[PRL] perl running on your cellular phone?

[Greg Pettyjohn]

This is the sort of technology that BSQUARE deals with. In particular, 
any platform that supports WindowsCE can support any number of 
applications that would traditionally run on the desktop. Just about 
every Microsoft Windows application has a scaled down version that will 
run on CE. It then becomes a simple matter of porting CE to the 
particular platform.  Of course, the form factor and physical 
limitations of the hardware will limit what applications can be used on 
the device.

Nokia's innovation, described below, is to make the phone scriptable. 
I.e. Perl becomes the language with which to program the device. 
Microsoft, in their first several versions of CE (to date as far as I 
know), has apparently completely missed this. Instead, application 
development on CE is modeled after development for the windows desktop. 
The windows CE effort is dominated by C/C++ compiler writers centered 
around an *extremely* refactored NT 3.51. I.e. it's a bunch of crusty 
old C/C++ programmers.  The notion of a Domain Specific Language is 
completely lost on these people. To them, it is a simple matter of 
making a --- let's call it a *domain specific interface* for a 
traditional C/C++ application.

There are innumerable examples of let's call them, "domain-specific 
devices": PDA's, Cell Phones, so called "convergence devices", which 
are PDA's combined with phones, smart cards, automotive PC's 
(telematics), information appliances, smart VCRs, stereos, web-enabled 
kiosks, web-enabled gas-pumps, game consoles, electronic voting 
machines...

The opportunity for PL applications here is obvious, domain specific 
languages for domain specific devices. There's another opportunity: 
domain specific operating systems. The piece of research that comes to 
mind is the OSKit project at Utah.

By comparison:
OSKit is a chopped up FreeBSD that can be re-assembled to make a 
special purpose OS.

WinCE (Windows CE) is a chopped up NT 3.51 (but significantly changed 
so that it is no longer fair to call it NT), that can be re-assembled 
to make a special purpose OS.

There are, of course, other players in this space: Palm OS, NT 
embedded, embedded linux. I recall that at least one cell phone 
company, (Nokia, I believe) has their own cell-phone specific OS. (I 
met a developer who worked on this a few years ago at a christmas 
party, he was in Seattle visiting my friend David Bennett who runs the 
Disc-World mud. Apparently, he likes muds. He had a really cool 
prototype phone/PDA combination.)

On Saturday, January 17, 2004, at 11:09 AM, Dale Vaillancourt wrote:

> I thought people might be interested to hear about this; the full 
> article text is pasted below for those who don't feel like following 
> the link:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/64/34943.html
>
> -Dale
> ----
>
> Nokia to release Perl for smartphones
> By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
> Posted: 16/01/2004 at 22:41 GMT
> Get The Reg wherever you are, with The Mobile Register
>
>
> Nokia will make an internal version of the Perl scripting language for 
> Series 60 smartphones available to its developer community, Lee 
> Epting, Nokia's VP of Developer Relations, tells us. Nokia 
> acknowledges a demand for more developer options as Nokia's 
> Symbian-based Series 60 platform reaches mass market volumes.
>
> Right now developers have two choices if they want to be sure an 
> application will run on a Series 60 device. There's the native Symbian 
> C++ APIs, which offer lots of power but a steep learning curve, and 
> Java. But even Java is overkill for simple forms-based applications 
> that are typically knocked up by business managers, rather than 
> developers; and Java doesn't always offer access to native resources 
> such as vibrating alert or SMS.
>
> There's no timescale set, but Epting hinted that it shouldn't take too 
> long. She also had positive things to say about the venerable 
> BASIC-like language OPL, which is the cheapest and easiest way for 
> novices to write Series 60 applications. Symbian open sourced the 
> language - which can trace its lineage back to the Psion Organizer in 
> the mid-1980s - a year ago. Compared with AppForge's Booster, which 
> allows Visual Basic 6.0 applications to run on SymbianOS (and Palm and 
> Pocket PC), OPL doesn't require an expensive developer add-in and the 
> runtime footprint is much smaller, which handset manufacturers value. 
> It's potentially a killer app, and the project, and developer Ewan 
> Spence who freed it from Psion's cold dead grip, could certainly use 
> some TLC.
>
> "It requires some funding to complete it," Epting told us, "and it 
> needs some buy-in from the rest of Nokia." Ensuring that OPL and Perl 
> developers get the same level of support is a consideration, she 
> added. Although the community has done a fine job with the Wiki.
>
> Coins in, software out
>
> Lee Epting joined Nokia a year ago from Handpring and she's a breath 
> of fresh air for a company that has had to learn about nurturing an 
> open development platform for the first time. (She was Handspring's 
> 15th employee, she tells us, and joined from Palm). Forum Nokia, the 
> developer community, is part of her group and in the recent 
> reorganization was given a horizontal role that feeds into the four 
> vertical business groups at Nokia: mobile phones, multimedia, networks 
> and enterprise.
>
> Amongst her priorities, she told us, was documenting APIs - a constant 
> demand from developers - optimizing porting, and better integration. 
> She also pointed to models such as superdistribution, an umbrella 
> buzzword that covers a few different things: smart downloading and 
> billing, as well as DRM forward lock. (That's when you own the full 
> copy of an application or game, but can beam a demo or trial version 
> to a friend).
>
> Nokia also wants to get the word out that development makes money. 
> Nokia has an intriguing distribution vehicle in Asia in the form of 
> kiosks: distribution points similar to theWide Ray familiar to many 
> tech conference attendees - and an idea which we've noted before, has 
> a lot of potential. Nokia's kiosks allow phone users to drop in coins, 
> and receive software by Bluetooth or Infra Red. Epting cited the 
> Puzzle Bubble game, which has sold 22,000 out of 240,000 from kiosks. 
> Even in its early stages, Series 60 has spawned an impressive amount 
> of software. Nokia says six figure sakes are not uncommon, although 
> developers earn more for premium Series 60 smartphone applications 
> than for cheaper Java games. For example, MobiMate sells 15,000 of its 
> WorldMate a week - at $25 a pop - across three OSes including UIQ and 
> Series 60.
>
> That's a tidy sum. ®
>
> _______________________________________________
> PRL mailing list
> PRL at lists.ccs.neu.edu
> https://lists.ccs.neu.edu/bin/listinfo/prl