mono and .NET Compact Framework (was: Re: [Mono-list] CLI and devices)

[Pavel Tcholakov]

On Wednesday 05 June 2002 06:12 pm, Bob Smith wrote:
> How about for PalmOS? I have an 8mb Visor. Think it could be squeezed in?

Should be possible - I don't think Compact .NET supports Palm, but it should 
fit in 8 MB. For comparison's sake, the J2ME (sorry, J2EE was a typo -- it 
comes from Micro Edition) Palm MIDP (Mobile Independent Device Profile.. 
those people at Sun loves acronyms, hey? :)) is about 1 MB, got it running on 
my 8 MB Palm.

The approach the Java guys have taken (already mentioned briefly by other 
people) is to write a very optimized JVM for those tiny machines, probably in 
C for easier portability. In order to reduce its complexity, the bytecode is 
simplified (reduced instruction set), and also it comes somewhat 
pre-processed, some of the tasks that the JVM normally does are handled at 
compile-time (don't remember exactly what). Further, most of the class 
libraries are stripped down and you get a very special abstract windowing 
toolkit that is just an interface to the vendor-supplied implementation, so 
that you get an adequate GUI whether you run it on a cell phone display, or 
your home TV. Probably looking at the way Compact .NET is implemented would 
bring more ideas.

So to answer your question, yes it is possible to get it there, but it _is_ a 
lot of work.

Pavel.