Why won't ereader see my pdb files?

[CClio333]

I can see the files listen on my handheld, but ereader keeps saying that I don't have any books installed. What's its problem?

[HarryT]

PDB is not one file format; it's just a "wrapper" which can contain data in any format from an eBook to a spreadsheet. Are you sure that the files that you're trying to look at are actually eReader files?

[CClio333]

Some additional info - I downloaded some of these files from Project Gutenberg. They are apparently "plucker" files. I downloaded others from manybooks.net. I have been able to view items from manybooks using ereader before, but for some reason I can't get it to work with the new manybooks files I just downloaded.

[HarryT]

Plucker files are not eReader files.

[comtrjl]

On my Pocket PC eReader books are in a subdirectory of 'My Documents' called 'Peanut Press' - perhaps they need to go there. Also, as mentioned above, .pdb as an extension/file type is used by other products as well - iSilo is one such - and they are mutually incompatible.

[wallcraft]

There is separate reader software for Plucker files, see Plucker Home Page. You can also read these on the desktop, and on Linux handhelds, using FBReader.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by CClio333

I can see the files listen on my handheld, but ereader keeps saying that I don't have any books installed. What's its problem?

Question 1: What generated these files?

PDB is a generic file extension in Palm OS standing for Palm Database. A PDB file can contian anything. PalmOS uses the Creator and Type attributes of the file to know what program owns it and can display the data it contains.

eReader can display Palm "doc" files, which have a Creator ID of REAd and a Type of TEXt, and files in PML format, which have a Creator ID of PPrs. eReader won't see other PDB files, in RAM or on a card.

Question 2: Where are the files stored? Most Palm apps that can read data on a card expect to see it in specific places. eReader looks in /Palm/Launcher and /Palm/Books. If they are elsewhere on the card, it won't see them.

It sounds like these either aren't eReader files, or they are on the card in a directory eReader doesn't look at, or both.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by CClio333

Some additional info - I downloaded some of these files from Project Gutenberg. They are apparently "plucker" files. I downloaded others from manybooks.net. I have been able to view items from manybooks using ereader before, but for some reason I can't get it to work with the new manybooks files I just downloaded.

You cannot view Plucker files with eReader. Plucker is an offline HTML viewer for PalmOS, and has its own data file format. It's free and open source, and you can find it here: http://www.plkr.org

You will want to install the Plucker viewer, and the syszlib.prc file, which is a Palm shared library version of Zlib, and required for viewing files created with the high compression option.

Plucker can live on the card in /Palm/Launcher. sysZlib must be in RAM.

Plucker will look for files in RAM, or in /Palm/Launcher, /Palm/eBooks, or /Palm/Programs/Plucker on a card. (I use /Palm/Programs/Plucker here.)

I have about 3,200 books in Plucker format on a card. I roll my own from the PG HTML versions. As well as the Plucker viewer on my PDA, it requires Plucker Desktop on my PC. The Plucker parser does the actual conversion of the HTML files to the format Plucker uses on the PDA.

To make life easier, I use Rafael Fetzer's freeware PDA Converter application. PDA converter is a GUI front end for the Plucker parser. It provides a convenient means to specify the options you want, then calls the Plucker parser in a background task to do the conversion.

You can get PDA Converter here: http://www.jakewalk.de/meine-software/pdaconverter/
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Dennis

[JSWolf]

CClio333 can you try downloading some of the Mobipocket format eBooks and see if eReader will handle them? If so, you can download from the E-Books section and read from there. None of the eBooks posted to MobileRead have DRM.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

CClio333 can you try downloading some of the Mobipocket format eBooks and see if eReader will handle them? If so, you can download from the E-Books section and read from there. None of the eBooks posted to MobileRead have DRM.

eReader will not handle Mobi formatted ebooks. It handles Palm doc files and PML files.
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Dennis

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

eReader will not handle Mobi formatted ebooks. It handles Palm doc files and PML files.

Many of the original PRC files in the e-books section should be PalmDOC compatible. The more recent ones are MOBI, and so probably not readable by eReader. Perhaps we need a MOBI2PRC command to down convert from MOBI to PalmDOC.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Many of the original PRC files in the e-books section should be PalmDOC compatible. The more recent ones are MOBI, and so probably not readable by eReader. Perhaps we need a MOBI2PRC command to down convert from MOBI to PalmDOC.

I'd hate to see that. PalmDOC is essentially plain ASCII, with RLE compression to save space in RAM. If you do that conversion, you lose fonts, text attributes, hyperlinks, and any embedded images. Since Mobipocket Reader for Palm OS is free these days, there normally isn't a good reason to not install it to read Mobi format books. (And you need text files in *nix format, using only LF as the EOL character. Embedded carriage returns is DOS/Windows files are treated as hard breaks, and screw up reflow.)

For files that were plain text originally, from PG or wherever, you're better served to install something like PalmFiction or WeaselReader. PalmFiction can handle ASCII text files, Word docs, and RTF files on a card, as well as PalmDOC and zTXT files. WeaselReader was originally designed to be a Palm viewer for PG etexts, handles PalmDOC and zTXT files in RAM or on a card, and has an option to skip over the lengthy PG boilerplate PG used to stick at the head of every etext they produced.
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Dennis