Tomeraider for Linux?

An anonymous reader asks: "Those who read e-books on PDAs may probably know that 'tomeraider' is a very popular format. After a few searches I've found Tomeraider for PDA's and Windows, and even utilities to convert from HTML to the tomeraider format on Linux. But I haven't seen anything that actually lets you VIEW tomeraider files on a Linux desktop. Does anyone know of an application that is open source and supports this format? What are the options and what works best?"

Comments

Doesn't exist.

[3-State Bit]

I just searched for 15 minutes on Google, and I would be extremely surprised if any project anywhere displayed TomeRaider files under Linux.

Perhaps you can get an EPOC emulator to run it under linux, or (doubt it exists for Linux; seen it on Windows) a PalmOS emulator. Then there's always WINE. Or, you could run the palm-OS emulator under WINE. Either way, frankly I don't understand why you'd want to run on Linux what is a fairly low-interest application. tomeraider + viewer returns 1,100+ hits, versus 25,000+ of gpl pdf viewer -- d'you know, PDF is an open format now. View a linux browser e.g. here, which is GPL'd, but of course the most robust and mature free-to-use Linux solution is Adobe's. See first two entries here, to create and view PDF files respectively. (Free to use.)

As the bylines say, Tomeraider's just a "freeware application for the TomeRaider format available for PalmOS, EPOC [a PalmOS competitor -3-state], PocketPC and Windows platforms."
And that's it.
Why you would want to run under linux what seems mostly to be a format supported under handhelds is beyond me....

It doesn't seem serious to me. Forget about it.

Besides, learn PDF-making software and I'll be happy to receive your documents exactly as you intended them to look without your having to do anything outside of instant, no-tweaking WYSIWYG, and without a proprietary format.

Wanna' know why MS word is so popular in the office?
Cuz' the document you get looks like the document I sent, and you can edit it as such, and return it, and the document I get returned looks just like it did when you finished working on it.

Can't say that of many widely used document formats...

Therefore, let's all adopt PDF.

It's democratic. It's Free. It's..... OPEN SOURCE!

Re:Doesn't exist.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Therefore, let's all adopt PDF.

Hear, hear. It always cracks me up when I hear or read somebody deriding PDF because... well, honestly I'm not sure why. Because Adobe invented it or something. Anyway, they hop up and down and spit and gesticulate about how PDF is bad and wrong, and how TeX and XML are the only true document formats.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here on my Mac saving everything-- web pages, screen shots, documents, basically everything that I want to keep and don't need to edit directly-- as PDF, straight out of my applications. Easy as la-la-la.

PDF is absolutely one of the great innovations of the 90's.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[samjam]

they hop up and down and spit and gesticulate

I've seen them do this, it is a pitiful sight. Some of them can't even walk and chew gum at the same time.

PDF is postscript plus the bits it needs to make it work everywhere.

However tomeraider is not so good IMHO, Mobi Pocket Reader is much better and comes with a free ebook builder for windows, but sadly doesn't supports linux either and wine chokes on installshield install. It seems to be, roughly, a compressed html browser.

Sam

Re:Doesn't exist.

[biglig2]

Well, PDF is great, sure, but isn't it a little sucky for handhelds, given that it includes a definition of the page size?

And in any case, he isn't asking "what format should I use" he's asking "I have a buncha stuff in this format, can I read it under Linux?"

I use Palm DOC format myself, as it has the widest range of readers, including some native Linux readers - but each to their own. It's so messy not having an agreed standard - DOC is the most popular, but there are so many others, each with a significant market share. Could be worse, he could have e-books in .lit format. ;-)

Anyhow, to get back to the original question, 3-state has exactly the right idea - get hold of a copy of the POSE emulator (apt-get pose 3.5-1 or whatever your own flavour requires ;-), find a ROM somewhere (sign up as a developer or doewnload a copy of your own Palm) and load TomeRaider on it.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[JJGreenaway]

Nice rant, but TomeRaider isn't anything like PDF I'm afraid. It's more of a database than an ebook - it's main use is large reference works, dictionaries, encyclopedias etc. You start typing a word in your handheld and it instantly finds the entry for it, even for docs 10s of MB in size. And all the entries can be cross referenced and linked. It's really quite neat.

TomeRaider isn't freeware either - it's shareware. It's be fantastic if there was an open source equivalent, but as far as I know there isn't...

Re:Doesn't exist.

[pete-classic]

PDF doesn't really compete with TeX or XML, but with PS and DVI.

-Peter

Re:Doesn't exist.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Yes, I know. But the argument often comes up, particularly on Slashdot. On the one side you have people who think that PDF is a great format for digital documents and whatnot. On the other side, you have people who bitch about it's being "proprietary" and say TeX and XML are the only politically acceptable formats.

This doesn't make sense to anyone, least of all me. But it comes up all the time.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[0x0d0a]

Wanna' know why MS word is so popular in the office?
Cuz' the document you get looks like the document I sent, and you can edit it as such, and return it, and the document I get returned looks just like it did when you finished working on it.

Can't say that of many widely used document formats...

Therefore, let's all adopt PDF.

PDF isn't designed for editable content, and Word files are. This is actually a major source of irritation for me.

Word documents are frequently used to hand information around. This is DUMB. I don't care if you're an MS shop, you love MS and you'd like nothing more than to give 50% of your yearly revenue to MS, Word documents are a fucking awful publication format. They're good for collaborating, actively working on documents when everyone uses Word. However, people that hand out documentation or similar in DOC format should stop.

Reasons to use PDF instead of Word files when releasing read-only information:
* You don't have to worry about the remote person having the proper fonts -- you can embed all needed information
* You don't have to worry about macro viruses
* You don't have to worry about old version of Word not being able to import your document
* You don't have to worry about formatting differences when a newer version of Word mis-imports your document
* Acrobat Reader is a much better "reader" from a UI standpoint than Word
* PDFs can be read by anyone on almost any platform
* Acrobat Reader is free, unlike Word
* You're pretty much guaranteed no printing issues with a PDF.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[MrResistor]

There are all sorts of ways to create PDFs on Linux, usually via Ghostscript. For Windows, though, last time I looked there was Distiller and that was about it. I saw rumors that you could hack Ghostscript to run on Windows, but I was never able to find any reliable information in that regard.

Summary: yes there are free PDF tools, but not for Windows.

In my experience, Distiller is OK, but can be difficult to work with. There is a better way, which is included with the full version of Acrobat, which allows you to print to PDF. It uses a dummy postscript printer (you have to have a postscript printer driver installed) and then converts the postscript to PDF, which introduces a lot less errors than Distiller does. I believe that's what is done with Ghostscript, which is actually a postscript tool.

Distiller is usually fine for text documents, but generally sucks for things like CAD drawings, which comprises most of my PDF experience. It's probably worth it to spring the $250 for the full version of Acrobat, especially if you can just set it up on one machine as a shared printer (never tried it, so I don't know if it can be done). If you're looking at buying a license for every workstation, though, you probably want to at least look into the Ghostscript thing.

I definately agree about RTF for text documents, but PDF does more than just text.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[toast0]

Microsoft makes a free word reader (for windows platforms only i think) that you can get from their website anyhow.

I think I heard about some sort of pdf virus fairly recently too, but I don't remember the details

I agree with your other reasons, and your conclusion.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[MrResistor]

Ghostscript runs fine on Windows, and it isn't in any way a hack.

Hmmm, that wasn't the impression that I got when I was looking into it, but that was over a year ago. I might look into it again if I ever need to do that on Windows again. Thanks for the info.

Re:Doesn't exist.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

how the heck do you edit something saved in PDF?

Duh. You don't, typically. Which is the great thing about PDF as a mastering format.

Some programs use PDF as their native file format, however, most notably Illustrator 10.

An interesting thread

[ianezz]

An interesting thread on the subject from comp.sys.palmtops.pilot.

Basically, little hope.