Programming for Palm OS/PilRC

PilRC (the PILot Resource Compiler) takes human-readable definitions of User Interface features (example) and turns them into a machine-readable form suitable for feeding to tools such as build-prc.

installation

installing PilRC on Debian

 sudo apt-get install pilrc

usage

PilRC reads a .rcp file and produces one or more .bin files. To find out what can be put into a .rcp file:

 mozilla file:///usr/share/doc/pilrc/html/manual.html#language

Then invoke PilRC like this:

 pilrc -q YourProject.rcp

..and it will produce files named things like:

 NFNT03e8.bin
 MBAR03e8.bin 
 tFRM03e8.bin

..which are fed to build-prc like this:

 build-prc $(PROJECT).prc "$(PROJECT)" $(CREATOR_ID) *.$(PROJECT).grc *.bin

examples

fonts

In YourProject.h (so that resource IDs can be kept in sync between the source code and YourProject.rcp):

#define  TinyFont  1000

..then in YourProject.rcp:

#include "YourProject.h"

FONT ID TinyFont FONTID 128 "6pt-sans-font.txt"

128 is fntAppCustomBase and should be in the range 128-255. 6pt-sans-font.txt refers to a file that describes the font. This file looks like this:

ascent  5
descent 1
glyph 32
---
---
---
---
---
---
glyph 33
-#-
-#-
-#-
---
-#-
---
glyph -1
----
###-
#-#-
#-#-
###-
----

..although your fonts should define more than only two glyphs.

The following Ruby can be used to create a blank font file suitable for consumption by PilRC:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
#
ROWS    = 7
COLUMNS = 6
puts 'ascent  %i' % (ROWS - 1)
puts 'descent 1'
(32..127).each do |index|
  puts 'glyph %i' % index
  ROWS.times do
    puts '-' * COLUMNS
  end
end