Java
Perhaps the best, and certainly the most exciting thing about the Series 5mx is that it supports "100% pure" Java. At this point it is only Java 1.1.4, but it has been breathed on enough to perform remarkably well on such a small device. Java has full access through the standard Java APIs to all features except only the hideable tool bar. The Psion Java SDK, which is available free of charge to anyone interested, had to run on a desktop PC, and is solely for the conversion of previously tested and debugged applications to a format acceptable to the Series 5mx. You can use it to develop alongside any full-scale, PC based, Java development environment. The only part of Java that is supplied by Psion to run on ER5 is the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) which consists of just the 1.1.4 JVM and required classes. As Psion have had a history of permitting development on their target machines, I was interested to discover a web page devoted to running Java on EPOC. As Sun distribute the components required for development in a form that can run on any JVM, it isn't hard to install a Java compiler (javac) on either the Symbian emulator that runs on PCs, or on a Series 5mx. However, at the time of writing only the emulator installation works properly; the javac installation on a Series 5mx fails when attempting to compile a test application. With any luck, this should be corrected by the time this column appears.
Running javac on a 5mx
Incompatibility between the emulator and Series 5mx
Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: September 15, 1999