Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
Pdb was the Palm extension for data files and there was no format specified. They could contain data in any form whatever, including plain text or text in a markup language or compressed text or even images. There were only 2 extensions possible on Palms, .pdb and .prc. The first, .pdb, was intended for data and .prc was intended for executables but as I recall neither was enforced and they were interchangeable. And I think either could contain anything.
So yes, you can have formatting in pdb files. I think you're right that books from ereader.com did have some formatting. Most of the early Palm ebooks were simply plain text that had been compressed and put into a pdb file.
Barry
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The e-book format using the .pdb extension was basically a simplified version of HTML (used simple tags but no paragraph tags, you could separate the paragraphs with hard-space indents or a blank line) that allowed formatting such as bold and italic. It also allowed links within the e-book. You could markup the text in a text editor and use a program provided by Palm to convert it into a .pdb file for loading on your Palm OS PDA. Palm also provided a program that allowed you to edit the text file and it would insert the formatting codes for you and then make the .pdb ebook.
One limitation was that you could not specify the typeface for the e-book. With Palm ereaders, you would have the fonts (typeface and size) already loaded on your PDA and you would choose which one you wanted.
One of the main reasons for the development of the ebook format for Palm OS PDAs is that there was a 4K limit for notes, which was not practical for e-book. The .pdb ebook format allowed for long ebooks.