Quote:
Originally Posted by historyb
It's a Palm 111e with 2 mb ram it runs 3.5.x not sure what OS yet. I know there are a ton of software out there for it.
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Actually, the IIIe is an OS 3.1 device. There is a downloadable upgrade for the III to OS 3.3 on Palm's site. I'm not sure if it works on the IIIe.
My old Handspring Visor Deluxe was OS 3.1 and couldn't be upgraded.
You'll want to check the OS requirements on any software you install, as a lot of things want OS 3.5 or better.
For reading ebooks, there are several options. One program I used to use happily was Bill Clagett's CSpotRun. The early version was tiny, at 22K, and fast. The major lacks were no support for categories or bookmarks, and no ability to read files on an expansion card. For a Palm IIIe, which doesn't
have an expansion card, the latter is not a big issue. CSpotRun reads Palm "doc" files, which are plain text files, compressed to save RAM, and decompressed on the fly by the reader. The compression used offers about a 40% size reduction.
CSpotRun is here:
http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/
Another program I used on my old Deluxe was Plucker. Plucker is a free, open source HTML viewer for Palm devices. It is designed to "pluck" web pages and convert them on the desktop to the format used on the PDA. I have thousands of HTML format texts from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere converted to Plucker on my device. Plucker defailts to Palm doc compatible compression, but can also use gzip compatible compression with the assistance of a Palm port of Zlib, provided with the viewer. Plucker documents created with the high compression option are compressed an average of 70%. The advantage to Plucker is support for text attributes, hyperlinks, embedded images and (on OS 5 machines) custom fonts. You may need to grab an older version for the IIIe. I'm not sure if the latest runs on an OS 3.1 device.
Plucker is here:
http://www.plkr.org
Another option I used to use is WeaselReader. WeaselReader began as GutenPalm, a Palm based reader for Project Gutenberg etexts. It includes things like an option to automatically skip over the lengthy license boilerplate at the beginning of many Gutenberg plain text files. WeaselReader can read Palm doc files, and zTXT files, which are also plain text but use the same compression as Plucker's high compression option. Weaselreader also uses Zlib for this, and will need it installed.
WeaselReader is here:
http://gutenpalm.sourceforge.net/
Your biggest challenge may be getting books you want to read in Palm doc, zTXT, or Plucker format.
Project Gutenberg now offers Plucker format files as a download option.
Munseys and ManyBooks are also sources. Munseys offers books in Plucker and iSilo formats among others. ManyBooks offers Plucker, Palm doc, and zTXT files among others.
Munseys is here:
http://www.munseys.com
Manybooks is here:
http://www.manybooks.net
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Dennis