Well, in a sense. On the PalmPilot, this is done by using System Extensions. In layman's terms, these are patches to the operating system that replace a certain piece of program code with another. For example, if you wanted to have your application run when someone tapped on the find button (instead of running the built-in find routine), you'd patch the section of the operating system that looks for that particular button to be tapped. This is where HackMaster steps in.

When the first Pilot first came out, Edward Keyes, realized that this ability to patch the system could be dangerous if more than one such patch used the same area of the OS. His goal was to develop a centralized manager of these system extensions, in order to keep track of what was installed and where. This goal has been met with the shareware application, HackMaster.

To date, there are currently over 30 such HackMaster controlled patches (normally referred to as "Hacks"). While some of them are little more than briefly entertaining (such as Jeff Jetton's BackHack, a hack that reverses ALL the text on a PalmPilot) some of these Hacks provide very useful functionality.

Also note that there are applications out there that don't use HackMaster to patch the OS. Care should be taken when using these in conjunction with HackMaster, especially if you've got a Hack installed that seems to do the same thing. These applications normally come with mention of such known conflicts in their documentation.

Using HackMaster
HackMaster itself doesn't really do anything until you load one of the Hacks. After that point, each Hack installed presents itself as a line in the HackMaster screen, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

This is the HackMaster screen, showing a list of currently installed Hacks.

Each installed hack displays first a checkbox, then the Hack's name and one or two buttons. The checkbox indicates whether the Hack is active (i.e., the system patch is in place). After the Hack name, the first button is the About button, which appears as a box with a question mark in it. The About button is where the programmer will normally put a general Info screen that might also contain registration instructions about the Hack. Optionally, each hack might also have a Configuration button, which appears as a box with a plus sign in it. The Configuration button allows you to set any configuration options that that Hack might require. For instance, SelectHack's Configuration screen allows you to set the tap speed at which it will select words, and if you want "Smart Select" activated. SelectHack is described in more detail later in this article.