TRON News Items for April 2002

Personal Media Updates the BTRON Basic Browser

Personal Media Corporation announced on April 17 that it had completed improvements to the BTRON Basic Browser (BBB), the compact system browser that comes as standard equipment in the company's BTRON3-specification Cho Kanji 4 operating system. These improvements have been incorporated into a new version of the BBB, R4.011, which is now available for downloading from Personal Media's Cho Kanji Web site (click here). R4.011 incorporates fixes to the following problems.

  • Fixed a problem in which a character string copied from a BBB window into a Basic Text Editor window had a strange layout during the printing of the contents of the text window
  • Fixed a problem in which insufficient memory errors occurred after the entire contents in a BBB window were copied to the tray and left there for a long time
  • Fixed a problem in which the print preview screen froze when attempting to print a real object included an as a virtual object that opened the BBB
  • Fixed a problem in which the pasted location of a virtual object shifted when a virtual object saved with the BBB was dragged to a text window

In addition to the BBB, the Cho Kanji 4 operating system can also run a version of the Mozilla open source browser, which unlike the BBB can handle frames, cookies, Secure Socket Layers, and JavaScript. The main difference between the two browsers is size, the BBB being considerably smaller than Mozilla. That makes it a better choice for compact applications, such as PDAs and cell-phones, which use very small liquid crystal displays. Another difference is in the interface. The BBB only employs pop-up menus, the standard interface for BTRON applications, plus a tiny navigation bar. These features also are advantages when porting the Cho Kanji 4 operating system to portable information appliances.

New Sample Programs Posted on the BTRON Developers Site

On April 24, Personal Media Corporation announced that it had put two collections of BTRON sample programs on its developer's Web site for downloading by software developers. The first is "1B Programming Dojo Cho Kanji Version Source Collection," a collection of source code originally distributed on a CD-ROM in Vol. 63 of TRONWARE. (Click here to download.) The second is "Cho Kanji 4 Sample Application Program Source Collection," which is source code collection of sample application programs written in C++ that also includes explanations of the programs. (Click here to download.) The Cho Kanji Developers' Site main, which unfortunately is still in Japanese, is here.

Although there are almost no third party commercial developers for the Cho Kanji 4 operating system at present, there are a lot of hobby programmers who have developed software and dataware for the BTRON architecture. In fact, Personal Media includes many of their programs and data collections on its system installation CD-ROM. In addition, programs and data collections not included on that CD-ROM can be downloaded from various sites on the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, all of this software is Japanese language based, so it can only be accessed by foreigners who are capable of reading Japanese.

TRONWARE Vol. 74 Filled with Introductory Information on BTRON

TRON Web readers who can read Japanese and are interested in giving BTRON a try should note that the latest issue of TRONWARE, Vol. 74, is filled with introductory information on how to use the BTRON operating system and its bundled applications. This special feature gives an overview of the Cho Kanji 4 operating system, an in-depth description of its unique filing system, a good description of how to connect to the Internet and where to find information about BTRON on the World Wide Web, plus the third article in a series by Japan's leading BTRON writer Mr. Kaoru Misaki, who is very proficient in applying the BTRON operating system to Japanese information processing.