Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

Terminology

Like every operating system, the Palm OS has it own set of necessary terminology for you to learn. Much of it may be familiar to you already from other systems on which you have worked. We suggest that you skim through the list and concentrate on the items that are new to you. New and unique terms are listed first.

Form

An application form (what many people would think of as a window) that usually covers the entire screen (modal forms cover only the bottom part of the screen, however). A form optionally contains controls, text areas, and menus. In a Palm OS application there is only one active form allowed at a time. Chapter 8 covers forms in detail.

Window

A rectangular area in which things like dialog boxes, forms, and menus are drawn by the application. The Window Manager makes sure that windows display properly relative to each other (for example, it has the ability to restore the old contents when a window is closed).

Database

A collection of persistent memory chunks. There are two kinds:

Resource

A piece of data stored in a resource database. Each resource is identified by a resource type and number. Note that a Palm application is simply a collection of resources. Chapter 8 covers resources in more detail.

Record

A memory chunk identified by a unique record ID located in a database. Applications typically store data in record databases.

Event

A data structure that describes things that happen in an application. These can be low-level hardware events such as a ...