PALM TRACKER - Documentation v1.0, 10.07.2000 Please check our website at http://www.emperor-studios.de. You might find an updated version of Palm Tracker there.

Palm Tracker is © EmperoR Studios, MM.

http://www.emperor-studios.de or email: info@emperor-studios.de

Welcome to Palm Tracker!

Palm Tracker is the first and only Soundtracker/ MOD-Tracker for the Palm. It allows to compose and listen to cool three-channel (!) songs directly on your Palm! A good example of the quality of sound that can be achieved with Palm Tracker is the title tune of ARCHON, the famous action/ strategy game based on the desktop classic (http://www.emperor-studios.de).

In Palm Tracker you compose songs. A song consists of a sequence of patterns. A pattern consists of a sequence of notes.
Consequently, Palm Tracker offers both a pattern- and a song editor, you can easily switch between them by tapping the Palm Tracker logo at the top of the screen.

To get a first impression, please start the program and play the demo song by tapping on the PLAY-icon in the middle of the screen. Even while the song is playing you can always switch between pattern and song editor.

Pattern editor

This is where you build your patterns from a sequence of notes. The major part of the screen is occupied by the current pattern consisting of the three channels. In each channel the notes and their corresponding volumes are displayed. The hardware up/ down buttons are used for scrolling through the pattern.
The buttons beneath the pattern are (from left to right):

• Jump to the first row of the pattern
• Play the pattern
• "ED" means "Edit". If this toggle is set, tapping on the keyboard at the bottom of the screen alters the pattern.
• "BR" means "BREAK" and it is to be used for terminating a pattern before the last row.
• The volume control lets you adjust the volume for every single note. Please note that only volumes that differ from the maximum value (16) are actually displayed in the pattern.
• "Ptrn" sets the currently edited pattern.
• "Octave" sets the octave for the keyboard below.

Song editor

This is where the song is built from the patterns created in pattern editor. Again, the hardware up/ down buttons are used for scrolling through the list of entries.
The button bar in the middle of the screen has the following functions:

• "INS" means "Insert" and inserts a new call to a pattern.
• The up/ down buttons move the selected position through the list instead of scrolling the list as a whole.
  
• "DEL" means "Delete" and deletes the entry at the highlighted row.
• Play and Stop should be obvious. Like in pattern editor the button below is for jumping to the first entry.

By tapping on the peakmeters to the right you can mute channels.
The buttons below the peakmeters mean:

• "Songlen" displays the number of entries in the song.
• The "repstart"-button sets the position a song restarts with (usually 0).
• "Time" displays the time a song is playing. The time is reset whenever you tap on the "play"-button.
• "Speed" makes the song play slower or faster.
• "Patterns" displays the number of patterns that can be chose from when building the song.

Author and song name can be set at the bottom of the screen as well as the song's volume. If volumes for single notes are set, then they are interpreted relative to the song's volume.

Main menu

Song

• "load demo song" reloads the demo song from within the application file [so that you always have a working song at hand:-)]
• "export song" lets you save the song. When hotsyncing, the song will be transferred to the Backup-folder on the PC. Export is disabled in this demo version. You can distribute your songs freely.
• "import song", "delete song" and "clear song" should be obvious.
• "play song blindly" plays the song while disabling the screen updates for the song editor. This might be handy to speed things up, if you create fast songs with many pattern breaks.

Pattern

• "create", "delete" and "clear" work similar to the song-related functionality.
• "copy to clipboard" copies a pattern to the clipboard.
• "paste from clipboard" pastes a pattern into the pattern editor. This discards everything that was previously there.

Installation

Simply transfer the provided PalmTracker.prc to your device. If you already have an older version of Palm Tracker installed, please delete it first!

Known bugs

The menu bar does not paint itself 100% correctly on OS3.5. Somehow, the message handling must have changed in this OS release. Any ideas?

Future work

Some features like a column-clipboard or muting in pattern editor might be implemented one day - as well as all the things you miss (feedback please:-)

Registration

There are two registration models for Palm Tracker.

Regular full version

Most people will want to obtain the regular full version where importing and exporting songs are enabled. You may use this version to create songs and then publish, swap, sell, etc. your songs freely. However, you are not allowed to use Palm Tracker songs within software projects, i.e. a song must only be distributed "for its own sake", not acompanying a game, for example.

Developer Kit

If you are a programmer, you may want to get the Palm Tracker Developer Kit, instead. The Developer Kit includes all the c-source code you need in order to play Palm Tracker songs within your own programs. A sample project with a simple application playing a song is also included as well as the full version of Palm Tracker itself. Only with a developer kit license you are free to distribute songs within your software projects.

To obtain a full version, please visit our website.

Song Gallery

Daniel Springwald maintains a webpage with Palm Tracker songs at http://www.springwald.de/software/palmpilot/tracker/songs/. You may want to send him your songs to be featured at his site.

Best regards,
Carsten Magerkurth, Lead Programmer