Palm e-Books: Your digital library

If you’re an avid reader but hopeless when it comes to returning borrowed books, there’s still some hope for you. Ashish Gupta has some tips on how to convert your Palm handheld into a complete digital library

One of the primary reasons that led me to stop using book libraries was that I would regularly, and repeatedly, miss the due dates for returning the books I borrowed. And once in a while I would lose a book. The fines I paid amounted to a lot, and I decided against borrowing books from libraries. I turned to friends instead, who now avoid lending their books to me.

Reading has been a hobby, and I had to satiate my desire to read. My Palm handheld computer offered the perfect solution. No due dates, no fear of losing books, no fines. No dog-eared pages. Or torn-out last few pages—how I hate it when I read a book to the end, and the last few pages are missing.

So here’s how to convert your Palm handheld computer into a complete digital library. First, you need a document reader. Next, you need the documents or e-books.

Here’s a list of a few good document readers for the Palm OS:

Palm Reader Pro
The document reader from Palm Inc, Palm Reader Pro includes the Webster’s New World Vest Pocket Dictionary and the ability to utilise any Palm standard bitmapped font. In addition, Palm Reader Pro includes sub-pixel font smoothing technology on colour handhelds to provide the best possible reading experience.

And while you’re at it you can pick up Agfa Monotype’s great new e-Book Font Pack for Palm Reader Pro. With three font faces designed for e-book reading and supporting four sizes for each font, this is the perfect way to get maximum control over the appearance of your e-books. You can also get the Windows version of the Palm Reader Pro. It has a two-page viewing option that makes it look just like a real book. You can design your own customised reading environment, selecting font colour, background colour and image, highlighting colour, and more. You can create textured ‘papers’ with your own graphic designs or photographic images and then save them for future use.

iSilo
iSilo is one of the most popular and comprehensive e-book readers for the Palm OS. It even displays formatted hyperlinked documents. The compression is 20 percent better than the Palm Doc format. Text formatting includes mixed size text, coloured text, underlining, italics, bold, subscript and superscript, fixed-width font, and more. Images can be compressed grayscale (1-bit/2-bit/4-bit) and colour (8-bit/16-bit), large and scrollable, and intermixed with text. Tables can have many rows and columns; can be nested within one another, support mixed borders, and more. Additional features include bookmarks, beaming, copy and paste, search, among others. Documents can be accessed through VFS on SD/MMC, compact flash, and memory stick. iSilo also has native support for the special features of the HandEra 330 and the 320x320 hi-res display of Sony CLIE devices. With iSiloX, you can create your own iSilo documents from content on your local hard drive or from content on the Web.

TealDoc
A full-featured document reader for standard Palm OS document files, TealDoc from TealPoint Software also supports special features and enhanced TealDoc-format documents. Standard features include screen rotation, anti-aliased text, smooth scrolling, full screen mode, beaming, a bonus tiny font, and direct support for docs and plain text files stored on external VFS-compatible media cards such as SD/MMC, compact flash, and memory stick.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed one of the document readers, you can go ahead and download some documents and e-books for the Palm.

An excellent place to start is www.memoware.com. This site has an exhaustive listing of free e-books for the Palm. You can browse the various categories to find something that interests you.

It has all types of e-books, ranging from short stories to entire novels—even the complete works of Shakespeare. Novels include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace among many other epics. The short stories section features O Henry, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and other greats.

Other interesting titles include The Little First-Aid Book, The Webster’s Encyclopedia, CIA World Fact Book and The Book of Good Manners.

The next time the missus wants the lights off while you’re reading, you can just turn on your Palm handheld’s backlight, and continue to read in the dark. Now, which book lets you do that?

Ashish Gupta is the founder and president of The Indian Palm User Group. He can be reached at ash@notcomguys.com ... Feedback, questions and comments will be entertained, and appreciated. Technical support questions will be answered. IPUG Website: www.notcomguys.com/palm