Von: Greg Gaub [flux@snapbag.com] Gesendet: Dienstag, 8. Oktober 2002 20:08 An: snapperMailPublicBeta@yahoogroups.com Betreff: [SnapperMailPublicBeta] [FAQ] Attachments (incl. MS Office) (The following is a FAQ based on my personal understanding of the capabilities of SnapperMail and other software. I am NOT a member of the SnapperMail Dev team, so I might be wrong on some of these points. If I am, I will happily stand corrected.) --------------------------------------- FAQ of SnapperMail's Attachment support --------------------------------------- (I use the word "Palm" in reference to any device running any version of the Palm Operating System.) 1) What kinds of attachments can I get with SnapperMail? 2) Why don't attachments show up in my Palm's RAM when I look using xxxx? 3) So now I have the file, what can I do with it? 4) How can I view the attachments I receive? 5) How do I open JPG attachments on my Palm? 6) How do I open ZIP attachments on my Palm? 7) How do I open MS Word .doc files on my Palm? 8) How do I open MS Excel .xls files on my Palm? 9) Why doesn't SnapperMail let me view everything I receive?? :P 10) What is the SnapperMail API? ---------------- FAQs and Answers ---------------- Q) What kinds of attachments can I get with SnapperMail? A) SnapperMail is file type agnostic. It doesn't need or want to know what kind of attachments people send you, nor does it care. Someone could send you a file called "whatchamacallit.foo" and it would still download unchanged into the SnapperMail Messages database. Anything anyone sends you, SnapperMail can receive it. *Viewing* it, on the other hand, is up to other programs on your Palm OS device, which is where the next few questions come into play... Q) Why don't attachments show up in my Palm's RAM when I look using xxxx? A) Because the attachments aren't stored individually, and can't be stored like that in the Palm RAM, SnapperMail saves the files in its Messages database. Palm's don't support a Virtual File System (VFS) in RAM so files in RAM must conform to what the Palm OS is expecting. And that is PRC, PDB, and PQA files. If someone sends you any of those in an e-mail, you can save it from the message in SnapperMail into your Palm's RAM. If you use an application such as Filez, or any other file manager that lets you see the contents of your Palm's RAM, all you'll see are those PRC and PDB files. If you have a Palm with a VFS compatible expansion card, like an SD slot, then SnapperMail will allow you to save attachments to a card. That works because the VFS on the card allows any kind of file to be stored there, not just Palm OS format files. Q) So now I have the file, what can I do with it? A) You can beam it to a PC or laptop, or any other device that supports the standard IR data transfer protocol. You can save it to an expansion card on your Palm, or you can transfer the data to another program on your Palm if you have one that supports the file type. Q) How can I view the attachments I receive? A) You can only view those attachments for which you have a compatible viewing application on your Palm. SnapperMail is just an e-mail client, not an Office app. It only receives the files for you. Other applications are responsible for showing you the data contained in those files. This is just like how a PC works. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your PC, and someone sends you a PDF file, you won't be able to open it. You'll first have to download and install the Acrobat Reader. Then you'll be able to open that attachment. This is exactly how SnapperMail works. If you get a file but don't have the viewer on your Palm, then you can't open that file until you get the viewer for it. Currently, viewers for unconverted PC files types that run on Palms are few and far between. Fortunately, SnapperMail has bundled two programs that can open and/or view the data in two of the most popular file formats. Those viewers are for JPG images and ZIP archives. With the advent and growing popularity of SnapperMail and it's unlimited support for attachments to e-mail messages, more viewers will be developed. If you have a program that you would like to use as a viewer for a particular file type that you often receive via e-mail, be sure to personally contact that developer to tell them you'd like them to support unconverted, native files of that type, and that supporting the SnapperMail API would be advantageous to their product. Q) How do I open JPG attachments on my Palm? A) The application bundled with SnapperMail to view JPG images is called JpegWatchLite. It's a "lite" version (meaning reduced feature set) of the JpegWatch software from HandWatch, Inc. (www.handwatch.com). With JpegWatchLite installed, JPG files can be sent from within SnapperMail to JpegWatchLite to be viewed. What happens is that since Palm RAM cannot have PC file formats, SnapperMail must send the file data directly to the supporting viewer. In this case, SnapperMail sends the JPG data to JpegWatchLite. JpegWatchLite then stores the data in a temporary file and shows it to you on the Palm screen. When you're done viewing the image, you can choose to save it, or discard it from JpegWatchLite. If you save it, then you'll have that file accessible from within JpegWatchLite. If you discard it, then it won't show up in a list of pics in JpegWatchLite, but you can still open it from within SnapperMail (to send it to JpegWatchLite) just like you did the first time. HandWatch sells the full version of JpegWatch which includes high-res and VFS support among other features. Q) How do I open ZIP attachments on my Palm? A) SnapperMail also bundled a lite version of HandZipper, also from HandWatch, Inc. Just like for JPG files, when you tap a ZIP attachment in SnapperMail, you have the option of opening it into HandZipperLite. HandZipperLite will then receive the data and show you the contents of the ZIP file. You can then open any file supported by the Palm OS and/or other applications on your Palm. For example, if the ZIP you open contains a JPG file, you can open that into JpegWatchLite. If there are PRC or PDB files, you can install those into RAM and use them. If there are TXT or HTML files, HandZipperLite provides a built in text viewer. This is especially useful for README files that are often included in ZIP files. The full version of HandZipper provides additional usability features. Q) How do I open MS Word .doc files on my Palm? A) This is the tricky one. In this case, there is not a free lite version that you can use for this. Unfortunately, there are no applications for Palm OS that currently support unconverted MS Word files. They all require conversion of some kind into PDB files to be viewable. This requires that the person sending you the MS Word file has the ability (and foresight) to convert the file before they send it to you, and then back again if you send back an edited version. Fortunately, though, Quickword, from www.quickoffice.com, has the ability to open unconverted HTML and TXT files, as well as MS Word files through wireless/e-mail conversion. Registered SnapperMail and Quickword users can "bounce" an MS Word attachment off of a special "conversion companion" e-mail address (qsconvert@equin.com). When you send an MS Word file to that e-mail address, the conversion is run on that server, and then sent back to you as a PDB attachment to the address you sent it from. You can then open that PDB in QuickWord, view it, even edit it and save it. If you need to send the document back to a collegue on a PC, you can bounce it off the conversion companion address again to convert it back into an MS Word file, then forward that file to your collegue. Currently, there are no other converters or viewers of unconverted MS Word files. If you prefer another "office" app on your Palm, such as DocumentsToGo or Wordsmith, you should contact the developers of those applications to put in your vote for their support of unconverted MS Word files and the SnapperMail API for file sharing between applications on the Palm. Q) How do I open MS Excel .xls files on my Palm? A) Right now, as far as I know, you can't. A conversion companion similar to that for MS Word files, converting them into QuickSheet format is under development. Until then, just keep hammering your favorite "office" app developer to support unconverted files and the SnapperMail API. Q) Why doesn't SnapperMail let me view everything I receive?? :P A) Just like it's not Eudora's or Outlook's job to open every attachment you receive on your PC, it's not SnapperMail's job to open every attachment on your Palm. If you get files in an unsupported (by other apps like JpegWatch, Quickword, and HandZipper, etc.) format that you want to be able to view on your Palm, then you need to contact your favorite developer of a promising app, and pester them to support unconverted files and the SnapperMail API. If you want to open that MS Word .doc into Wordsmith on your Palm, then contact Blue Nomad to urge them to support such files. SnapperMail's job is already complete, though, so don't bug them about it. SnapperMail gets the files from your mail server and provides the ability to give those files to other applications. It's up to other vendors to make their applications have the ability to GET those files from SnapperMail when it tries to give them. Q) What is the SnapperMail API? A) SnapperMail uses a system in the Palm OS called the Exchange Manager. This system allows data to be transferred from one application on the device to another. In this case, it lets SnapperMail send file attachments to other apps on the Palm, like a JPG file to JpegWatchLite. Snapperfish Ltd. has made available an API that makes it easier for developers to support the exchange manager and SnapperMail. This technology has been in the Palm OS for a while, but no one else has really used it until now. Maybe they didn't know about it or think it was useful, but Snapperfish Ltd. did. Tell your favorite developer to contact Snapperfish Ltd. for more information on their SnapperMail API. ---------- End of FAQ ---------- Hopefully that helps with people's understanding of how this works. The key to remember here is that it's very much like how an e-mail app on your PC works. If anyone wants to copy what I've written and edit it for clarity and mistakes and post it somewhere, you are more than welcome to do so. Another member requested that I explain this stuff as I understand it, so I have done so. I also look forward to corrections by the SnapperMail dev team, and additional questions I can answer. Thanks! -Greg - Gregory A. Gaub | http://www.snapbag.com/~flux/ - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Home Selling? Try Us! http://us.click.yahoo.com/QrPZMC/iTmEAA/MVfIAA/b2FxlB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: SnapperMailPublicBeta-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/