It seems that many people still either don't know or have trouble with
the "convert to hex, look in this header file, convert to decimal, look
in that header file" procedure to turn a Palm OS error code back into
its corresponding human-readable symbolic error name.
This isn't too surprising, because that procedure sucks.
In the 4.0 SDK timeframe, some people were thinking about using some
of their copious spare time to make it easier to grep for these error
#defines in the headers. It didn't happen: our spare time wasn't very
copious, and indeed my feeling was that anything involving developers
grepping header files was the wrong approach anyway.
Ideally, you shouldn't have to search manually. You certainly shouldn't
have to search ErrorBase.h manually to find out which error class you
want to search for! You really want to just type in "537" and have the
computer do the search for you. That's what computers are for, after all.
There are now tools to look up the names of numeric error codes at
http://prc-tools.sourceforge.net/errorcodes.html
There's a web form where you can just type in "537", and a similar Palm
OS application which you can download. It would also be useful to have
a Palm OS function similar to C's strerror() which could be called from
an application to pretty print an error. In fact, such an API function
already exists -- SysErrString() -- and the tools at the URL above make
it useful for developers.
Enjoy,
John
--
For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see
http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
