Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
The Palm as eBook reader
What exactly is an electronic book (or ebook)? Using the ever useful Wikipedia:
An e-book or ebook is an electronic or digital version of a book. The term is ambiguous, since it refers both to an individual work in digital form as a device used to read books in digital format. Some users do not use it in the second sense and use instead the more accurate "e-book device.
The e-book devices, can be either a PDA, a portable LCD memory.
The advantages of the book in electronic format are numerous. For starters, the space: Don Quixote occupies only 800 KB, so a memory card can store thousands of titles. But in addition, the book extends the possibilities of digital reading can search within the text, highlight phrases, make notes, etc.. Not only can carry novels and we want to read in spare time. There are many occupations where there is the very thing you always have your documents, catalogs, tables, instructions, etc.. Many engineers, lawyers or doctors always wear your Palm up at work as a tool.
The program that I recommend to read our eBooks on your PDA is Plucker. Already seen in more detail the operation of this program when we tried how to read the news on the Palm. Being open, free, to allow a fair chance to choose the font size, and completely eliminate the interface to read full screen, makes a perfect application for this task.
Plucker can maximize the screen
You just have to take into account one thing: Plucker only knows how to convert HTML documents. And e-books can be in many formats: PDF, DOC, RTF ... So we convert to HTML first, if we want to use Plucker and Sunrise. But there is a specific program called PDAConverter that make the whole process for us. It's easy to handle. Indicate the source file, choose the format you want to convert, and that's it. If we choose plucker as output format, genre is a file that can synchronize directly with our PDA, and read using Plucker Viewer (or Vademecum, if it is a PocketPC). PDAConverter also allows us to edit the HTML file through, to remove parts that do not want to include in the final version, modified others, and so on.
PDAConverter plucker automates the conversion from different formats
There are numerous sources on the net free e-books, ready to be played on our PDAs. Of note is the Gutenberg Project, dedicated to collecting texts that can be distributed freely. This project started in 1971 no less! You can learn more about its purpose, how it was created, how they work, etc. in this section of your page. There are a number of books in Spanish. You can also search by title and author. Besides free ebooks, of course there are very good pages where you can buy them. Not to detract against one another, I propose to those who already know some, they leave in the comments about it. Happy reading.
By: Mark Gonzalez Troyes in Palm Analysis
Comments RSS | 
Print this post
Related articles
| Share: |           |
Gutenberg did not know the project but following your post, I began to look at him and caught my attention much. Thank you.
Incidentally, I read books, use the RepliGo.
Greetings,
I'm glad to know I gave you something interesting. Project Gutenberg is too well known, but are doing a great job. Once you have the books in electronic format is easily adaptable to any emerging technology, such as Palm. They do the hard work.
RepliGo though I know I have not used. I know it's useful to take PDFs that have a complex format, with images and tables, which otherwise could not be implemented on the PDA. I aim to discuss the issue when it has investigated him.
Greetings and thanks
It seems strange that do not talk of palmfiction, ebooks reader is a free software that exceeds all other performance I've seen. It is the text what the TCMP to the video.
Yulbeast Hello,
Although I know I have not tried it yet because it's palmfiction to read plain text, which documents with images, tables or text format will not be able to see. From the beginning I liked more Plucker and, of what use is better than I speak.
Moreover, as Plucker use to read RSS feeds, so I avoid having 2 programs instead of 1.
However I've been reading, and everyone puts palmfiction by clouds, so I'll try. To read novels that are just text after all, it may be interesting.
A greeting.
Well none of them have rich text and drawings, is as versatile as the PDF, the only problem that first checks the file and then can submit or not to PALM. I tried like 5 of them read any PDF, and be converted into converted walk is lost original file to see.
For PDF complexes, which are not good when you convert to Plucker, you must stay with Acrobat Adobe Reader for PalmOS (whose quality leaves much to be desired) or use other programs like Documents to Go, which reads perfectly PDF documents, word, excel etc..
For several years I used my palm to read the works of different authors, I have read several books of 200 300 pages and up to 600 inclusive, usually do with Documents to Go ... to download books. doc and. pdf, I recommend visiting http://www.librostauro.com.ar players must register and have more than 8 thousand titles available in Spanish ... Congratulations to the author of the blog, recently changed my palm E2 tungt previous one, and I found interesting things .. greetings from Venezuela!
Thanks Amici
I have also used the E2 to read books and not so bad the screen size.
both the acrobat reader, as the documents to go, I have served! which I work is the eReader, but with UDMH for large files. The problem is that PDFs with version 1.6 although open, is not very stable (only supports up to version 1.5). It seems that Adobe did strange things with the PDF format from version 1.6. What I have done to convert the PDF version, print the PDF as PDF ... or create a new PDF. In linux use cups-pdf, this CutePDF for windows (although I'm not sure that your version is out). You can use this PDF in separate chapters to load faster and easier to read.
Thank you Carlos!
I'm going to Plucker books, so they know these incompatibilities with recent PDFs. I document the time I have that problem
Try Plucker, but does not display Japanese characters correctly .. Repligen would have to try too ... is that with the eReader takes about 5 to 6 econds to change from page to page and from what I read, Replgo is faster ...
Personally, I prefer the use pdftogo, Repligen I tried but I gave some problems, I think the fastest pdftogo pdf reader is faster than eReader and not need as much as PalmPDF UDMH. I have not used plucker, but I'll give a look.
I find what I'm stupid
My input on palm technology could become very rich because I like my TREO 650 provar all software that are posted, comment or see published.
Estube looking hard about how to make my Treo and almost succeeded with some trial versions Pspeaker com I found, Speak Moose, Say it, talking dictionaries, talking clock, etc.., Unfortunately with some limitations such as read only with English pronunciation or short paragraph and one from a block of notes (memos) or clipboard. In the case of speakers that use pronunciation dictionaries in Spanish, only serve to correctly pronounce a word or phrase and very low volume.
For readers insert text into documents like Word, Exel, txt, pdf, etc ... we Picsel Browser, the "small" jewel mix document viewer and web browser, Documents to go, we could also refer to editors in some cases texts read and interpret Word without images.