Just a quick web page to make my Zaurus/Agenda programs/ports accessible.

Contact me at tim at timwentford dot uklinux dot net or timwentford@hotmail.com.

Tim's Zaurus Programs

OpieReader

Obligatory Screenshot Section

This is a text from Fictionwise with just *bold* and _italic_ style formatting	This is a Plucker book The items in red text are hyperlinks. Tapping on them jumps to the referenced part of the document.	This is an html formatted book from Baen. Opie-Reader's understanding of html is limited but can be effective.

This is one of the free books for PalmReader from Peanut	Another view of the same book	The Hacker Crackdown from the same site
Note that of the books at this site only a few of the free books can be read by Opie-Reader. Do not buy any books from here expecting to useOpie-Reader with them. They are encrypted and can not be read byOpie-Reader. These screen shots illustrate Opie-Readers ability to understand PML. My long term intention is to use PML marked-up books and then use a custom document preparation utility which oesn't yet exist to produce documents for Opie-Reader.

Will document X work with Opie-Reader?

pdb is a generic database format for Palm devices. Many companies and individuals have mapped e-text formats to this database format but each has done it in a different way. Some are even encrypted for DRM purposes - or even just to make it difficult for other people to support them. Unfortunately this means that Opie-Reader can not be made to work with all pdb files.

The formats which is does understand are:

• "Doc" format - also known as the original Aportis or AportisDoc format.
• Weasel or ztxt format.
• Plucker format.
• gzipped text.
• ppms text.
• iSilo 3 (unencrypted)
• Mobipocket (unencrypted)
• Rocket EBook (unencrypted)
• Plain text with special handling of PML or HTML marked-up text.

It does not support:

• iSiloX or any encrypted iSilo file
• Encrypted Rocket EBook
• Encrypted Mobipocket
• TealDoc (afaik)
• PalmReader/Peanut - although the early versions of these files were based on "Doc" format and Opie-Reader can manage some of the free files.
• EZReader.
• Many others.

Rules of thumb for determining whether a site supplies documents compatible with Opie-Reader:

• if a site sells its own reader then the documents they distribute will only work with that reader (It's pretty obvious why). (e.g.Peanut/Palm [verified incompatible although some of the free documents will work]).
• if a site distributes documents for free but has only onereference (note the singular) to reader software ordistributes only one kind of reader software then the documents will probably not work with Opie-Reader. (e.g. this site [verified incompatible]).
• if a site distributes documents for free and has references (note the plural) to reader software then the documents will probably work with Opie-Reader in the "Doc", Weasel/ztxt or Plucker formats. (e.g. Memoware [verified working]).
• if a site sells documents in multiple formats and hasreferences (note the plural) to reader software then the documents will probably work with Opie-Reader in the "Doc" format. (e.g.FictionWise [verified compatible - I use them all the time] or PDA Bookstore [partially verified - they seem very keen to support the Zaurus so well worth checking out!]).
• ...and the Baen free library books work, too!

Recommended Format

• JPluck - which performs a similar job to the Plucker Desktop but is much faster and is written in Java - and is amongst the nicest to use open source software I have come across to date 8^).
• gut - a tool for converting Project Gutenberg texts written in Perl.
  

Installing

Download the ipks for the version you want and the corresponding help files and use the Add/Remove Software app as normal.

I've deliberately kept the help files in a different ipk so that you can install the help when you first start using Opie-Reader and then delete it once you don't need it any more. I recommend installing it and reading through it each time you install a new version of Opie-Readeras often there are new features which may not be apparent otherwise.

If you add any etext/... entries to /home/QtPalmtop/etc/mime.types file then you can open up your document from the documents tab (remember to restart Qtopia after updating the file, either by using the Shutdown app on the settings tab or by installing/uninstalling an app). I removed the chemical/x-pdb entry and added

etext/palmdoc pdb prc
etext/ppms ppms
etext/reb rb

entries in my mime.types file.

Downloading

• Get it here. I think I may be missing a step in the install because sometimes I get a error about not being able to find a library. If you can't get it to start it may be worth a reboot - or just get the statically linked version below (anyone who knows how to refresh the dynamic library cache from an ipk let me know 8^). There is no bugfix version ATM.
• Here is a version for Sharp ROMs which doesn't use dynamic loading. Some people have problems with the standard version, some people don't. If you do, use this version.
  
• Opie/OZ version is here.
• This ipk is for versions of Qtopia greater than 1.5 but which still use gcc 2.x (there is a Cacko Qtopia 1.6 ROM plus this should work on the Archos device)
• Here are some old versions of the help files which I will update and replace real soon now. You can read them online here.

The bugfix versions are the latest stable versions which include bugfixes to the main release but the changes are too minor to warrant a formal release. If you get a bug in a bugfix version let me know that it is a bugfix version. If the version numbers of the main and bugfix versions are the same then there are no bugfixes - they will be the same file.

If you do experience a bug then often it may have been fixed in the bugfix version. I try never to put up a bugfix version which is worse than the main-stream version so it is usually worth trying the bugfix version.

Tim's Agenda Programs

This is what is available currently:

• TWReader: A small text reader.

TWReader

New(07-Nov-2001): Version 1.2 experimental (source code only) is here.

New(10-Oct-2001): Version 1.1 beta is here. Includes binary for snow v1.1.x and a new icon from Bill Kendrick.

TWReader is a small text reader program which works with files generated with makedoc (Aportis doc format), text files and files compressed using a custom version of PPM. Depending on the trade-off you choose between compression ratio, memory usage and speed of random access (which most shows up when doing a page-up), the PPM compression algorithm gives compression ratios similar to BZip2 - substantially better than the Aportis doc format.

I've also supplied the compression program so that you can compress your own files. If there is sufficient demand, I'll get a converter to go directly from doc-format to PPM format.

The following table gives you some idea of the compression ratios achievable with this program. It shows file sizes for the Project Gutenberg text for Anne of Green Gables.

File	Size (in bytes)	Compression Ratio	Memory required
Original text	573714	0%	0
Makedoc (Aportis doc format)	329543	43%	2k
agppms (default settings)	184187	68%	350k
agppms (best settings)	151733	74%	800k
bzip2 -1	180175	69%	340k
bzip2 -9	154280	73%	2.2M

The compression ratios is the percentage reduction in file size - so bigger is better. The Memory Required column is the approximate memory requirements required to decompress. I think it is pretty obvious why the Aportis doc format has been so populer on small devices!

TWReader
Source code - includes binary for 1.1.x snow	TWReaderV1_0.tar.gz
PPM Compressor
Source code	ppms.tgz