Today plugins

[banannq]

Recently i was thinking about creating an app which would show me my remaining calltime with one of polish prepaid services. I imagine it would work like that:

1. receiving a specific text message with my account balance from my operator the app would capture it and store the value
2. after each call being made operator sends sms with call cost. this should be deducted from previously stored value. etc etc.
3. value should be displayed somewhere, like on today plugin...

seems simple, but theres a catch;] i can't code for WM5. i just got myself delphi 2006 today and i see it has limited CF support so i can create applicatons... but am i able to create Dlls? also i don't have clue about creating dll's at all, especialy those for WM5. is it even possible with .net? is there any chance for me?
i know, i know, i shoud start to use c++ long time ago, but i'm affraid it' might be a bit to late for me;]

ps. is there anything like WM5 sdk, any guide kit for programmers, specs of any kind? where to look for it? thanks for any help. please note, i'd like to become one of you guys, i could even be of some value;]

[Rudegar]

heard somewhere that today plugins
cant be written in .net

here is a link to the subject of today plugins
http://forum.xda-developers.com:80/showthread.php?t=234162&highlight=codeguru

[banannq]

thanks, gonna try it in a minute.
(today unbelievable happened - my wizards battery got empty:o )

[banannq]

interesting. i'll consider switching to c++. as far as i understand it's not normal C, its some kind of mobile oriented c? but no connection with .net? how does it work?

[levenum]

Ok.
C++ is an extension of C to include object oriented programming. The language is not specific for mobile devices, so any book / article on the subject will do for starters.

I taught my self C++ after learning Pascal (Delphi is for Pascal right?) in school and it was quite easy because the languages have similar structure.

Your second stop is to learn WIN32 programming. I don't know how Delphi deals with APIs and function exports (that's what you need for DLLs).

Basically WM programming is very similar to desktop windows programming, except for a few miner difference (like all APIs using only Unicode).

You can download a free development tool called eVC 4 from MS. It looks exactly like Visual Studio 6 if you have any experience with that.

Unfortunately system DLLs like plugins can not be written using .NET but if you search MSDN (I really don't remember the link), there is an article on how to use a basic C++ DLL for the plugin and delegate all the real functionality to a .NET DLL.

Good luck.

[banannq]

yes, delphi is much like pascal
i know it's not that hard if you mean the structure. i just don't know how to start. in fact i got myself evc yesterday, after what you say i'll take good lok at it as soon as i prepare some room on my HD.
Delphi does well with windows api - as far as i can tell, i played with theese a bit so it shouldn't be hard to catch up when starting with c++. other thing is i never did dll, although i know how it works in general, i also used other peoples dll's in my programs. will do i hope. also, Rudegar provided us with good tutorial/example on today dlls, so i hope i'll be able to expand it. the only thing, i'm a bit anxious. you say evc is good for starters? ok, going to give it a try.
what a week, four days, four new RAD environments already:)

[Rudegar]

delphi is object pascal which is an extention of pascal like c++ is of c
c programs should compile without any problems in c++

[Imer]

Hi,

I saw a way to develop today plugins in .net : http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/TodayScrn.asp?_r=1
I did not try and I guess it will slow down the device as .net is not very fast, but you can try...

Good luck ;)