Palmcricket

[pgous]

HI all, any information re palmcricket software available for Pocketpc based PDA, e.g. Garmin IQue M5?

Will the palm version work on pocketpc?

Would love to hear from you all!
Regards Petrus

[Dev Oberholzer]

Hi Petrus

Welcome to the Palmcricket forum.

We've had several enquiries related to the use of Palmcricket on operating systems other than PalmOs. Jon Bitmead, a Palmcricket member in the UK reports almost 100% perfect operation on his Pocket PC, using the StyleTap emulator. Problems were minor, with easy workarounds. The three reported problems were:

• Partnership button on the batting summary (resolved with a later version of StyleTap).
  
• Dismissal of the non-striker, with fielder involved. The fielder pop-up screen stubbornly refuses to disappear after fielder selection, making the selection of the non-striker impossible. Workaround: Select non-striker as the dismissed player first, then the fielder. Since the "Done" button is still visible below the fielder pop-up, a graceful exit from the dismissal window with all fields correctly set is then possible.
  
• Hotsync file names: Jon notes that these can be found under /styletap/db/<name>#<long string>.

Brian Robinson, another long-standing Palmcricket member in Australia, recently (September 2005) switched from Palm to Pocket PC. I haven't heard from Brian as yet, so presumably this migration was successful?

Please post any other anomalies or strange behaviour under this topic, and I will try and trouble-shoot them remotely as best I can, until I can get a Pocket Pc handheld or emulator to address such problems first-hand.

Dev

[Dev Oberholzer]

To conclude this topic:

I've been in touch with the StyleTap authors. After considerable research, we've been able to resolve the following incompatibilities between Palmcricket and StyleTap:

1. The fielder pop-up list box on the dismissal screen.
   
2. The partnership display on the Batting Summary screen.
   

These fixes have been effected in Palmcricket revision 1.29f and work well with your existing StyleTap platform. If you need a copy, let me know. It only affects PocketPC users, 4 of whom I'm aware of and who already have a copy.

StyleTap advised the following with regard to archived score-sheets:

"The file names of the databases are not instantly recognizable, but they are in the \Program Files\StyleTap\db folder, with the extension .stp (instead of .prc or .pdb). The filename for the databases starts with the original database name, followed by the # character and a string of gibberish that improves the StyleTap database manager's performance. In any event, the .stp files can be renamed back to .prc or .pdb databases without losing any information at all."

Note that Microsoft's ActiveSync works with files in a different manner to Palm's HotSync. The "\Program Files" folder referred to above is actually found on the Mobile Device under My Computer, when connected, and NOT, as one might expect from a Palm perspective, on the C:\ drive.

What this means for Palmcricket users is that one should use Windows Explorer to:

1. Copy the file from the Mobile Device's \Program Files\StyleTap\db folder to a safe folder (e.g. C:\Palmcricket)
   
2. Rename the file by retaining the original first part, deleting the rest of the gibberish after the # character, deleting the extension .stp and adding the extension .pdb

One should then be able to open, view and print these score-sheets using P-Viewer, by navigating to the safe folder.

The end result is that, as far as we know, Palmcricket will now work 100% on the StyleTap platform running PocketPC devices. Certainly good news for all the cricket-scoring MicroSoft fans out there. However, before you rush out to buy that new $1000 Garmin to score your next match, first make sure that the device meets the Palmricket scoring criteria of visibility and battery life (since cost is no longer an issue if you can afford these top of the range models).