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So, you've just gotten a PalmOS-based PDA... now what? Here are some suggestions for Open Source Software/Free Software available for the Palm, grouped into the following topics: electronic books, games, miscellaneous software, and how to locate other software. I'll close with a few comments about the future of Palms. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. [Editor's note: As part of our preparations for merging themes.org with freshmeat, scoop made it possible to show subsets of our database as separate sites. Our second use of this feature highlights our PalmOS section. Just as you can find nothing but themes at http://themes.freshmeat.net/, you can find nothing but PalmOS applications at http://palm.freshmeat.net/. To help celebrate the new site, David Wheeler has offered this category review that suggests interesting Palm applications to try. We hope you'll chime in with your thoughts about the Palm apps you can't live without and keep submitting them to the database.] Electronic BooksOne major use I've found for PDAs is storing information for later use, particularly as electronic books (eBooks). The best eBooks are often reference books or books you can read a page or two at a time while you're waiting for something. An 8 mebibyte PDA can store a lot of text. For example, if you use 7 of those 8 mebibytes for text and compress the text by 43%, and, on average, the text is 60 characters per line and 60 lines per page, you could store 3,577 pages of text (7MiB/(60*60*.57)). This would be a typical result when using PDOC (described below); if you use better compression algorithms (such as zlib) you can store even more text. One developer using a zlib-based approach claims that 56.5% compression is typical. If that's so, that approach would let the same PDA store 4,687 pages of text. To use a PalmOS PDA to read documents, you have to install at least one document reader; PalmOS systems don't come with any built-in programs to read documents. There are many different data formats used for storing documents, and you need a reader that can read the format of the document you're trying to use. Many PalmOS users end up installing several document reading programs. General-purpose eBook readersThere are basically three good OSS/FS programs for reading typical eBooks: CSpotRun (which reads the PDOC format), Weasel Reader (formerly named GutenPalm, which reads the PDOC and zTXT formats), and Plucker (which reads the Plucker format, a compressed HTML format). If you're using a Palm-based system, you should definitely install Plucker. Most people should also install either CSpotRun or Weasel Reader; I personally have all three installed. Here's a little information about each one:
Deciding which readers to installAgain, if you're using eBooks on a Palm, I believe you must get Plucker. If you want an PDOC reader, deciding between CSpotRun and Weasel Reader is trickier. After all, they both have the same basic functionality; both display PDOC, and they both support adding and jumping to bookmarks, rotated text, auto-scrolling, and searching (case-sensitive and caseless). I've compared CSpotRun 1.1.2 against Weasel Reader 1.56, and in my opinion, CSpotRun is better for reading while Weasel Reader has more "extra" features and is better for "maintaining" PDOC documents. Feel free to install both -- I do! Here's how they compare:
Important: If you install multiple readers of the same format, beware. Palms like to associate data with only one program, and if you delete the program, all of the associated data gets deleted too. If you install both CSpotRun and Weasel Reader, don't just "delete" one later without taking special precautions, or all your PDOC documents may be deleted, too. Basic synchronization won't help here; synchronization will automatically remove the PDOC backup files in your PC, too. Getting eBooks to readOnce you get the eBook readers, you'll need eBooks to read. The plucker Web site includes interesting sample documents. Large collections of older classic documents (over a thousand) in Plucker format can be found at Pluckerbooks, which also has links to other sources of Plucker documents. The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) generates its HOWTOs, mini-HOWTOs, and FAQs in Plucker format, so it's a good source for Linux-related documents. Bandersnatch Unpress includes various freely-available documents in several formats (including PDOC and Plucker), including The U.S. Constitution. Memoware is a commercial eBook company; they include a lot of documents in different incompatible proprietary formats that you must pay for, but they also make many free documents available. You might consider documents such as The Art of War by Sun Tzu and The Script to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You can also create documents in these data formats if you have the text in electronic form. You can use http://pilot.screwdriver.net/, which will automatically convert arbitrary Web pages into PDOC format. As I noted earlier, Plucker comes with tools to create readable documents in Plucker format. Specialized electronic booksSome material is made easier to use by running specialized readers. For example, I wanted the Bible on my PDA. If you do, too, try Bible Reader for Palm, a good reader which offers various translations you can install in it. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer more modern translations, due to copyright issues. It does let you see two translations simultaneously, and offers searching and jumping to specific verses. I also use PocketBabylon, a nice French/English word translation tool. The author hopes to add other languages -- please help him! (There seems to be a lack of good public domain word translation dictionaries; help with this general problem would be appreciated.) GamesI can't possibly review "all OSS/FS Palm games". Instead, here are a few good ones to consider:
There are many other games, but game preferences definitely vary by individuals. See the section below on locating other software. Miscellaneous SoftwareSome useful programs I'd recommend are:
If you like to fiddle with Python, you can install Pippy, a Python implementation for Palms. I've been trying version 0.7, and, unfortunately, it's not very useful yet. As of this version, it doesn't support floating point nor complex numbers (I wish they'd support MathLib!), many important Python libraries have been removed (such as the regular expression libraries), and, as far as I can tell, you can't write and store files on the PDA itself. Still, this is a work in progress; I hope that the final version will be more feature-rich so developers can write and run many kinds of useful programs. For more general information on Palm-hosted programming languages, see the IBM review by Mertz and Blais and Palm OS development resources. Editing textAs a tool for editing text, I find PDAs awful without a full-sized keyboard. Anything less is just too painful to use when entering lots of text. Styluses and micro-keyboards just don't do the job. If you're doing a lot of text entry, you might want a laptop instead, since the small screen of a PDA isn't as nice as a laptop's screen. If you need both tiny size and the ability to enter lots of text, get a folded-up full-size keyboard for your PDA. I took notes at the FOSDEM 2002 conference using my PDA, and it worked out well. Once I was done, I could put both the keyboard and the PDA in my pockets, something you just can't do with a laptop. However, the built-in Memo Pad application limits each memo to 4096 characters (about one page), so it's a poor approach to entering or editing real documents. The OSS/FS programs for editing text aren't very capable, unfortunately. You could also use Zurk's ZDoc, but it's really no better; you still have to break documents into 4096 character chucks. One of the more promising approaches to an OSS/FS text editor is to use SmallBASIC. SmallBASIC implements a variant of the BASIC programming language, and includes a surprisingly capable integrated development environment. Its IDE includes the ability to import and export PDOC format, and it can edit large files (each line must be 4095 characters or less, which is far less restrictive than Memo Pad). Unfortunately, while SmallBASIC is a really friendly IDE for program development, it's unpleasant as a general text editor. For example, you have to retype filenames (instead of choosing from a list) when importing or exporting PDOC files. Also, SmallBASIC is still in an alpha stage of development and isn't really intended as a general-purpose text editor for large documents. When testing it with large files, I managed to crash it twice (and one crash required a data-losing reset). Currently, if you must edit large documents on PalmOS, you need one of the many proprietary programs. However, in a little while, I believe that SmallBASIC (or some derivative of it) will be ready as a general-purpose text editor. I don't see an OSS/FS word processor in the short-term horizon, though once a text editor is available, it might be expanded to that as well. Locating other SoftwareHow can you find other software? In addition to the freshmeat PalmOS category, one good, organized location for OSS/FS software is palmopensource.com. If you just want free (beer) software and don't care if it's OSS/FS, another source is freewarepalm.com (but note that you have to pay to really use much of the so-called "free" stuff). If you're also using Linux, you can find useful information in the Linux Documentation Project's Palm OS Desktop HOWTO (available in many formats, including HTML, PDF, and Plucker). The Future of PalmsGiven current technology, there's a lot to like about Palms. They cost much less than Wince- or Linux-based PDAs, simply because Palms are designed specifically for the limited memory, display, input bandwidth, CPU performance, and electrical power of today's PDAs. Linux and Wince systems weren't designed from the ground-up for that circumstance, so they require more hardware (e.g., memory and CPU speed) than PalmOS simply to run, and much of their extra hardware is is consumed by the operating system instead of being actually useful. That extra hardware costs more, and (even worse) drains the batteries. Palms tend to work much longer on the same batteries. However, it's quite likely that things will change over the next few years. I expect that hardware for PDAs will continue to get better, just as it has for laptops, and then the advantages of PalmOS will be worthless. PalmOS's underlying software design and implementation are awful in many ways; there are many arbitrary and unnecessary limits (especially size limits) that make PalmOS unnecessarily difficult to program. Also, PalmOS's fundamental incompatibility with larger desktop and server operating systems is probably insurmountable (e.g., PalmOS poorly supports large text files, making it unnecessarily difficult to interoperate with other systems). And note that PalmOS is not OSS/FS, unlike Linux. None of this is a disaster if you're using OSS/FS applications. The OSS/FS software can be ported to other architectures, and the Linux PDAs in particular will probably attract those ports. Author's bio: David A. Wheeler is an expert in computer security and has written several articles on Open Source Software/Free Software (OSS/FS). He's the author of the Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO, Why Open Source Software/Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!, More than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size, and The Most Important Software Innovations. His Web site is at http://www.dwheeler.com/. T-Shirts and Fame! We're eager to find people interested in writing articles on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an article gets a t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about. [Comments are disabled]
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Where are the .PRC download links? My device is a -palm-. It will download a .prc just fine. I have zero interest in downloading zips, tarballs, exe's, or anything that requires a non-palm device, OS, or conduit.
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Strip You forgot one of the most useful free palm applications ever made. Strip. (Secure Tool for
Recalling Important Passwords). It keeps track of all your passwords and
encrypts the whole thing with 256bit encryption (AES) and best of all it is
free and GPLed.
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Re: Strip
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A web based ztxt converter http://linuxfocus.org/cgi-bin/2ztxt?about
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Re: A web based ztxt converter
If so, you can post it to the Desktop section of www.palmopensource.com . BTW, if you need open source software for PalmOS, you should visit www.palmopensource.com which is a kind of freshmeat for PalmOS but ONLY with open source software ! Cheers, Ludo.
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Re: A web based ztxt converter
And to freshmeat. ;^) --
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Are there any decent text editors at all? I've got a Visor and just bought a keyboard with the intention of doing creative writing away from desktop computers. The 4096 character limit will really hamper my efforts. Why is there a limit and is there any way around it?
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Re: Are there any decent text editors at all?
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should I get one? I am currently looking to buy a Palm Pilot but I am a bit nervous about it.
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Re: should I get one?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
You wouldn't want to read from one continuously for 10 hours a day, but normal use doesn't cause a problem.
The standard scheduling apps do just fine for most people. I've never felt a need to look for any others. Look through some of the links here. --
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Making your own e-books The article only mentions pilot.screwdriver.net for creating your own doc-format e-books, but there is a convenient (and more featureful) open source alternative you can run on your own box (Linux or that other OS)... Pyrite Publisher. It converts web pages, translates zTXT to Doc format and vice versa, and more. I highly recommend it, but then again I wrote it so perhaps I am a bit biased...
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Any chance of Zaurus getting the same nice treatment? Thanks for the great site and all the hard work. Any chance of the Zaurus PDA (which runs Linux) getting a zaurus.freshmeat.net ?
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Re: Any chance of Zaurus getting the same nice treatment?
Maybe when there's enough software to justify it. :) --
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try Progect -- it's like TuxCards, and it's free http://sourceforge.net/projects/progect By the way, TuxCards is at http://www.tuxcards.de Cheers, --
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