Palm Tcl is a high level programming language and development environment for creating applications for handheld devices running the Palm OS operating system. It allows programmers to write applications without requiring them to know the intricacies of the Palm OS runtime environment. Programs written in Palm Tcl are generally an order of magnitude shorter than their C equivalents and can be written in a fraction of the time.
Palm OS is the operating system running on the most popular series of personal digital assistant (PDA) handheld computers – the Palm Organizer series from 3Com and Palm Computing, the Visor from Handspring and Clie from Sony. Because it has been custom designed for a PDA environment, Palm OS has some features as well as hardware resource limitations that impose an additional burden on programmers who wish to write applications for this platform. Palm Tcl’s goal is to simplify and accelerate the process of application development for Palm OS. In its current version (0.3), Palm Tcl supports most form based user interface elements in Palm OS V3.0, as well as support for databases and several system related functions. Applications written in Palm Tcl require at least V3.0 of Palm OS to run.
