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cspotrun It's been my reader for right at 9 years now, even with the new built-in reader in PalmOS.

MakeDocW will neatly convert ascii to .pdb format for Palm Pilot book readers. Then CSpotRun will let you read the document with a freeware low overhead reader. I use my Palm extensively as a reader because it is light, easy to carry, and has lots of books on it at any given time.

I have found few defects in Gutenberg documents, so I am not sure what you are finding. Of course, since they are ascii, portable to all formats, and free to all, they can't be in a temporarily useful proprietary format with pictures, etc. But, IMHO the text is what most people want anyway.

I agree with you on one point: the Vx was absolutely the high point of Palm development. It had enough memory and processing power for any practical palmtop app (if you needed more you should probably be using a laptop anyway). And the battery lasted for days, even under heavy usage.

The Vx has one major flaw -- the up button sticks out too far, so the cover presses against it when it's in your pocket. This is severely uncool, since all the function buttons double as power buttons. Fortunately, a hack with the (self-explanatory) name of StayOffIfUp provides a reasonable workaround.

I'd still be using my Vx if I hadn't lost it. Should have tried to find a used one. Instead, I "upgraded" to the m515. Which has a bunch of new features I either never use or positively hate. The color hirez display looks cool, but usually needs backlighting to be readable -- which is a terrible battery drain. And they had to go and change all the physical parameters, so all the third-party styluses and covers for V series don't fit. And all the function buttons stick out too far!

I have Weasel Reader installed in my Palm but CSpotRun has been so good I don't find a need to explore Weasel Reader. It carried me through many of my first eBooks (and will continue to do so). I recommend it and it uses the GPL.

CSpotRun. Very lightweight and efficient -- great for reading doc format stuff.

Thanks for the description of PalmReader. So far I've only been reading public domain or Baen free library books. Maybe I'll try dipping my toe in the pool of DRM.

1. Open Gutenberg file in UltraEdit (shareware)

2. Run this macro
InsertMode
ColumnModeOff
HexOff
UnixReOf f
Find "^p^p"
Replace All "QQQQ"
Find "^p"
Replace All " "
Find "QQQQ"
Replace All "^p "

3. Save file.

4. Run MakeDocW (free) on the file.

5. Hotsync to the Palm/Visor.

6. Read and bookmark in CSpotRun (free but you can send a donation). Annotate in something else.

The only thing that'll cost you is the PDA itself and I bet a used 2-meg one isn't that much.

The mobility - yes. I read almost exclusively from gutenberg, using the best document reader I've ever seen, which also happens to be free, cspotrun (Get it, see spot run? A simple reader.) It does everything you are talking about, and there's no flicker in PalmOS. Edit the texts and prep them with any of the utilities - I generally just use makedocw. The format (tealdoc, aportisdoc, whatever it is) compresses the docs about 2:1.
All of your docs are always at hand, and open to wherever you last viewed them, and with the autooff function of palmos, you can shut off the light and read a book that, if you fall asleep reading it, saves your place and turns off the light.

I was thinking it would be funny to suggest someone start work on an open-source, GPL'd DRM scheme.

Luckily I checked SourceForge first, because there already is such seemingly contradictory work going on.

OK, I searched SourceForge and I found something, csrdrm.sf.net. Is that what you were talking about?

The DRM option for C Spot Run is an external library with decompression and decryption. If you were refered here by C Spot Run then you are missing a module of the form csrdrmXX.prc where the XX is some number and letter combination.

The csrdrm project on sf.net:

Project: C Spot Run Digital Right Management
Digital Rights Management example library for C Spot Run.
Foundry Member: :Handheld Foundry

• Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable
• Environment: Other Environment
• Intended Audience: Developers, End Users/Desktop
• License: zlib/libpng License
• Operating System: PalmOS
• Programming Language: Assembly, C
• Topic: Cryptography

Project UNIX name: csrdrm
Registered: 2002-01-15 21:13
Activity Percentile (last week): 0%

Which you found out using FactorPad for your Palm, right?

bryguy

My favorite DOC reader for Palms can do 90 degree flips: http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/
It's GPL too!

ZDOC never did much for me as far as Palm Doc readers goes. Though it has the worst name of any software ever released, CSpotRun is a high quality Doc reader that has been released under the GPL.

Hello Katz,

I'd be more than happy to share some of my reading habits with you.

Newspapers have never quite tickled my fancy, I've always had a hard time to tackle an overly large and totally untame sheet of paper. The times I do read something news worthy would be over a person's shoulder or when it appears in a more tame form (ie. cut into pieces).

On the average, being a geek, I'm a real busy person and would give almost nothing to the major newspapers out there (but I'v seen the new Onion), politics and gossip just does not delight me. The only time you do see me get over my boredom and read something in default format would be to turn the newspaper on it's back, and explor the last few pages in the hope of finding something comical to entertain.

The same goes for traditional books. I am an avid reader, but over the last few years, I've been slacking very badly (since it's just not economically possible to read a book anymore nowdays). All sorts of constraints apply when reading a book.

My solutions arrived in the form a small electornic device (which I immediatly dubbed 'garo' -- a long lost feline friend). This device was a PalmOS based Handspring Visor Delux, with 8mb ram and the ability to upgrade using an unique hardware modular slot (even though it's flash is not upgradeable).

After having exhausted my batters in less than a week (of continuous play with the Visor), I decided to explore the waste expances of software available for PalmOS. I installed utility after utility, getting delighted with the slightest twist of a coding wizard (and yes the little mirror program that turned your palm screen black did send giggles up my spine and entertain a whole load of female friends).

One of the delightfully free software that was buzzed down my USB connection into my Visor was AvantGo. Which was a mixture of channel based online newsfeeds and other resources (even /. could be tamed to exist inside my avantgo). I quickly started to apperciate the depth and breath of this free services and the number of channels available on my Visor. This is the time I started to read newsspapers seriously. I have the following channels on my Visor, CNet's News.com channel (updated puter type microsoftish news), ExploreZone (Scientific not so in depth news), HollyWood.com (Movie times for my city! very important -- daily as everyting else), New York Time ( traditional media now readable), PalmCentral/PDABuzz, Slashdot.org (Oh baby .. this could be created by making a custom channel in avant go and putting this URL in), The weather channel (Ok, not so necessary in the desert :))), USAToday (fine with me), Wired News (Some low tech is fine while doing the daily garbage disposal).

I take my visor everwhere, it fits snuggly in my pocket and feels very conforatble in my hand. All channels are updated at least once a day. I usually update early morning and in the evenining. News is read where I happen to be :)

Now that takes care of news.. What about books?! It took me over a month to get into books on my Visor and man.. Now I'm reading almost 2 books a week after that. My fav doc reader would undoubtably be Bill Clagett's CSpotRun, A GPLed reader that is undoubtably the king of all Doc Readers out there. It has the ability to make the fonts closer, to turn the text into every single position known on the pilot (read from the sides or upside down?), autoscroll, drag scroll, scroll using the pageup-pagedown (fun!), and anything you could contribute! Ebooks are fun! Most books from the gutenberg project have been converted into ebooks over at MemoWare also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit. Others check here. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on tolstoy.org), re-read Most books from William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke and various other entities. I've also had the pleasure of reading classics such as ShakesSpeare, SunTzu, Tolkein, Plato, Confucious and many others right on my PDA.

Overall, the handheld computer with it's extreemly large memory (yes books in electornic format are tiny!) has been the only reason why I've gone back and read so many books (not to mention carry around so many techical notes and moste of the relevant HOWTO pages). I would recommend a handheld PDA to anyone who reads it and encorage them to read electornic Newspapers and e-books on a regualar basis.

Enjoy!
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