On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, [iso-8859-1] Germán S. Arduino wrote:

> But, my main interest is not only use the PDA as user, else use it as
> developer (I can't afford a notebook here, too many expensive), do you think
> that is possible to work (at least a bit when I'm away of my desktop
> computer) with a PDA?

My answer is a very vague "Yes and no."  I have used an iPAQ 3150 for
coding in Squeak, and believe it or not, I've written a pretty substnatial
amount of code on a device with that kind of form factor.  It is possible.

*However* I think it is something which will only happen if you're
pretty... hardcore, for lack of a better word.  Especially on that 133 MHz
SH4, you will definately be wanting for speed.  Morphic will be mostly
painful.  MVC, o n the other hand, won't be that bad.  On the 206 MHz
WinCE machines on which I've used MVC, it is quitefast.  THe character
recognition (CharRecog- works in MVC and Morphic... not Genie, mind you)
recognizes characters instantly in MVC.

Heck, I would have used MVC myself as my primary Squeak PDA environment
for this reason.  Except, I am darn near useless with MVC.  In Morphic, I
can whip up a GUI, hack out a neat little PDA pretty quickly.  If I want
my environment to do something different, I usually know where to look,
and what to change, to make the environment better for that usage style.
In MVC, though, I couldn't make those changes for the life of me, without
asically learning MVC through and through.  It is something I could do,
but considering that Morphic is the future, for Squeak in general and for
Dynapad, the time investment didn't seem worthwhile.

Having used a Palm-size form factor PDA as well as something with a
built-in touch-typable keyboard, I much prefer the latter.  On the
Jornada 720, I can type almost as fast as I can on my desktop, and I get a
bigger screen.  You may be able to find a WinCE machine with similar specs
to the JOrnada 545 for a similar price- yet with a bigger screen and
keyboard.  Doing much coding on anything that small will be rough,
especially in MVC. It will be really slow.  IMHO, text entry will be the
least of your problems- in MVC especially, I think it was more the way you
interact with Squeak. Opening windows, switchign windows, playing with
morphs, etc that really slows you down on a PDA with Squeak.  Which is a
big reason I started work on Dynapad.

Also, you can get external keyboards for Palm-sized PDAs.  They are often
as nice as the integrated keyboard in a Jornada 7x0, NEC MobilePro 7x0 or
Psion, but they could get the job done.  With some good keyboard commands
made global in MVC, you could help get rid of the general interaction
slow-down I mentioned above.

Good luck!  What kind of app are you planning on working on?  Morphic or
MVC?

Regards,
Aaron

  Aaron Reichow  ::  UMD ACM Pres  ::  http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/
"the only difference it makes if some dust on the clay"  :: atmosphere