A Reader For My PDA That Works!

Tonight I was looking to add a copy of the latest Cory Doctorow novel to my PDA. Doctorow’s site has versions of his book in just about every format you could ever want, go take a look – it’s positively impressive.
I figured I’d have an easy time finding a format that would work on my PDA but I was sadly mistaken. At first I tried an HTML file, figuring the built in Internet Explorer would be able to load it but it barfed and locked up. Then I tried the Microsoft Reader, you know the LIT files that all the DRM junkies just love? Well it loaded it just fine and looked great but informed me that it could no longer display the book after page 14. Somehow, that makes sense in a Microsoft sort of way. Looks great but screws you on performance.
I didn’t even bother with the PalmOS PRC file, my Mobilpocket reader is a pain to use.
And a Pocket Word document is out of the question, the batteries will run out before it would ever load.
After almost giving up and forgetting the whole thing I spotted the Fictionbook 2 format one and a new reader called Haali Reader. What the heck, I’ll give it a try. So I downloaded the book and reader and ran it on the PDA and bingo, instant book. No problems with memory issues and it looks great! I throw a 2.2MB text file at it half expecting to need to reset it and to my amazement it works. I poke through the settings and discover that I can rotate the text for horizontal reading, auto scrolling, and bunches of other stuff.
Take a gander at the list of features:

* Loads plain text and XML files. (There were rumours that Haali Reader can open Microsoft LIT files. This is not the case. LIT format is not supported and will never be supported.)
* Cyrillic encodings support with autodetection.
* Last viewed position in file is saved on exit.
* ClearType support.
* Any font/size can be selected.
* Fullscreen and landscape mode.
* Colors can be adjusted.
* Text search.
* Dictionary support. Tapping a word opens a translation window.
* Automatic hyphenation (russian language only).
* Table of contents and bookmarks
* Multiple columns support (1-4)
* PRC/PDB files support (plain text and XML only, HTML is not supported).
* Builtin ZIP archives support.
* Autoscroll (controlled from keyboard/buttons only, settings are in Options->Buttons).

If you have a PocketPC go grab a copy of Haali reader, you won’t regret it.

Haali Reader – a book reader for Windows CE

cool, windowsce, pocketpc, reader, PDA