PDA's

[Kirk Reiser]

Greg Keto <gorgotek at gte.net> writes:

> I can't see a pda audio interface being done right in any O/S other 
> than the palm O/S, CE is out of the question, why should an audio

Hi Greg: I would be interested in hearing your reasoning with respect
 to the above points. I don't know the Palm O/S but it seems to me
 that an audio interface or any other interface shouldn't be better or
 worse than any other OS.  I particularly don't understand why you
 think C is out of the question.  With a good compiler like gcc you
 can create better tighter code than you can in assembler if you're
 not an experienced assembler programmer.

> Software speech synthesis for the Palm is crude, Im not sure if its 
> a limitation of the mc68328 dragonball processor or the simple 

I think our software synth will probably be pretty crude to start off
with as well.  One of the aspects I am always fighting with is quality
vs size.  Although size isn't quite as critical in user-space, if you
want to use it for kernel code then you need to be very careful about
it's size.  The nice thing about publicly available code though, is
that it can be improved on over time.  Providing however, that you
have people willing to work on it.

> the question. Hardware speech synthesis is probably the best solution
> for a good sounding audio interface for the Palm pilot. For input a 

Once again, this is true providing you can design and implement a
hardware synth solution.  I know of two pcmcia speech synths: the
Accent Messenger and the Keynote one.  The Accent has no onboard
smarts so it needs a large driver to make it talk.  I know nothing
about the Keynote product.

> single handed chorded key device would be optimal. Probably cumbersome
> to learn, but once learned the combination of good speech output,
> chorded key input and a well designed audio interface will provide an
> extremly powerful man/machine schemata that would make J.C.R. Licklider
> proud. A person can be in motion, eyes free not visually captive, palm
> pilot tucked away with earphone output. 

Pretty cool imagery isn't it?  I am sure we can come up with
something, how elligant it will be will depend on a lot of facters.

> I have heard of a scaled down linux kernel running on the the palm 
> pilot but didn't hear anything about performance. A company called

There are Linux ports to a number of palmtops.  I have seen Linux
running on the Psion series 5 and it is quite impressive.  The biggest
difficulty is going to be with storage size.  I am not sure what the
largest flash-cards are these days.

> Good to see people are interested in this sort of thing, maybe this 
> can lead to the next generation of operating system. I don't know
> what happened in the last 15 years as far as computer interfaces, but
> it looks like regression to me. Looks like its gonna take the free
> software and open source movement to do what the commercial industry
> has failed to do in the last 15 years.

For the most part I agree with this statement.  I think the computer
future looks great for blinks providing they can give up their
MicroSoft habit.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061