Installation

1. Before You Install PawCalc

Before you install PawCalc on your Palm PDA, make sure that:

  • You have removed any old version of PawCalc and MathLib from your PDA.
  • Your PDA is running PalmOS 2.0 or later.
  • You have read and accepted the license agreement.
Please read the LICENSE for PawCalc. You are not required to accept this license. However, nothing else grants you permission to use or distribute PawCalc. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this license. Therefore, by using or distributing PawCalc, you indicate your acceptance of this license to do so, and all its terms and conditions.
PawCalc uses of the MathLib IEEE-754 double-precision mathematical library. MathLib is a free shared library that can be used by any OS 2.0+ Palm program that needs IEEE 754 double precision math functions. It's distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License, and is freely available with full source code and documentation at the MathLib Information web page. It's not a part of the PawCalc program, and you're not paying anything for its use; a copy is simply included with PawCalc for your convenience.

2. Installing the Program

PawCalc and MathLib are distributed as standard PRC files. Install "PawCalc.prc" and "MathLib.prc" like regular application programs using your favorite install tool, for example Palm Desktop for Windows.

If you don't know what to do, try double-clicking on the two files ("PawCalc.prc" and "MathLib.prc") on your PC and then perform a hotsync of your PDA.

3. Installing the Setup Files/Memos

When you start PawCalc, it reads a number of definition "files". Since there is no real file system on Palm handhelds, PawCalc uses memos from the built-in Memo Pad application instead. All memos must be in a category called 'PawCalc' (without the quotes, but with capital P and C). To create such a category, do the following:

  • Start the Memo Pad application on your PDA.
  • Tap the stylus in the upper right corner of the screen.
  • Select 'Edit Categories' in the list that pops up.
  • Select 'New' and enter 'PawCalc' (without the quotes, but with P and C in caps). Tap 'OK'.
  • Hotsync to copy the new category to your PC.
Hint: Refer to the screen shots on this page when you install PawCalc on your PDA.

In the 'PawCalc' category, PawCalc looks for memos with the names 'constants', 'functions', 'layouts', and 'units'.

PawCalc comes with a number of memos you can use:

Instead of "units4.txt", you can download the latest up-to-date exchange rates directly from the European Central Bank.
Copy the content of the above text files to separate memos in the 'PawCalc' category in Memo Pad. You may also copy some of the programs in "programs.txt" to separate memos.

You may want to do this using copy and paste on your PC and then hotsync with your PDA.

Due to a limitation in the PalmOS MemoPad application, no memo can be longer than 4 kilobytes. For this reason, we have separated the constants and units into multiple files. Luckily, pedit32 supports much larger memos. Using pedit32 you can combine all the constants into one file, and all the units into one file.

Please consult the manual for your PC software for information on how to edit memos on your PC.

The menu item 'Test memo setup' in the 'Edit' menu allows you to test your memo setup. PawCalc will report whether it found a 'PawCalc' memo category; and if it did, what memos are in that category.

4. Optional Settings

By selecting 'Memo settings' in the 'Edit' menu, you can change where PawCalc looks to find the initialization memos. You can chose the program (MemoPad or pedit32), the memo category, and the individual memos.

To use PawCalc as your default calculator:

  • Run the built-in 'Prefs' (Preferences) program on your PDA.
  • Change the calculator button to run PawCalc.

This also allows you to use PawCalc as a kind of pop-up calculator. Whenever you need to perform a calculation, just press the calculator button on your PDA silk-screen. When you are finished, select 'Quit' in the menu to return to your previous application. (Actually the previous application is started again, but since most applications save their current state on exit, this works fairly well.)