Updated Garnet VM for Nokia ITs Released

[Nate the great]

I just got this email:

Dear GVM User,

Since our launch in November 2007, the ACCESS Garnet VM Beta for Nokia Nseries can boast over 15,000 downloads! Like you, thousands of Garnet VM users around the world still enjoy using Garnet OS applications for their simplicity and their diversity. During the last six months, we have received a tremendous response about the Garnet VM launch. You have shared valuable comments about the features you want to see in the next version of Garnet VM and the improvements you want in the applications. We listened to our GVM community and thanks to your help made some changes. We have added the most requested feature - support for full screen rendering. We have also identified and made other improvements to Garnet VM including providing full support for MathLib that will enable many additional applications to run on Garnet VM.

Today, we are pleased to announce that the new ACCESS GVM Beta 2 for Nokia Nseries is available:

Download the ACCESS GVM Beta 2 from our web site: http://www.access-company.com/products/gvm/

Regards,

The Garnet VM Team

Yippee!

[Nate the great]

My N800 is still charging so I have to wait. Could someone try the new VM, and tell us what you think? In particular, can someone try Mobipocket and eReader for Palm? This might be a way to add DRMed ebook support to Nokia's Nseries.

The previous VM could do it, yes. But it didn't work very well.

[TadW]

Interesting. Not working well, as in, it crashed a lot, or it was just sluggish as a drunken sloth?

[Nate the great]

It never crashed for me. No, the problem with the previous VM was that it was a one to one mapping of pixels. This limited it to 320 by 480 out of 800 by 480. It ignored most of the available screen real estate.

This version has a full screen mode, which makes it much more useful.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Yippee!

What is Garnet VM?

BOb

[Nate the great]

Garnet is the formal name for PalmOS 5. It was developed by Access for Palm way back when. Last fall Access released a Virtual Machine (VM) that let us run PalmOS software on Nokia's Internet Tablets (770, N800, N810). Today they just announced an updated version.

Access is developing the next generation PalmOS on its own, to run on its devices. IT is going to be backward compatible (to some degree). They released this VM so Palm fanatics could keep using their favorite software until Access is ready to release the next operating system.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Garnet is the formal name for PalmOS 5. It was developed by Access for Palm way back when.

Cool, thanks for the info.

BOb

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

In particular, can someone try Mobipocket and eReader for Palm?

I enclose screenshots of MobiPocket from the original 320 by 480 setup and the new full screen 480 by 720 mode (1.5x scaled?). I don't have an eReader ebooks to try. The fonts are not great, but perhaps there is a way to add new fonts.

[Nate the great]

It's been a while since I used the Palm version of Mobipocket Reader, but I think it has several fonts built in.

[Nate the great]

I have tried and failed to install on my N800; it says I am missing a dependency. It's late here so I'll try again tomorrow.

If anyone else has this trouble, start a new thread and let's work together to solve it.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

It's been a while since I used the Palm version of Mobipocket Reader, but I think it has several fonts built in.

Palm uses bitmapped fonts (see wiki if you don't understand this). The magnifier mode is using pixel replication to increase the page size so don't expect clean pages in full screen mode. Certainly some fonts may scale better than others but it is not going to be like TTF.

Dale

[Kaysclie]

I have a n800 with Garnet vm, which works great, I may add!
Fortunately Ereader works wonderfully with the Garnet vm, but I have a problem with mobipocket. I can download and read free mobi books, but not the drm ones that I have paid for. Has anyone had success with mobipocket protected books on a n800 or b810?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Garnet is the formal name for PalmOS 5. It was developed by Access for Palm way back when. Last fall Access released a Virtual Machine (VM) that let us run PalmOS software on Nokia's Internet Tablets (770, N800, N810). Today they just announced an updated version.

Access is developing the next generation PalmOS on its own, to run on its devices. IT is going to be backward compatible (to some degree). They released this VM so Palm fanatics could keep using their favorite software until Access is ready to release the next operating system.

Actually, Palm is developing the next generation PalmOS.

Palm's former OS division was spun off some years back as an independent company called Palmsource, in part to try to boost Palm's lagging stock price, and in part to placate major Palm OS licensee Sony, who used Palm OS in their Clie line, and were uncomfortable about having OS development in the hands of a competitor in the PDA market.

Sony subsequently decided to exit the PDA market. (The Clie line was profitable, but not profitable enough.) The drop in licensing revenues caused by Sony's withdrawal left Palmsource in a poor position, and they put themselves on the market. Palm tried to buy them back, but got outbid by Japan's ACCESS corp., who wanted an OS to offer to the burgeoning Asian smartphone market.

Palmsource had been developing Cobalt, the intended PalmOS 6, which would feature a multitasking, multithreading kernel. Cobalt was reportedly completed, but nobody, including Palm, licensed it. ACCESS announced plans to implement an embedded Linux kernel with Cobalt as the UI layer. Palm apps would talk to Cobalt, Cobalt would talk to Linux, and Linux would talk to the hardware.

What ACCESS wound up actually doing was implementing Palm OS Garnet (OS 5) as a virtual machine running on an embedded Linux kernel, to provide a measure of compatibility with existing Palm OS applications. (The Garnet VM executes as a Linux program.) They are shopping the ALP (Access Linux Platform) to vendors interested in implementing it in smartphones. It will be interesting to see how they compete with Google's Android OS and the OpenMoku offering. They offer a beta of the VM as a stand alone product, available as a free download for the Nokia Tablet line. According to an ACCESS rep, it's largely OS version independent, and one of their engineers was able to bring it up on a different Linux kernel than ACCESS uses internally in about a day (Mostly a matter of changing some DEFINES in header files and doing a new build.)

Palm, meanwhile, has been working with Wind River systems on their own next gen OS. They have passed on ALP, and have no plans to use the ACCESS offering in Palm devices. Wind River has a long history in embedded development, starting with their own VXWorks OS and later offering Linux based OS products. It appears that Wind River is providing an optimized Linux kernel for ARM devices, while Palm builds the stuff that will run on top of it. Palm also paid ACCESS for a perpetual source code license to Garnet to insure availability and right to modify the code.

Palm OS II (or whatever they wind up calling it) isn't scheduled to hit the streets before 2009, so no one knows right now what the product will look like or do. I assume a fair bit of compatibility with existing Palm apps, but I don't know whether they are using a VM approach of have something more closely integrated. When Palm canceled their Foleo product, one reason given was the desire to complete their new OS, which would serve as a base for any future product. This leads to speculation about whether Palm might offer a new version of the Foleo based on Palm OS II, and whether Palm has plans down the road for any devices that aren't smartphones.

We'll see.
_____
Dennis

[pathfinderca]

But isn't n800 screen too small to do serious reading?

[pathfinderca]

Does this program work with pdf files? Thanks