Hi
> Why is it that the built in applications have the alarm dialog come
> up after the alarm sound finishes? It would make sense to me if the dialog
> would pop up first and then have the sound start. This is especially true
if
> you have a very long playing alarm.
>
> I am thinking of changing my applications so that the dialog pops up
> first and then have the alarm sound. Is this a bad idea?
>
> Also, would Palm consider having the built in applications have the
> dialog come up first?
This is a difficult question. The PalmOS UI/programming guidelines has some
information on it. Read the sections on alarm managment.
If you already did alarm programming you should now that there are two
special launchcodes for alarms:
sysAppLaunchCmdAlarmTriggered
sysAppLaunchCmdDisplayAlarm
The first is "exact" on the selected alarm time, but should not block the
device from other actions. So you should do nothing there that requires user
interaction (like a alarm display). On the other hand
sysAppLaunchCmdDisplayAlarm might be triggered much later, so if you only do
your actions there, the user might miss the alarm.
The build in applications solve this problem with playing a (short) sound on
the triggered event (and set the next alarms there), and displaying the
alarm (and blocking the UI) on the sysAppLaunchCmdDisplayAlarm.
With very short sounds this is a good solution, if you are using longer ones
it gets anoying if there is no screen to the alarm.
In BigClock i have solved it so:
On sysAppLaunchCmdAlarmTriggered i play my custom sound and display the
alarm form. After finishing the sound the form is automatically closed (or
before that if the user taps the screen).
On sysAppLaunchCmdDisplayAlarm the alarm form is displayed again, this time
without a sound and waits for user interaction.
This creates a short "flashing" if the two launchcodes are directly behind
each other (which is normally the case), but i think that is accaptable.
Hope this helps
Jens
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Jens Rupp
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.gacel.de
www.pocketreport.com
Ircnet: Gacel
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"Ein Buch das man liebt, darf man nicht leihen, sondern mu� es besitzen".
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