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USING YOUR POCKET PC AS A BOOK READER
This article covers
the subject of ebooks and how to use them in your pocket pc.
Several ebook readers will be described as well as some sources
for ebooks.
Can I
use my PDA as an e-book reader?
Yes, you can. This is one of the great uses
for a PDA. You can hold a full library of books on an SD card
and reading is easy with the unit in the palm of your hand.
All you need is a program to read the e-books and a source
of books. One good source of books is memoware.com (http://www.memoware.com) but there are many
more as well. Most of the classics are freely available while
more recent books can be purchased. One of the complications
with e-books is that they are often formatted and designed
for a particular e-book reader so you will need to have an
appropriate reader to use with the book. For Pocket PC PDA’s
there are 4 main readers. These include Microsoft
reader, Palm eRreader, Adobe Acrobat, MobiPocket,
and Tome Raider. There are a few others
but these are the main ones. Each of these are covered below.
Note that e-books have two basic flavors
in addition to multiple formats. There are free books and
books you have to pay for. Most of the time the books you
have to pay for are locked and must be unlocked to be read
using a key supplied by the company you buy the book from.
The readers mentioned above have support for locked books,
called DRM (digital rights management) in the trade.
Why do
I need a special reader to read e-books?
Actually you can read many e-books without
a special reader. Project Gutenberg (link:http://www.gutenberg.org) releases all of
its books in .txt format for simple reading using a text editor.
For Pocket PC this means these files can be easily read by
Pocket Word. However, an editor is likely not the best tool
to read books with. It is typically not oriented toward just
reading a page at a time and does not support such features
as bookmarking your progress. In addition .txt file books
do not lend themselves to elaborate or easy to read formatting
options. They often have fix length lines of data that do
not wrap well on the PPC screen or require scrolling. In addition
there is no DRM protection possible for these kinds of books
and no graphics support.
What
is Microsoft Reader?
Microsoft Reader AKA MS Reader is an e-book
reader that is shipped with most installations of Pocket PC
and is freely downloadable from Microsoft (link: http://www.microsoft.com/reader). Versions
are available for Windows PC’s, Tablet PC’s, and Pocket PC’s.
The reader is designed to read e-books identified with the
.lit extension only. This link is also a place you can purchase
e-books for this reader, although the sources mentioned in
earlier tips on e-books also have some .lit books.
Features of this reader include: table of
Contents support, clicking links in the document to traverse
the document, dictionary support by clicking on a word in
the text (requires free dictionary download from Microsoft),
image support, clear type font support, annotation support
including bookmarks, highlighting, notes and drawings. You
can also copy text to your clipboard. The e-books are compressed
to minimize the disk space requirements. DRM is supported
but requires that the reader be activated using a Microsoft
passport login. Text to speech is a feature of PC version
and the PPC version supports audible books from audible.com.
What
is eReader?
eReader (link: http://www.ereader.com) is the latest name of
an e-book reader from Palm. Earlier it was called Palm Reader
but the new name signifies that is has branched beyond Palm.
This reader is available for Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile,
PC, and Macs. There is a free version and a Pro version that
costs $9.95 but comes with a dictionary for that price. Features
of the Pro version include all of the features of the free
version plus reference book support, font selection support,
auto scrolling, themes and more. Books that can be read on
this eReader will have a .pdb or .prc extension but it cannot
read all files with these extensions.
This reader can read books custom designed
for this format and features embedded pictures, TOC, bookmarks,
and DRM support. It can also read book in the original Palm
DOC format. Books for this reader are available from the above
site and many of the sites mentioned previously.
What’s
a DOC file?
A DOC file is a Palm based database containing
e-book data. It should not be confused with a Word file containing
a .doc extension. A DOC file usually has a .pdb extension
(Palm Data Base) but occasionally be found with a .prc extension.
Note that some DOC readers will not find documents with a
.prc extension, but you can try renaming it to .pdb. Palm
stores the type id inside the file itself instead of in the
extension. A DOC file has a type id of TEXt. The DOC database
manages the text information such that it can be used on a
small low powered platform like the original Palm OS but it
current can be used with almost any platform since there are
a wide variety of readers available. There are a huge number
of files available in DOC format.
The basic format for the data does not support
any fancy font control or other features. There is support
for bookmarks that are stored in the database itself at the
end of the file. This bookmark facility is often used to provide
a Table of Contents and some readers will automatically generate
a list of bookmarks based on a search criterion such as the
word CHAPTER. If the DOC file is edited the links may point
to the wrong place. Many Palm readers have customized the
basic DOC file with more advanced features, usually unique
to their reader. This may cause a basic DOC reader program
to show odd characters in the text or perhaps html like statements
in the text. These enhanced files often have a .prc extension.
You can read and create DOC files from Text files on a pc
with a free DocReader which
runs on a pc.
DOC was originally the format of AportisDoc
but the company no longer exists.
How can
I read pdf files?
You should download a reader from the Adobe Site. Adobe
reader is the defacto standard for the exchange of documents.
They have versions for almost every kind of computer you can
think of. Their product is a generalized document reader and
now they have added DRM support to make it an e-book reader.
They call these e-books the Digital Edition which are available
from the above link and from other sources previously listed
in these tips. The Reader for Pocket PC is huge. Its takes
more than 8 Megs of space on the unit so I suggest you install
it on an SD card. If it is installed on an SD card the card
can be moved to another device and it will work.
One of the reasons it is so big is that
it tries to read all kinds of documents instead of just e-books.
For this reason it considers the page presentation sacred
and preserves this format on whatever unit it runs on. This
means you could have to scroll a lot to read a document on
the small screen of a PDA.
To avoid excessive sideways scrolling Adobe
has designed a tagged format for small screens. Tagging the
data provides the intelligence that allows the small screen
version to re-flow the document to eliminate horizontal scrolling.
Their reader can work either way on the PDA, but only if the
document is tagged. There is a conduit installed on the PC
for ActiveSync to automatically tag a document, if needed.
Documents created in Acrobat or Framemaker can be pre-tagged
so that they will re-flow even if transferred without using
ActiveSync. Tagging at the source file level produces better
results than adding the tags with ActiveSync. All of the pdf
files created by Mobile Crossing for download are pre-tagged
so that you can read them easily on your PDA.
There are other readers for Adobe files
that can run on a pocket pc device but none of them support
re-flow making them unsuitable as e-book readers.
What
is Mobipocket?
Mobipocket is an e-book reader from http://www.mobipocket.com or from your PDA
use http://www.mobipocket.com/mobile.
Like most readers that work on Palms it can read its own format
and Palm DOC files. Files will have a .prc for Mobipocket
files. It does support DRM for its own format which is an
extension of the DOC file format. The program can not only
read e-books but also has the ability to read RSS feeds and
other news sources. The PC version can also import files in
other formats for use by the e-book reader. Import formats
include HTML, word files (.doc), RTF files, text, Adobe PDF,
Excel, Power Point, and Visio. You can use the PC version
to push files to your PDA. Books in mobiepocket format are
available from the link above or several of the previous sources
mentioned in these tips.
The Pocket PC (and the PC) version supports
annotation, file links, table of contents, images, highlighting,
bookmarks, and a dictionary. Files are stored in the ebooks
directory on the PDA. This does not have to be in RAM. The
books can be moved as needed using the program or even beamed.
Can I
create my own e-books?
Yes. Each of the e-book readers has the
tools available to create the books. For the most part these
require a PC. There is often a free tool to create the files,
usually by converting a file in a different format, and a
professional tool that will often let you edit the file directly.
The free tools will not allow the generation of DRM protected
files. For lit files there is a converter plugin that will
work with the newer versions of Word to create lit files.
This tool is available from the Microsoft website. It will
not work if the file is very complex. Palm’s e-book reader
has a drop book utility that lets you drag and drop a file
created in their format. It will then create an eReader file.
The format is a bunch of keywords similar to html to identify
the entries and can be created in a text editor. The PC based
reader I already mentioned in the earlier tip on DOC files
can convert standard text files to and from this format. There
are many utilities to convert PDF files from various programs
and Adobe sells one as well. MobiPocket also has creation
tools available on their web site. Check for licensing restrictions
on these programs if you plan to sell the book.
Can I
read CHM e-book files on my PDA?
CHM e-book files, also called compiled html
files, are often used for manuals and help files. They can
be read on your Pocekt PC device if you have a reader. A couple
of good readers are: Microolap chmreader
and CHMReader from codeproject.com.
The second one is free. This is a handy way to keep reference
manuals close at hand for easy access.
What
is Tome Raider?
Tome
Raider is an e-book reader oriented toward reference books
but it has a large collection of other e-books as well. It
can handle files of any size including the entire Wikipedia
which is almost a Gig of data after compression. Tome Raider
features high compression and rapid access to data in files
making it well suited for reference libraries. It is available
for a wide variety of platforms. Many larger e-books are only
available in this format. There is no free reader but the
purchased reader can also convert files to Tome Raider (TR)
format. Note that files aimed at the Palm platform with have
a pdb extension instead of tr.
The idea of e-books is neat but what
if you prefer the public library?
Libraries are supporting e-books as well.
Check your local library and see what they have to offer.
For example: follow this link to the University
of Virginia library.. This library is a bit different
from some of the others in that it offers some books to the
general public while most do not. Many libraries have a web
presence but require a locally obtained library card to use
the web facilities to actually check out books. In some cases
you can just download an e-book and keep it but most of the
time you have to actually check it out. Many of the libraries
use a DRM system with time limited licenses so you do not
need to return the book to the library. Instead, it will just
time out unless you check it out again. They generally own
a limited number of licenses per book and manage them exactly
like a real book. Once the number of licenses have been used
by customers they won’t let you check out a copy until someone
else’s license expires or is returned. The big advantage is
that you can use your PDA to read the book and after you have
a library card you can do everything from your computer at
home or anywhere that can access the Internet.
Links
for more information
Here are some more links in addition to
all of the links above for e-books and e-book readers.
- Isilo
Reader was originally a Palm program but is now available
on a wide variety of platforms. It uses its own format with
high compression. It can also work with TXT files and Palm
DOC files.
- Tiny ebook reader
is an lit and txt e-book reader and can do its own format,
TeBR. It can read txt files in zip format. (PPC and Smartphone
only)
- Fictionwise
reader can read lit, tiny reader, HTML, TXT files. (PPC
and PC only)
- OverDrive
makes an lit creation program called reader works. The standard
version is free.
- Reader add-in
allows Word 2002 or Word 2003 to create lit e-books.
- Foxit
Software makes a small foot print pdf reader. (PC and
PPC only)
- Cyber
read is a source for e-books.
- Ebooks
.com is a source for e-books.
- Fictionwise
ebooks is a source for e-books.
- Digital
Books index is a source of e-books.
- Planet
ebook has digital PDF books.
- Internet
Public Library is an index source of e-books and online
resources.
- California
Digital Library contains many resources. Check the Scholarship
link for online books.
- EServer
has a collection of e-books and other resources. It is maintained
by Iowa State University.
Also look at online sites for regular book
stores. They often have e-books as well.
On-line html books often work well using
a PDA browser. Of course they can also be downloaded and used
with some of the readers mentioned above. |
