argnob
08-24-2009, 11:36 PM
1) Following on from my comments in another thread that a Desktop Form project run on a mobile device has "&" before the "File" menu entry and two squares and a "t" in place of "Exit" in the "File, Exit" menu entry, it occurs to me that maybe it's odd to be running a Desktop Form project on a mobile device. Starting with a Mobile Form project, however, there are still problems. I don't get the & before File but the Exit entry is similarly corrupted.
2) Kornalius responded to my
"The Firewall changes I made didn't solve the problem of not being able to run the program on the mobile device even after a reboot ..."
with
"Have you tried turning off your firewall completely just to try out? Is your device correctly connected via ActiveSync first?"
I do think I wasn't getting a connection despite the firewall being completely off. However, I'll assume the issue was an incorrect Activesync version for WM5.0. My problems getting a connection between the PC and mobile device for the purposes of running PPL2 had actually gone away at that point after uninstalling, deleting the PPL2 folder and reinstalling. However, I wasn't doing myself any favours by, at the time, running Activesync 4.0 with a WM5.0 device. I've now upgraded to 4.5 and this appears to have done away with intermittent critical errors when synchronising and the unaltered code for certain new projects now runs on the mobile device (whereas before sometimes it would apparently transfer over but not run).
3) I raised the possibility of CleverUpdate checking to see if current versions of PPL2 files were already stored locally (in the folder where CleverUpdate would have put them on initial installation) rather than routinely download them again. Perhaps this suggested feature would not be used much once installations become more trouble-free, so that reinstallations will be uncommon. It does seem wasteful of bandwidth (and time) to re-download (though perhaps the user should be asked whether to use the local copy or re-download, in case the local copy is believed to have become corrupted). I did experience a particularly slow re-download recently. I have also experienced the oddity of PPL2 add-ons e.g. Swirl being installed from a local setup file but not recognised by CleverUpdate as installed (current version shown as N/A) - yet downloads to try to convince CleverUpdate that everything was present failed to install ("Could not execute Installer script!"). I suspect this might have been an issue with .pvi files not being in the right folder.
4) Is the code provided as a starting point for various categories of project all supposed to be runnable without error, even when nothing has yet been done to it to build on it? Some new projects e.g. Desktop Form, Mobile Game do run without me having done anything to them. The Database Project is one which doesn't run on my equipment without error - either on the PC or the mobile device - both terminate with an Access violation, with the debugger highlighting line 1003 "else if (sqlite3_get_table(..." - file orion.ppl - opcode sqlite_get_table.
Hopefully this will turn out to be down to the code not being sufficiently complete to be runnable without further work. However, I just mention it, in case it's indicative of a problem.
I'm still at the stage of playing around with PPL2 with no understanding of it - just trying to establish the extent to which it works properly. Hopefully the forthcoming manual will help me start to understand some aspects.
5) Ideally, I'd use Orion for a database project on the mobile device using a 50Mb Sqlite3 database. I fear that may be optimistic, given that my WM5.0 device currently has only 37.77Mb memory allocated to Program and 123.12Mb allocated to storage. I noticed a string compression add-on package you offer for PPL2 but am doubtful that that might help me. I wonder if you're in a position to comment on the feasibility of a PPL2 program working with a 50Mb database with those memory constraints? At the moment, I suspect I will have to split the database into smaller chunks and query one after the other if I need to search more than one chunk of it. Or else give up on using a Pocket PC and use a Windows XP netbook instead (which would be less convenient).
2) Kornalius responded to my
"The Firewall changes I made didn't solve the problem of not being able to run the program on the mobile device even after a reboot ..."
with
"Have you tried turning off your firewall completely just to try out? Is your device correctly connected via ActiveSync first?"
I do think I wasn't getting a connection despite the firewall being completely off. However, I'll assume the issue was an incorrect Activesync version for WM5.0. My problems getting a connection between the PC and mobile device for the purposes of running PPL2 had actually gone away at that point after uninstalling, deleting the PPL2 folder and reinstalling. However, I wasn't doing myself any favours by, at the time, running Activesync 4.0 with a WM5.0 device. I've now upgraded to 4.5 and this appears to have done away with intermittent critical errors when synchronising and the unaltered code for certain new projects now runs on the mobile device (whereas before sometimes it would apparently transfer over but not run).
3) I raised the possibility of CleverUpdate checking to see if current versions of PPL2 files were already stored locally (in the folder where CleverUpdate would have put them on initial installation) rather than routinely download them again. Perhaps this suggested feature would not be used much once installations become more trouble-free, so that reinstallations will be uncommon. It does seem wasteful of bandwidth (and time) to re-download (though perhaps the user should be asked whether to use the local copy or re-download, in case the local copy is believed to have become corrupted). I did experience a particularly slow re-download recently. I have also experienced the oddity of PPL2 add-ons e.g. Swirl being installed from a local setup file but not recognised by CleverUpdate as installed (current version shown as N/A) - yet downloads to try to convince CleverUpdate that everything was present failed to install ("Could not execute Installer script!"). I suspect this might have been an issue with .pvi files not being in the right folder.
4) Is the code provided as a starting point for various categories of project all supposed to be runnable without error, even when nothing has yet been done to it to build on it? Some new projects e.g. Desktop Form, Mobile Game do run without me having done anything to them. The Database Project is one which doesn't run on my equipment without error - either on the PC or the mobile device - both terminate with an Access violation, with the debugger highlighting line 1003 "else if (sqlite3_get_table(..." - file orion.ppl - opcode sqlite_get_table.
Hopefully this will turn out to be down to the code not being sufficiently complete to be runnable without further work. However, I just mention it, in case it's indicative of a problem.
I'm still at the stage of playing around with PPL2 with no understanding of it - just trying to establish the extent to which it works properly. Hopefully the forthcoming manual will help me start to understand some aspects.
5) Ideally, I'd use Orion for a database project on the mobile device using a 50Mb Sqlite3 database. I fear that may be optimistic, given that my WM5.0 device currently has only 37.77Mb memory allocated to Program and 123.12Mb allocated to storage. I noticed a string compression add-on package you offer for PPL2 but am doubtful that that might help me. I wonder if you're in a position to comment on the feasibility of a PPL2 program working with a 50Mb database with those memory constraints? At the moment, I suspect I will have to split the database into smaller chunks and query one after the other if I need to search more than one chunk of it. Or else give up on using a Pocket PC and use a Windows XP netbook instead (which would be less convenient).