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We believe that most PalmOS users find LinkStart interface intuitive and
easy to use. Scroll below for an illustrated walkthrough.
Frequently asked LinkStart Questions:
Why LinkStart disappeared from Palmgear.com website?
LinkStart was removed from PalmGear website because of the way PalmGear treats
developers. Unfortunately, PG is focused on generating revenues and they prefer
to list commercial applications rather than freeware. Their claim is that since
LinkStart Pro is not free, they cannot list LinkStart on their website. In fact,
LinkStart Pro is a separate product that is complied from its own source tree and
shares less than 60% of LinkStart code. Dear PalmGear! We would suggest you to spend
your resources improving customer support rather than wasting them on removing freeware titles
from you database. We had
terrible experience working with your accounting department where checks
are sent out whenever they want it and have to bounce three times in the mail
before reaching developers. Nothing changed after we tried to resolve it with
at least five of your customer support representatives.We all know that you have acquired several software
resellers that were a pleasure to deal with and we regret that you were unable to also acquire
their ways of doing business that were based on keeping customers happy, not on
reaching their pockets.
Until PalmGear realizes that customer support is a key business factor rather than overhead, we will not list our products with
PalmGear. Hopefully, other developers will join us.
Why do I get the nag screen and how do I get rid of it?
Occasionaly you should get a nag screen advertising LinkStart Pro.
Unfortunately, on some devices, the nag screen can appear quite often.
This is a known bug and it will be adressed in the next release.
As a workaround, you can get rid of the nag screen by removing LinkStart preferences
using any database editor. LinkStart saves preferences in
"Saved Preferences" database, and the preference id is 'LSlS'.
We are considering removing the nag screen feature completely in future LinkStart releases.
What is the difference between LinkStart and LinkStart Pro?
The primary difference between LinkStart Pro and LinkStart is the link editor.
You can tailor link files any way you want, for example, it is possible to manage
a number of large data files for a single application (like dictionary, database,
or encyclopedia) and specify which files need to reside in RAM, which need to be
located on card, which should be read-only and which need to be saved back to the card.
It is also possible to delete or restore specific databases
when links start or quit. There options are virtually unlimited. LinkStart Pro,
with correct settings, starts and quits applications much faster than LinkStart Lite.
Also, LinkStart Pro has more stable code comparing to LinkStart Lite. Last, but
not least, LinkStart Pro users are the people who make LinkStart Lite free.
An illustrated walkthrough on how to use LinkStart Pro to save over
5Mb of RAM space by moving DocumentsToGo(*) to the card:
Here is how DocumentsToGo originally looks like. Note
that LinkStart only shows that it takes 497kB of memory because
LinkStart does not know that D2G uses multiple creator IDs. Also note that
a system has 40.3Mb of free memory (shown in the upper-right corner).
If you click "Info" button, you'll see the list of databases.
Let's start...
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Click "Move" to move application to the card. If this were Linkstart Lite guide,
it would be the end of it. From this point forward we talk about LinkStart Pro.
So, switch to "RAM Links" view, select "Documents" and click "Edit" button. We are going to add other D2G
databases to the link. But before we do that...
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The D2G clipboard database is probably not something that we want to restore
and save every time. So, to save loading time, we'll set that when the application
starts, it won't copy the clipboard database. Switch "On Start" option
to "Do Nothing". Similarly, we don't want this database to be saved to card when D2G
quits. We also don't want it to stay in system memory and waste RAM space. So,
select "Delete From RAM" for "On Quit" option. Let's proceed...
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Now, let's add other databases. Click "Add" button, select database, and click
"Add" again to add it to the list. We'll have to repeat it for all D2G
databases that we want to move to the card:
DGraphConverter
DSLib.prc
DSlideLib
DTTFonts
DXTGAttachmentPlugin
DXTGMailPlugin
DocsToGo
DvzSSFonts
English_Am.lex
GraphicsLibrary
LexLib
PP_P2P
PicsToGo
Presenter
SS_P2P
SheetToGo
SlideshowToGo
SmartChart
WP_P2P
WTGFontPackage
WordToGo
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Now, let's customize even more to improve load time. First of all,
we'll set "On Quit" option to "Delete from RAM" for all databases that we don't
expect to be modified (applications and libraries). "Delete From RAM" is preferred
over "Move if Modified" because it will skip the step that is required to check if
the database was modified. Since we know which application databases will not be
modified, this saves time when LinkStart needs to decide whether to export database
back to the card.
We also know that we don't use SlideShowToGo and Presenter
applications (well, at least for this demo), so it is a waste of time to copy them
every time. To instruct LinkStart not to load those databases, we'll set "On Start"
option to "Do Nothing". That is it. When you click OK, LinkStart will copy all
required databases to the card. Let's see what out results are...
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Swith view to the card where we D2G has just been copied. It shows that
3.9Mb of data was copied to the card. (In fact, this number is much higher,
since for the purpose of this demo we used a stripped-down D2G version that
came with T5). Now switch to "RAM Links" view. Note that Documents takes
only 14kB of RAM space. Also note that a free RAM space shown in the
upper-right corner is 45.7Mb, it is increased by over 5Mb comparing to what it
was before we started. We've just recovered 5.4Mb of RAM! The difference between
this number and the total size of databases on the card (3.9Mb) is caused by
the way databases stored in RAM and on filesystem plus the overhead required
to account databases in RAM.
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(*)DocumentsToGo is a mobile office suite by DataViz
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