The world of hack managers for the Palm OS really started with a program called HackMaster from Daggerware (at http://www.daggerware.com), a five-dollar shareware program written by Edward Keyes, a graduate student in theoretical astrophysics at MIT.

Keyes created HackMaster to make it easier for programmers to write system extensions by using a single API (Application Programming Interface) and a standard interface for handling hacks. HackMaster is a great program: simple, easy to use, and written by the guy who created the standard API that all of the programmers use.

Like all programs, HackMaster isn't without its fair share of flaws. For instance, it doesn't work as well with hacks that take advantage of color and grayscale (not to be confused with black and white) screens, and it has some problems when the Palm handheld is restarted. HackMaster will reactivate hacks in a random order after a reset, which can cause some nasty reactions between hacks. In addition, HackMaster will crash a system after it's opened ten or fifteen times, which isn't very desirable.

Recently, a number of developers have released hack managers that address some of HackMaster's problems and add new and helpful features. In addition to HackMaster, there are three other hack managers. They all work off of the same API, so the same hacks will, in theory, work with all of them.

Let's look at each of them in turn.

EVPlugBase
The TRGpro Users Group on eGroups (at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TRGPro_Users_Group) created EVPlugBase, a freeware alternative that worked better after restarts. It also prevents users from deleting running hacks, which could cause a hard reset in some circumstances. EVPlugBase is pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A

EVPlugBase has a better response to a restart.

Unfortunately, Visor and Visor Deluxe (but not Visor Prism, Visor Edge, or Visor Platinum) users are out of luck because EVPlugBase has a tendency to be quite unstable running under OS 3.1h. EVPlugBase is a worthy hack manager, but there's still some work to be done before it's ready for prime-time use.

X-Master
X-Master by Linkesoft (at http://linkesoft.com) was written to fill those gaps. It's also available for free. Building on all of the features of EVPlugBase, X-Master prevents you from deleting a hack when it isn't safe, and it also introduces something called "sets." Basically, "sets" allow you to prevent two or more hacks that don't work well with each other from running at the same time. X-Master is pictured in Figure B.