Alternatives to Graffiti on the Palm TX

Posted on October 07, 2007 in Palm. - No comments

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I recently posted an article about Graffiti Problems on the Palm TX on the Palm TX which discussed replacing Graffiti 2 with the original Graffiti libraries. If, for whatever reason you’re not happy using the modified original libraries then is there an alternative?

TealScript

Well at first sight TealScript by TealPoint seems to hit the mark.

TealScript has a whole bunch of interesting features and comprehensive setting/configuration options. Features include improved accuracy, trainable strokes, custom strokes, multi-stroke characters (personally the bane of my Graffiti 2 experience!), exclusive “push-to-write” mode, write-anywhere mode, “EZ” capitalisation option, stroke macros, switch write-anywhere by application, auto-shift disable option, entry statistics and importantly for us Palm TX users – PalmOS 5 compatibility.

It all sounds good so far doesn’t it. In fact it sounds almost mouthwatering and I would definitely recommend checking out the TealScript web page for more info.

Problems with Blazer

There is of course one question that needs an answer. Does it avoid the problems with the Blazer web browser that you got when trying to use the old libraries?

Unfortunately not. Using the old libraries Blazer would crash as soon as you got to the end of a text field. I’d hoped that using Tealscript would give me the benefits of the original version of Graffiti but without the crashes. This doesn’t look like it’s the case.

When I clicked on a text field in a web page form the TX reset. This was disappointing to say the least. After all, what with the number of forums and Web 2.0 sites out there encouraging you to get involved it was a real shame this didn’t work. I sent an email to the support guys at TealPoint and I got a very prompt response. It wasn’t good news.

They suggested that the problem could be related to a known bug in the PACE emulation layer in the PalmOS.

They explained that Blazer and HotSync are the only two applications under PalmOS that are compiled directly or the ARM processor using specially hacked development tools. All other applications are compiled to a 68k processor and run under emulation.

Apparently the PACE emulation layer in PalmOS is “kind of buggy” and isn’t fully initialised when either of these two applications are running. As a result background applications don’t always run properly because the PACE emulator isn’t properly initialised. Maybe this could be the cause of the crash.

The other suggestion was that another background application may be crashing when the overhead of TealScript and Blazer is causing memory to be rearranged. I didn’t think this would be the problem as my TX is pretty clean and there shouldn’t be anything running in the background, but who knows.

A way round this problem was suggested. Using TealScript’s “Write Anywhere Apps” settings you can disable Tealscript while a particular application is running – in our case Blazer. Hardly an ideal solution, but perhaps the only workaround if the crash is due to a problem in the PalmOS. While it would mean that Blazer keeps running, you wouldn’t get the benefits of Tealscript while using the web – you’d have to revert to using Graffiti 2. Perhaps this is marginally better than using the original libraries.

Overall TealScript is pretty cool and if you’re prepared to invest some time – you can get a much improved graffiti experience. I’d say it would be definitely worth checking out the fully functional trial!

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