New to the list: Pilot person

[eakeyes@xxxxxxx (Edward Keyes)]

Hey all.  Just a quick intro here...

I was introduced to the Xanadu project through the infamous Wired
article a couple years back... evidently a poor introduction, but
enough of the potential leaked though to catch my eye.  Just recently
I looked it back up and checked out the current ZigZag version and
assorted mission statements... quite some cool ideas there, although
I don't pretend to understand all the nuances yet.

Anyway, my personal avocation is Palm Pilot programming, so I'm
interested in seeing what subset of ZigZag ideas, and what interface
designs, would be well-applied to palmtop use.

In the list archive, I noted a short discussion about Pilot plans --
namely, the eventual port of perl-derived generic C code to a bunch
of platforms, including the Pilot.

In my opinion, it's probably a mistake to try for a straight port,
just because the system requirements are too different.  I mean,
the Pilot only has ~20K of dynamic RAM available for application
use... at a guess this is significantly smaller than perl prefers.

There are enough differences in desktop versus palmtop use, I think
-- speed, I/O availability, and user needs -- to justify a parallel
effort, rather than a sequential "one size fits all" approach.

- Edward Keyes
  eakeyes@xxxxxxx