Download and Read E-Books on your Palm
One of the most thriling options that the Palm offers to me is the possibility of taking documents with you. That way, you can either read Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (in a Plucker version), or you can skip through all the Slashdot news that you missed during the day.
Another useful thing might be to have "SQL for Web Nerds" by Philip Greenspun on you, or "PC POST beep error codes for various BIOSes".
E-Book Readers
- Plucker HTML Browser, my current preference when it comes to e-books. Licensed under the GNU GPL, Plucker exists in several localized versions and allows you to used the original hyperlinks in the documents, as long as you downloaded the linked contents to your palm as well.
- SiteScooper seems to be a great tool in combination with aforementioned
Plucker which "automatically retrieves the stories from several news websites, trims off extraneous HTML, and converts
them into formats you can read on your Palm computing device for later reading on-the-move."
This tool is excellent if used in conjugation with Plucker - SitesScooper prepares the pages you want to receive, and Plucker converts them to a format that is readable on your Palm.
NOTE: Current versions of SiteScooper do not work with Plucker 1.2 - please use a lower version such as 1.1.3. Otherwise, you will receive errors like "DEPRECATED" when you issue the command "sitescooper -mplucker".
- RichReader, a tool that allows you to view RTF, DOC, and PDF files on your palm after a conversion. An advanced payware version is also available...
- AvantGo, is offering its reader also for free. They also provide so-called channels that contain updated information, such as your local cinema program, the bus schedule of your university or the cooking recipe of the week. These channels (or the sites they are provided on) can also be used with Plucker.
- Adobe Access Plug-In for Acrobat allows you to export (under the menu "File") the contents of a PDF-file to HTML or plain text, even using the free Acrobat Reader. The conversion from PDF to PDB is not lossless, since tables etc. get messed up, but for text-content, this methor works very well. The resulting HTML or plaintext can be converted using your tool of choice, e.g. using Plucker and its Windows shell integration (right-click, "Convert to Plucker").
Where to download e-Books
- Byron's E-Book Emporium offers speeches ("I Have A Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr. or "The Gettysburg Address" by Abraham Lincoln) as well as German classics, including "Der Ölprinz" and "Der Schut", written by Karl May.
- Curt 'n' Dave's Plucker-book Repository
is dedicated to classic works of fiction, including works by Herman Melville ("Moby Dick"), Jack London ("The Sea Wolf") and Edgar Allen Poe.
- MemoWare - The PDA Document Repository has a wealth of documents, be it computer-related reference material, sports articles, medical handbooks or jokes.
- Project Gutenberg, explained as "Fine Literature Digitally
Re-Published", is an iniciative to bring all the great works (that are not subject to copyright infringements) to a
digital format. These works include (amongst many others) Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
- InterText, "The Online Fiction Magazine Publishing on the Net since 1991"
has more than 200 short stories available in various formats, amongst them HTML, plain text, PDF and Palm DOC. Browse
all issues in the in the archive.
- Baen Free Library "is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached." (page blurb). Authors include Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, David Drake, and Eric Flint.
How to convert text files to Palm DOC format
Suppose you have downloaded a plain text file (.txt) to your PC. How do you get it "into" your Palm in order to be able
to take it with you? The answer is rather simple: you will have to convert the file so that you are able to "install" it
onto your Palm. Once the installation has taken place (via HotSync), your e-Book reader will show the newly installed
text.
For Windows, MakeDocW and DocReader seem to be very good at this
job. DocReader is even able to open Palm e-Books on your PC!
Once you converted the .txt files into .pdb or .prc archives, simply install them on the Palm via a HotSync and enjoy
your texts!
Achim J. Latz,
achim@latz.cc
, 13.02.2021
