> Plucker isn't a standard Palm doc maker, but converts HTML documents
> into its own format. As such, you can use hyperlinks between pages and
> so on, the same as on the web. You also get more textual effects and
> images than you can with plain Palm doc.
There are ways to "simulate" bookmarks within an HTML document,
however, and also within Plucker, which supports it's own bookmarks.
You can use <h1>My First Heading</h1> type of tags, and then create
a Plucker bookmark to link directly to that heading, or.. you can simply put
each bookmarked section on it's own page or database, and use that instead,
like "chapters" in a book.
> I think the recommended way to distribute ebooks is now to offer them as
> simple HTML documents, so the users can convert them easily to their
> preferred format.
This is ideal. With 17 separate DOC formats out there, including
Plucker, it makes it hard to have to grok all of them in one reader,
however, at some point, the architecture might allow "snap-ins" (plug-ins,
whatever) to do DOC, PDF, whatever you wanted. We talked about this probably
2 years ago on the list. So far we have:
ASCII 7-bit text, Standard HTML, Palm DOC, Plucker Database, EBook,
Gutenpalm (ztxt), TomeRaider, iSilo, Microsoft Reader (.lit), WordSmith,
RichReader, Aportis, XML, and so on. It's mind-numbing trying to keep track
of them.
The basic roots of support for it is there, just start whacking away
a patch. It wouldn't be impossible to add DOC support to Plucker as it
stands today. It would, however, add bloat and a bit of redundancy.
> I don't know the Palm Doc format well enough to know how bookmarks are
> done, or what open source software does them. Perhaps someone else on
> this list does.
It's documented pretty well on a lot of sites. Here's a few sites:
http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/palm/doc.txt
http://www.myfileformats.com/search.php?name=DOC
(myfileformats.com is a great resource, btw)
Julie's comprehensive (with a slant) DOC Reader Review:
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/docreaders-review.html
She doesn't include Plucker, because she views it as a browser, not
a DOC reader, so it's not in the review, IIRC.
Hope that helps.
/d
