Epoc OPL and Programming Aids

Programming languages and writing your own programs.

Programs and tools on this page.

Books and Tutorials

OPL Tools

Other Languages

Other Programs

Books and Tutorials

OPL Manual

There is usually a somewhat dated OPL manual in PDF form on your PsiWin CD, but here is another SIBO version via Dave Stafford. Formerly http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/dubois/psion/oplman/and http://www.snake.net/people/paul/psion/oplman/ and Psion had one in PDF (about 700k, as oplman32.zip) on their web site.

OPL manual

Tim Richardson (author of Contact!), had the OPL32 manual in Psion 5 Word format, and in Psion Data format available at www.btinternet.com/~timrichardson/OPLManual.htm Psion also had it available at www.epocworld.com/downloads/opldocs.htm

OPL Tutorial

There is an excellent OPL tutorial series by Steve Litchfield at 3Lib. The first twenty or so attempt to cover both Psion 3 and 5, pointing out differences. The final installments describe RMREvent, a framework for your own full object oriented Psion 5 OPL program by Al Richey. stevelitchfield.com/progindex.htm

OPL Tutorial

There was the start of another very short OPL tutorial by Ian Hatton at ianhatton.tripod.com/opl.htm

Programming Psion Computers by Leigh Edwards

Comprehensive account of programming the earlier SIBO (Psion 3) computers, mainly in OPL. Has some material on Epoc (Psion 5) OPL. Includes a very handy CD with lots of SIBO utilities and background material. EMCC, 1999, 30 pounds. ISBN 0953066304 (out of print, but a PDF copy was available at the site). www.emccsoft.com

Professional Symbian Programming

Comprehensive treatment of Epoc 5 programming in C++, with CD. Very much the most comprehensive book available on ER5. Includes the SDKs and emulator on CD. Has some material on OPL and Java. Published by Wrox.

SDKs and emulators

Gareth Saunders has an excellent page explaining how to get the SDKs and the various Psion emulators from the official sites, and various unofficial sources. He also has considerable helpful material on setting up the emulators, installing applications, using them in conjunction with your Psion and so on. Formerly at http://www.gareth-and-jane-saunders.co.uk/ps_emul32.htm

OPL Tools

Various OPMs and tools. See my OPX page for a list of OPXs.

AFrame

Create complete Psion 5 applications. Freeware, August 1998 on Tucows.

EikonWizard

Create basic Eikon applications. Freeware on Tucows June 1999.

IQCalculator

RedFoot Software, Freeware. Popup calculator OPM, event handling, colour support, ER3 and ER5. www.pocketiq.com/oplzone/opm.htm

IQCalendar

RedFoot Software, Freeware. Calendar OPM, Mini Menu for other functions, event handling, colour support, ER3 and ER5. www.pocketiq.com/oplzone/opm.htm

IQDrawPad

RedFoot Software, Freeware. Scribble pad OPM module. Text and handwritten notes, unlimited pages, configurable size position and title, event handling, colour support, ER3 and ER5. www.pocketiq.com/oplzone/opm.htm

IQGrid

Damien Lewis. Shareware. OPM for listbox and menu selection (like Windows ListBox). Scrollbar support, tag or select rows, row styles, font zooming, Find facility, pen event handling. Works well with RMREvent. www.pocketiq.com/oplzone/opm.htm

IQText

RedFoot Software, Freeware. Clipboard, buffer and editor OPM module. Buffer tools to enhance dEDITMULTI. Plain text editor, event handling, colour support, ER3 and ER5. www.pocketiq.com/oplzone/opm.htm

MakePKG

Create Psion pkg files for installing applications using SIS, on Tucows Oct 1999 and Oct 2000

nScrollbar

Freeware OPM from Alex Skilton, 12k, also Revo compatible. Supports up to 10 fully Eikon scrollbars with visual feedback, nudge, resizing scrollbar slider. Versions for Revo, 5, and also for NetBook, 7. www.skilton.net/

Program Examples

Many Toolbar and Menu examples in OPL, lists Psion application UIDs, hints and tips for various OPL tasks, etc. Gary Ewer. www.prosoft.force9.co.uk/oplzone/index.html

PsinoWeb

Psinoweb processes a text or Psion Word file containing a literate program written in PSINOWEB and transforms it to text files. In general, literate programs combine source and program documentation in a single file. Literate programming tools then parse the file to produce either compilable source or readable documentation. The Web style of literate programming was created by D.E. Knuth during the development of his TeX typsetting software. Now you can write your OPL program in Epoc-Word, put some pictures in it, and format it nicely for program documentation. Afterward, you can run it through PSINOWEB to produce OPL text files. Those can be directly compiled by the OPL translator later on. PSINOWEB is free and comes with full source code. It's written in pure OPL, hence it directly runs on any Epoc platform. Even if you're not into literate programming, the source code of PSINOWEB might be interesting for those wanting to read information via OPL from Epoc-word files without resorting to any OPXs. pda.tucows.com/epoc/prog5.htm#psionweb

SafeOPL

SafeOPL 1.3 has now been released, and could formerly be downloaded from: http://www.richardsmedley.co.uk/ SafeOPL is a popular anti-RevTran protection program for programmers, to help protect your OPL programs against hackers.

Scrollbar OPL support

Dr Thomas Tensi provides an OPL (not OPX) source code for scrollbars. Supports linear scaling, arbitrary sizing. OPM to come. www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/6299/psion/scrollbar.html also an OPM source list viewer www.geocities.com/dr_t_tensi/psion/listviewer.html

VWin

Richard Panton provides a Virtual Windows manager for OPL programs, inplementing scrollbars, windows, buttons. Partially completed disassembler, and a description of the clipboard format. www.iota.demon.co.uk/psion/

Richard Wakelin

Old web site for some good programming tools. www.rwakelin.freeserve.co.uk/

Other Languages

ARM Assembler

Saves assembled code so it can be called from OPL using an OPX. Freeware GPL, with source, from Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen login.dknet.dk/~henrik/psion.html

GB Assembler Studio

Nicklas Larsson formerly at w1.318.telia.com/~u31802901/nicbit

Epocemx

(Try epocemx.sourceforge.net). This is mainly an ER5 C/C++ SDK destined to run on Unix platforms, but it seems that using his SDK, the author has ported the SDK itself, including GCC, to the 5mx. There are a few binary packages available, but unfortunately GCC seems not to be available as a binary package, so you would have to download, compile and install the SDK in order to cross-compile GCC and other required tools for the 5mx.

Hugs programming language

No details available.

Inform

Graham Nelson's port of Inform compiler.

Isis

Kevin Moor's IceForce provides Isis, a graphical front end for Psion's Makesis utility. Makesis is a command line utility used to build EPOC installation files. V1.05. Shareware US$25. 1MB.

Java

I don't know anything about it, but here are posts from the news groups. "For a good introduction to how to incorporate applets into a web page, have a look at http://www.anfyteam.com (using your desktop) I understood all this so it must be simple. You basically place the applet in your root directory and set parameters using a few lines of code on your page. Not all applets will be viewable using PsionJVM
"I tried a lot of different applet sources using PsionJVM with varying success.
Joe Kaufman reports:
I found JVM 1.1 from June 1999 on Revo CD, and a link at www.psion.com/downloads/jvm.html Works with little Java apps. Occupies 3MB of file space, another 3 MB of memory to run. So a small Java app takes about 7 MB.
Also try these sites
javaboutique.internet.com/ javapowered.com www.whatrain.com/javatest/ www.davies.lu/Java/ www.hasiland.com/javaonepoc/javac.html

Lua programming language

Pascal like scripting language ported by Reuben Thomas. Multithreaded, small standard libraries, simple front end, portable binary format, brief manual, and a good mailing list on eGroups. Ships as source and binary in SIS as a few DLLs for integration into C,and OPL via an OPX. Lua 5 features cleaner syntax, weak references, built-in coroutines, redesigned overloading, faster execution, and object-oriented IO. Its license has been changed from a proprietary open-source license to the standard MIT license. See www.lua.org/ for more details. Also released via www.freepoc.org/viewapp.php?id=32

Perl programming language interpreter

Look for links from www.perl.org, or www.linuxstart.com/~oflebbe/ or www.science-computing.de/o.flebbe/perl/

Prolog

B-Prolog: www.probp.com/old/download/index.htm

Python programming language interpreter

Look for links from www.python.org, or an archive of dales.rmple.co.uk/Duncan/PyPsion.htm

Rebol programming and scripting language

Rebol is an internet and data scripting language. Simple like Forth, but easier to use. Weakly typed, lots of automatic data types. Handles internet access including email, web, news, ftp. Small footprint. Available for about 40 platforms, but Epoc is still alpha. Try www.rebol.com

Simple C++ Builder

Nicklas Larsson's PC based integrated development environment for C++, and the DJGPP programming system. Formerly w1.318.telia.com/u31802901/nicbit

Other Programs

Ascii Viewer

Jim Willsher's simple freeware ASCII table generator. Displays to character 255, lists decimal and hex value, and shows the character.

Perl info dumper.

Most of the header information is dumped. By default it dumps a list of the imported DLLs and the number of functions imported from each. The program Dmp32.pl and a EPOC executable header format and hex offsets, is available from www.geocities.com/jfldars/

PsiApp

Eikon application generator running under Windows NT. Freeware July 1999 on Tucows.