Installing e-books

[sanjayschrapel]

okay, ive searched these forums and although the stuff posted by YellowRose is very useful, i am still left in the dark on some points.

i downloaded and installed Palm Reader today and installed it to the RAM. I also downloaded a couple of eBooks with the extension .pdb, ie a palm database file. I thought i could just install them using the install tool. So i did, and Palm Reader wont acknowledge their existences. What exactly do i have to do?

dont flame me, if you have nasty comments about my noobiness then keep them to yourself.

[ixi]

Sorry for the stupid question, but are you sure you REALLY installed them? Just asking because I had just today a similar problem. One of the books I tried to upload was kinda junk, meaning only 1 k in size. This blocked the entire upload process (but didn't give any error mesage). Check your install tool and see if they are still listed, which would indicate they weren't installed.

Happy New Year

[sebring]

Are you sure you installed Palm Reader compatible ebooks. I believe it only reads doc files and Palm Reader specific files? There are many ebook formats for Palm devices, but Palm Reader only reads a couple of them. Others are specific to other reader apps. That's one of the pains related to ebooks.

[RD100]

A few other good free eBook readers are MobiPocket, Plucker, and CSpotRun.

www.mobipocket.com (http://www.mobipocket.com)

www.plkr.org (http://www.plkr.org)

http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/

Chances are, if you load an eBook that can't be viewed in Palm Reader, it may be viewable in one of the above readers.

[sanjayschrapel]

thanks guys, i will have to download some of those apps.

[*YellowRose*]

sanjayschrapel~ if you could post a link to the books you're trying to read, I'd be happy to see what the deal is with them. It IS entirely possible that they are formatted for a different reader . . . you can usually tell from the creator ID (which you can see in most file management programs).

You may find this helpful:

Determining .pdb format

Determining what format a .pdb file is in

You can open .pdb or .prc files with a text editor like Wordpad and you will see, near the beginning of the file, the Type and Creator codes of the file. For example, if the .pdb or .prc file contains the text "ToGoToGo" near the start of the file, it's an iSilo file. You can also use Windows Find File to search for PDA files of a specific creator or type. For example, if you want to find all the iSilo documents on your PC, go to Start->Find->Files or Folders and search for files containing the text string 'ToGoToGo'. (This great tip was provided by Javier Bonet and Mark Worthington). I've compiled a short list of Type/Creator codes for some PalmOS document formats found here at MemoWare, as follows:

TEXt~REAd = DOC
DB99~DBOS = DB (Database program)
vIMG~View = FireViewer/ImageViewer
PmDB~PmDB = HanDBase
Info~INDB = InfoView
ToGo~ToGo = iSilo
SDoc~SilX = iSilo 3 (newer version of iSilo)
JbDb~JBas = JFile
JfDb~JFil = JFile Pro
DATAL~Sdb = LIST
Mdb1~Mdb1 = MobileDB
Data~Plkr = Plucker
Data~Sprd = QuickSheet
TEXt~TlDc = TealDoc
Info~TlIf = TealInfo
Data~TlMl = TealMeal
Data~TlPt = TealPaint
data~TDBP = ThinkDB
Tdat~Tide = Tides
ToRa~TRPW = TomeRaider
BDOC~WrdS = WordSmith
If you run Win95/98/NT, you can use the pdbhdr utility from Richard Hartman to determine the Palm database name, creator code and type for .pdb and .prc files. Or, if you are a Linux user, Hasan Umit Ezerce has crafted up a simple shell script that will tell you what file format a .pdb file is. You can download doctype (doctype-1.2.tar.gz) here, and command-line execution is in the format doctype [path/filename.pdb]. I forget where I got that quote from, but I keep it stored as a Palm memo for reference . . . ;)

[*YellowRose*]

And a book created *SPECIFICALLY* and only for PalmReader will have "PPrs" as a creator code. Sorry, but I forgot that one. :)

[jackson]

Originally posted by *YellowRose*

You may find this helpful:
Wow !

Thnaks for that. Real Handy.

Jackson

[*YellowRose*]

No problem. :D

Glad to be of help!

[DaveTN]

I know this question is pretty obvious, but I am trying to help. After you installed the ebooks with the palm install tool, did you perform a hotsync?

David