DB: Open Source Database Program for PalmOS
-------------------------------------------

*** WARNING: While every effort has been made to find and remove bugs
*** from DB, it is still under active development. You use it at your
*** own risk. Since DB is still under active development, there may be
*** bugs which will cause your PDA to crash to the point where a hard
*** reset is required. (Hard resets cause loss of all data on the
*** PDA.)

DB is a flat-file database application for PalmOS-compatible PDAs from
companies such as Palm and Handspring. Using DB, you can create
databases to store any sort of information that can be stored as
records in a database. Several field types are provided for the
information in each record.

DB is Free Software provided under the terms of the GNU General Public
License (GPL). Read the file "COPYING" that is included in this
distribution to learn more about the GNU GPL.

Since DB is under constant development, read the file "NEWS" included
in this distribution to learn what major changes have taken place
since the previous releases. A more in-depth list of changes is
available in the file "ChangeLog" included in this distribution.


Installation
------------

Since DB is available in multiple languages, you must first choose
which file will actually be installed to your PDA. Choose the
particular file based on your desired use:

  basic features of DB  db-light.prc
  basic features + color/greyscale, icon buttons, plugins, linkmaster,
        sort editor, Sony and Handera support
                        db.prc

For the international support, you could choose to load an overlay
file based on your desired language:
  overlay/overlay-fr.prc        French
  overlay/overlay-pt.prc        Portuguese
  overlay/overlay-de.prc        German
  overlay/overlay-sw.prc        Swedish
  overlay/overlay-jp.prc        Japanese
  etc.

If you use a Handera device, you can load the Handera icons file (which
contains larger icons):
  overlay/handera.prc

If you wish, you can load a help file based on your desired language:
  overlay/help-en.prc
  overlay/help-fr.prc
  etc.

You can download different plugins from the Pilot-DB sf.net download page:
<URL: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=621 >
  db-DB3vfs.prc         read and write support for expansion card.
  db-DB2.prc            read and write support for older versions of DB.
  db-JFile3.prc         JFile database support.
  db-MobileDB.prc       MobileDB database support.
  db-colorselect.prc    Set DB's records list colors or grays.
  db-informations.prc   Display database size, number of records etc.
                                about a particular DB database.
  db-report.prc         Give information about DB database column of data
                                (statistics, etc.)
  db-memoexport.prc     Export a specific DB database to a Palm Memo
                                (coming soon)

  ...

The next step is to actually install these file on the PDA. Users of
Microsoft Windows should use the Install Tool that comes with the
Palm Desktop software to install one or more of the above PRC files.
Afterwards, initiate a HotSync to complete the installation.

Macintosh users may encounter some troubles, the current PalmDesktop 2.63
software can not upload Pilot-DB databases (due to a PalmDesktop bug).
Your choices are to use PalmDesktop 4.0.1 for MacOS X from Palm Inc.,
use another upload tool, or use the MobileDB databases format.

UNIX users should use a program like "pilot-xfer" which is a part of
the pilot-link package to install one or more of the above PRC files. (Other
packages like KPilot, JPilot, and gnome-pilot will work just as well.)


Resources (Web and E-Mail)
--------------------------

You can find the latest version of DB at the following Web site:

  http://pilot-db.sourceforge.net/

You can also join a mailing list for general discussion of DB. To
learn how to subscribe to this mailing list, just visit the following
Web site:

English:
  http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/pilot-db-list
French:
  http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/pilot-db-list-fr
German:
  http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/pilot-db-list-de

You can post to this list by sending email to the following address:

English:
  pilot-db-list@lists.sourceforge.net
French:
  pilot-db-list-fr@lists.sourceforge.net
German:
  pilot-db-list-de@lists.sourceforge.net

Development of DB has been hosted at SourceForge for some
time. SourceForge is a hosting site for many Open Source software
projects provided by VA Linux Systems, Inc. DB's particular project
page on SourceForge is at the following Web site:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/pilot-db/


Building Databases on your Desktop System (Windows and UNIX)
------------------------------------------------------------

The DB package itself does not contain the conversion utilities that will take
text files and produce DB-format databases. They are available in a
separate package called "palm-db-tools". Get version 1.0.0 or higher
which supports this version of DB. You can get the latest copy of the
palm-db-tools from:

  http://pilot-db.sourceforge.net/
