Using Palm OS® Emulator provides you with conceptual, guidance and reference information on how you can use Palm OS Emulator to test your Palm OS applications.
Who Should Read This Book
If you are a Palm OS application developer, whether you are writing your first Palm OS application or you are an experienced Palm OS application developer, then this book is for you. Palm OS Emulator is a valuable tool for testing and debugging Palm OS applications.
In most cases, you will need to download ROM images for Palm OS Emulator from the Palm OS Developer Program's Resource Pavilion. As a result, you should join the Palm OS Developer Program. For more information, see "Loading ROM Images".
What This Book Contains
This book starts with a general overview of Palm OS Emulator, and continues with detailed procedural and reference information that describes how to use Emulator to test your Palm OS applications. It contains the following chapters:
- Chapter 1, "Understanding Palm OS Emulator Concepts," provides a conceptual overview of Palm OS Emulator.
- Chapter 2, "Installing Palm OS Emulator," describes what you need to do to get Palm OS Emulator installed and ready to use on your desktop computer.
- Chapter 3, "Running Palm OS Emulator," describes how to customize and use emulation sessions.
- Chapter 4, "Palm OS Emulator User Interface Summary," provides a reference for Emulator's command menus and keyboard input functions.
- Chapter 5, "Testing Applications Using Palm OS Emulator," describes how to use Palm OS Emulator to test and debug programs you have written for Palm OS.
- Chapter 6, "Palm OS Emulator Error Handling," provides details about Emulator's error handling and reporting features.
- Chapter 7, "Palm OS Emulator Advanced Topics," describes how to use Emulator skin files, how to create a demonstration version of your application, and discusses how you can send commands to Emulator.
- Chapter 8, "Host Control API Reference," describes the host control API, which provides functions that an emulated application can use to call into Palm OS Emulator for certain services.
- Chapter 9, "Debugger Protocol Reference," describes the API for sending commands and responses between a debugging host, such as Palm Debugger, and a debugging target, which can be a Palm Powered™ handheld ROM or an emulator program such as Palm OS Emulator.
- Palm OS Emulator monitors applications for direct structure accesses. Appendix A, "Structure Access Notifications," lists the conditions for when Emulator does not notify you of structure accesses.
- Emulator also monitors any application use of Palm OS system traps. Appendix B, "Unsupported Traps," lists the traps that will not be supported in future Palm OS releases.
Palm OS SDK Documentation
The following documents, which are part of the Palm OS Software Development Kit documentation set, will also be useful when you are developing and testing Palm OS applications.
Additional Resources
- Documentation
PalmSource publishes its latest versions of this and other documents for Palm OS developers at
- Training
PalmSource and its partners host training classes for Palm OS developers. For topics and schedules, check
- Knowledge Base
The Knowledge Base is a fast, web-based database of technical information. Search for frequently asked questions (FAQs), sample code, white papers, and the development documentation at
What's New for Palm OS Emulator 3.5
- Support for Palm m125, Palm m130, Palm515, and Palm i705.
- Support for HandEra TRGpro and HandEra 330.
- Allow access to UI data structures in support of PalmOSGlue. See Appendix A, "Structure Access Notifications," for more information.
What's New for Palm OS Emulator 3.4
- Common, cross-platform dialog boxes.
- Support for multiple file selection in the Install Application dialog box.
- New preferences for control skin appearance.
- Detection of direct structure access.
- Detection of memory leaks.
- Detection of Overlay Manager errors.
- Enhanced support for processing when errors and warnings occur.
- Gremlin minimization function, including new Palm OS event files.
- Host Control API functions HostDbgClearDataBreak, HostDbgSetDataBreak, HostImportFileWithID, and HostSessionSave.