A component that you should consider adding to your suite of development tools is the NavTech Navigation Libraries for the Auto PC. These are tools that allow for the development of navigation related software. They can be acquired directly from NavTech (at http://www.navtech.com).

New concepts and programming interfaces
The Auto PC introduces a rich set of new concepts and programming interfaces. This is due largely to the fact that the automotive environment has a unique set of requirements. The focus on a speech driven user interface is one such requirement. Keep in mind that, as a software developer for the Auto PC, you have a responsibility to write software for the Auto PC that will not be distracting to the driver by drawing the driver away from his or her primary task of operating the vehicle.

Using text-to-speech, speech recognition and .WAV files to interact with the user should be the primary interface for any application written for the Auto PC. Making the move away from thinking in Graphic User Interface centric models to speech models is very challenging. There is very little published in the arena of speech user interface but you can look at the work that is being done in the accessibility arena for the visually or physically impaired.

Both the Department of Defense and the automotive industry have done quite a bit of research in the area of speech UI--but most of it is closely held. The Auto PC makes use of the Microsoft Speech API as the underlying interface to the speech recognition and text-to-speech, but the Auto PC SDK also includes libraries to significantly simplify creating a speech user interface for an application.

Another area new to the Auto PC is the Forms Manager. It's the means by which applications for the Auto PC draw to the screen and receive event notifications such as key presses. The Forms Manager uses a special type of ActiveX control to interact with the user, both visually and through speech. The Forms Manager handles the sharing of the screen and other resources between applications as well as watches over the application to make sure it is still responding.

As an example, the Forms Manager requires that applications paint their screen within of several seconds of being notified of the need to paint the screen. Failure to paint the screen in a timely manner causes the Forms Manager to assume the application has hung and the application is forced to exit.

Another new component that works in conjunction with the Forms Manager to assure the system works reliably is the CPM (Critical Process Monitor). You can use the CPM to designate your application as one that's critical to the operation of the Auto PC. A critical process is one that is required by the system for proper operation or where a malfunction could have significant impact on the Auto PC.

Through various methods, the CPM will monitor the application for proper operation. If the application is determined to be malfunctioning, the application is forced to terminate and may be automatically restarted. The CPM also monitors the overall health of the Auto PC. In the event that some catastrophic system failure should occur, the CPM will force the Auto PC through a soft reset to correct the failure condition, without user intervention. An Auto PC application should be written with these factors in mind so as to prevent or minimize data loss by the application in the event of failure.