Emulators

The Development Kit supplies an emulator which provides a Microsoft Windows-based implementation of Symbian OS. To be precise, it supplies two emulators, one built with the Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Symbian compiler, the other with Microsoft Visual C++. The two emulators are identical in functionality: two versions are required because C++ code produced by the two compilers cannot be linked together.

The emulators provide the full range of Symbian OS functionality, and enable development to be substantially PC-based. Only the final development stages focus on the target hardware. The only exception to this rule is low-level programming for which target hardware must be directly accessed — such as programming a physical device driver.

TechView UI

The Development Kit emulators use TechView, Symbian's demonstration UI. This UI does not reflect the appearance of any real phone. It will though be familiar to users of Symbian OS v5, and the Psion devices based on that UI.

You can start either debug or release versions of the TechView emulator from the Symbian Kit OS7.0 menu on the Windows Start menu.

A TechView emulator is driven from its GUI shell program, called System, which allows applications to be launched and files to be accessed and managed. As TechView emulates a phone with a touch-sensitive screen, you can tap (click with the left mouse-button) the screen to activate items. Use a single tap for buttons, while for other screen items, use one tap to select, and then another tap to launch.

The figure below calls out the major features of the shell:

• Pull down menu: the TechView UI does not by default show the application's menu. To show it, tap the menu button, or press F1.

• File Browser: the main window allows you to navigate the files and folders on an emulated drive

• Control Panel: tapping this launches the control panel, which allows you to set global system settings

• Running Tasks: this shows the name of the foreground application. Tapping it brings up a list of the running applications.

• Return to System: this button can be tapped at any time to return to the System screen

• File Manager: tapping this launches a compact file system navigator, used to select quickly a directory location for the main File Browser window

• Applications: this allows you to launch quickly one of a number of pre-set TechView applications

• Extras: additional applications (including the ones you build yourself) can be launched from here

Note

The emulators also support development of console applications, which use a simple non-GUI text UI. Console applications are typically not delivered to end-users, but can be useful for test programs or for quick experiments. For a minimal example, see this HelloWorld program.

A command-line shell is available for the console: see Text shell (eshell).