I call it... BIGtext.
What does it do? It displays any text of your choice in big, bold letters across the display of your Pocket PC.
Why would I need this? A number of situations have occurred in my life that would have warranted a need for this. Have you ever found yourself separated by a glass or a camera from the person you wanted to communicate with? Ever tried to get a message across a crowded room, only to fall on deaf ears? With this program, you just type your message and flash your PocketPC in their direction to read it.
It does real usefulness... God forbid you're stuck in a hostage situation, trapped down a well, or even just held up in a meeting or a bad date - if you can't talk, you may be able to type. Trying to give a guy/girl your number? Flash it on the screen. Not everyone has a cell phone (gasp), or if they do, you might not know their number. Your cool Pocket PC device may have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and SMS, but what good is that if they are not ready or capable to receive any communication from you that way?
What features does it have? It has preset buttons for 'YES,' 'NO,' 'I DON'T KNOW,' and 'HELP.' It also has an adjustable scrolling speed. It even uses the Windows Mobile 5.0 soft keys (tested on the K-JAM) to toggle between entering text and displaying it, and to exit the application. If the text is short enough, it'll simply flash it right in the center of the screen.
It does require a hardware keyboard for text entry, as of version 1.0 - which will work out well for Wizard, Apache, and Universal owners. Nice big buttons allow easy thumb use on the screen, even on 2.8" touchscreen LCD displays.
It's a measly $2.50 for the program and you can give a trial run with the demo available on [url=http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=19914&associateid=326
]PocketGear.com[/url]. C'mon, it's cheap, but I'm sure it'll be worth it, and you're also helping me out.
Version 1.1 will have a virtual keyboard and more adjustable scrolling, perhaps even a full interface makeover.
One note of importance: make sure you're in landscape mode BEFORE launching the application. Having the Wizard automatically changing the orientation (by opening the keyboard) will make the buttons inoperable until you close the keyboard again.
Have fun!
Developer Notes
Makslane: The keyboard capture feature cannot capture certain symbols, such as !, @, and so on, since it captures the SHIFT as a single keystroke, and then the 2 or whatever key, also as a keystroke.
Also, since the Wizard Pocket PC automatically shifts to landscape when you open the keyboard, I notice that my program shifts to portrait mode and then back to landscape mode (and it's a little sluggish).
When I first started to develop, I was trying different TrueType fonts, and Game Editor would crash if I tried to set it to large font sizes (the value that it crashed at is different for every font), but I ended up with Impact at 160 points. Can I get any larger without having to make my own font?
When the program is suspended, there is a button for "Continue Game." Can it be changed to just "Continue" since sometimes I won't be making actual games, but also multimedia applications and other cool stuff that may not fall into the "game" category.
Lastly, I cannot set a string to be null or empty. (i.e. strcpy(textstring,""); would not clear out the string on the display.) I had to make a clever workaround, but I feel it was unnecessary to have to do that.
Thanks again, and when is 1.3.3 coming out? Any chance of reading/writing to registry entries?
