EReader
From MobileRead
eReader is the new name for Palm Reader. It is a viewer for electronic documents on PalmOS and other platforms and devices. If you were really looking for hardware Readers try E-book devices.
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[edit] History
Palm Reader was originally Peanut Reader, a product of early ebook publisher Peanut Press. Palm bought Peanut Press and renamed them the Palm Digital Media division. The product was renamed Palm Reader, and a freeware version was bundled with most PalmOS devices as an optional install, or included in device ROM.
Palm subsequently sold the Digital Media division to Motricity, Inc., who renamed the product eReader, and created versions for Windows Mobile devices, Windows and Mac platforms. As of 01/09/08, Fictionwise acquired eReader from Motricity.
[edit] Features
Like PalmReader, eReader is available in freeware and Pro versions. Currently the Pro version is released free as well on some platforms and for a reduced price on others. The additional features include downloadable font support and dictionary look up. The same executable is used in both the free and pro versions with the pro version reverting to basic support after a trial period.
eReader files are produced from source text in Palm Markup Language format. eReader files in PNPd format can be produced by the older MakeBook and DropBook programs, or by the shareware eBook Studio. They will generally have a .pdb extension.
eReader is capable of displaying Palm "doc" files and PML (Palm Markup Language) formatted files. Documents my be in device RAM, or may be on an expansion card in the /Palm/Launcher or /Palm/Books directories.
In addition, eReader supports Digital Rights Management, and can be used to view downloaded commercial titles. These titles are encrypted, and use a key based on the purchaser's credit card number to decrypt for viewing.
[edit] Platform Support
eReader is supported on PalmOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, Windows, MacOS X and one optimized for Windows on OXO. See http://www.ereader.com/ereader/software/browse.htm
[edit] Content Creation
The easiest method to make content in this format is to use eBook Studio which is available for Windows and MacOS. If you are willing you learn PML, Palm Markup Language, you can create files in a text editor and then drag them to Dropbook or use a Java version called Makebook. Dropbook is also available on Windows and MacOS. Makebook is no longer supported but will run anywhere Java is supported. Dropbook and Makebook are free.
[edit] Palm Markup Language
Palm Markup Language is the source language used to create documents for eReader. Files in this format are then compiled for use with the reader. The following table specifies the Palm Markup Language commands, and what they do. Looking at the table provides insight into what can be done with the PNPd format which Fictionwise calls -ER.PDB.
| \p | New page |
| \x | New chapter; also causes a new page break. Enclose chapter title (and any style codes) with \x and \x |
| \Xn | New chapter, indented n levels (n between 0 and 4 inclusive) in the Chapter dialog; doesn't cause a page break. Enclose chapter title (and any style codes) with \Xn and \Xn |
| \Cn="Chapter title" | Insert "Chapter title" into the chapter listing, with level n (like \Xn). The text is not shown on the page and does not force a page break. This can sometimes be useful to insert a chapter mark at the beginning of an introduction to the chapter, for example. |
| \c | Center this block of text; close with \c on beginning of line |
| \r | Right justify text block; close with \r on beginning of line |
| \i | Italicize block; close with \i |
| \u | Underline block; close with \u |
| \o | Overstrike block; close with \o |
| \v | Invisible text; close with \v (can be used for comments) |
| \t | Indent block. Start at beginning of a line, close with \t at end of a line |
| \T="50%" | Indents the specified percentage of the screen width, 50% in this case. If the current drawing position is already past the specified screen location, this tag is ignored. |
| \w="50%" | Embed a horizontal rule of a given percentage width of the screen, in this case 50%. This tag causes a line break before and after it. The rule is centered. The percent sign is mandatory. |
| \n | Switch to the "normal" font, which is specified by the user |
| \s | Switch to stdFont; close with \s to revert to normal font |
| \b | Switch to boldFont; close with \b to revert to normal font (deprecated; use \B instead) |
| \l | Switch to largeFont; close with \l to revert to normal font |
| \B | Mark text as bold. Unlike the \b tag, \B doesn't change the font, so you can have large bold text. You cannot mix \b and \B in the same PML file. |
| \Sp | Mark text as superscript. Should not be mixed with other styles such as bold, italic, etc. Enclose superscripted text with \Sp. |
| \Sb | Mark text as subscript. Should not be mixed with other styles such as bold, italic, etc. Enclose subscripted text with \Sb. |
| \k | Make enclosed text into small-caps; close with \k. Any characters enclosed in \k tags (including those with accents) are made uppercase and are rendered at a smaller point size than a regular uppercase character. |
| \\ | Represents a single backslash |
| \aXXX | Insert non-ASCII character whose Windows-1252 code is decimal XXX. See the PML character table for details. |
| \UXXXX | Insert non-ASCII character whose Unicode code is hexadecimal XXXX. See the Extended PML character table for details. |
| \m="imagename.png" | Insert the named image. See the section on Images below. |
| \q="#linkanchor"Some text\q | Reference a link anchor which is at another spot in the document. The string after the anchor specification and before the trailing \q is underlined or otherwise shown to be a link when viewing the document. |
| \Q="linkanchor" | Specify a link anchor in the document. |
| \- | Insert a soft hyphen. A soft hyphen shows up only if it is necessary to break a word across a line. |
| \Fn="footnote1"1\Fn | Link the "1" to a footnote whose name is footnote1, tagged at the end of the PML document. See the section on Footnotes and Sidebars below. |
| \Sd="sidebar1"Sidebar\Sd | Link the "Sidebar" text to a sidebar whose name is sidebar1, tagged at the end of the PML document. See the section on Footnotes and Sidebars below. |
| \I | Mark as a reference index item. Enclose index item (and any style codes) with \I and \I. See Creating Dictionaries for more information. |
The extended \UXXXX characters can be compared to other readers at special characters
[edit] Images
The following rules are intended to guarantee that images in your eBook will be viewable on all platforms that eReader runs on.
On low-resolution Palm OS handhelds, an image wider than 158 pixels or taller than 148 pixels will be represented in the text by a thumbnail that the user can tap to view the entire image. Images smaller than 158 x 148 will be presented in-line with the text.
On high-resolution Palm OS handhelds (those having screens of 320x320 pixels or more), images smaller than 158 by 148 pixels will be pixel-doubled. Images larger than 158x148 may be shown in-line with the text, if they will fit on the screen.
On non-Palm OS platforms, small images will be scaled up appropriately. Large images will be scaled down to fit on the page; in this case the user can tap on the image to view the entire image and zoom in or out.
For DropBook to find the image, it must be present in a directory whose name matches that of the PML text file. For example, if "pmlsample.txt" contains a reference to an image called "intro.png", then there must be a directory called "pmlsample_img" that contains intro.png. The directory's name is the name of the PML file (without the .txt extension) with "_img" appended.
Images must be in PNG format and cannot be filtered or interlaced. Image depth must be 8 bits or less. Any color table may be used for color images.
Image files must be less than or equal to 65505 bytes in size, since they are embedded into the .pdb format of the book; Palm database records are limited to 65505 bytes in length. Since images are compressed, the actual image displayed by the reader may be much larger than 64K.
Any or all of these restrictions may eventually be removed.
[edit] Metadata
DropBook normally presents a dialog in which the title and other Metadata information for the eBook may be specified. This information may be embedded in the PML file instead.
To specify the eBook title as it will appear in the Open dialog on the handheld, place a block of invisible comment text at the beginning of the file using \v tags. Inside this comment block, put the string TITLE="My eBook", where "My eBook" is replaced with the name of your eBook. It should look something like this:
\vTITLE="Palm Sample Document"\v
You can also specify the author using the AUTHOR meta-tag, the publisher with PUBLISHER, copyright information with COPYRIGHT, and the eBook ISBN with EISBN. A fully-specified set of meta-information might appear in PML as:
\vTITLE="Palm Sample Document" AUTHOR="Sam Morgenstern" PUBLISHER="eReader.com" EISBN="X-XXXX-XXXX" COPYRIGHT="Copyright \a169 2004 by Sam Morgenstern"\v
Cover art: If an image named "cover.png" is present in the eBook, it is assumed to be the cover art for the eBook. See the rules for images for sizing and other information.
[edit] Footnotes and Sidebars
Footnotes and Sidebars are specified with an XML-like syntax at the end of the PML document. For example,
<sidebar id="sidebar1"> Here's some \itext\i for a sidebar. </sidebar>
would specify the sidebar to be displayed when the user taps on a sidebar link in the text that was specified using the \Sd tag.
Any text or PML placed after the first footnote or sidebar is ignored as part of the book text.
Sidebars and footnotes can include most PML features, but there are some PML tags that cannot be used inside of a sidebar or footnote.
These include
- Chapters \x, \X, \C
- Links \q, \Q
- Footnotes \Fn
- Sidebars \Sd
See the palmsample.txt file (included with Dropbook) for examples of how to use many of the PML tags.
[edit] Creating Dictionaries
The \I PML tag is used to delimit an index item. Example: \Iaardvark\I
Each entry must start in the normal font. If DropBook shows an error beginning with "No styles permitted before...", there is probably a missing end style tag before the text shown in the error message.
Links, chapters and other PML structures are not permitted in dictionaries. Images, however, are.
A special dictionary entry, "(Front matter)" is shown before other entries in the list of entries, and should be used to include pronunciation symbols and other front matter.
Note that use of dictionaries requires eReader Pro.
