available at that time..
I'm sure you can program C++ with OO now, as that's what they were working
on back then..

I used to love Palm, from a users standpoint.. but from a developer's
standpoint, it made you very conciouss of it being embedded, with having to
lock memory and such.

I'm sure you can develop any virtual machine or interpreter on top of palm,
like on any other device.. even emulators.. but I doubt Zend engine can or
will be ported to palmOS and I'm sure there are better alternatives, like
basics or form designers and what not.

Lisa
"ChronoFish " <de**@chronofis h.com> wrote in message
news:11******** *************@f 14g2000cwb.goog legroups.com...

I know this topic comes up every so often - so I thought I would annoy
everyone and ask again.....

I am looking for a way to write PHP apps on a Palm based computer.
Why? Because I like PHP, and the whole Palm OS paradigm is very
web-server like (from a user point of view).

If the you envionsion a plam screen as a web browser and the Palm DB as
either a database or file system, you could easily and quickly build
PHP apps for palms.

I have several apps I would like to crank out - however cranking out
C/C++ code is no longer my specialty and the nuances for Palm involve a
learning curve that I never have enough time to conquere (I have put
together several Palm apps in the past - and now it seems I struggle
with "hello World". Why would you create a system that is so difficult
to change strings of things like labels? The entire UI is string
based!)

Anyway the bottom line is this: Has anyone done it?

I imagine creating a LAMP stack (uclinux, apache, php, mysql) is harder
than it sounds or else I would have found examples already. And
actually just a file system would be suffice (no real need for mysql).

-CF