In the world of the handheld computers running the Palm® operating system, there are many devices, many reader programs and many formats that data is stored in. It can be confusing because the Palm really has only two file extensions PRC and PDB. When you see a file for a Palm device, you really don't know what it is or what you can read it with simply by looking at the file name. It can be very frustrating if you go through all the effort of downloading a file only to find out you can not read it with the software you have on your hand held. There is a way to determine what type of file a pdb file is though. If you open the file in a text editor, there will be a string of text that will identify the file type. It could almost be considered the equivalent of a file extension except you can't see it unless you open the file in an editor. This file id can be used to determine what reader you need to read the file.

TEXtREAd - Better known as DOC format or PalmDOC or AportisDOC. This is the defacto standard in the Palm world. It has no relationship to the proprietary DOC format used by Microsoft Word. It is the Palm equivalent of an ASCII text file. This is usually just fine for reading a regular text based book like a novel or something. The rights to the format were purchased by Aportis and they had their own software to read the format called AportisDoc. There are a couple of problems with it. First, there are other formats that use considerably less space than the DOC format because of compression. Space on a handheld computer used to be at a premium. This is less true today than it was just a couple of years ago. Another disadvantage is the inability to use special formatting like bold, italics, tables and images. Despite these disadvantages though, the format has some huge advantages too. The best thing about the DOC format is that most ebook software in the Palm world will read it. It is also pretty easy now to save your documents into this format. See the HANDebooks converters page for more help converting documents. You can use MakeDocW, or now even OpenOffice will let you save directly to this format. With a large selection of free readers and a selection of free converters for a standard format that almost any program can read, the TEXtREAd format will be around at least as long as Palm is and maybe even longer.

DataPlkr - Better known as Plucker format. Plucker is a great little format. It is an Open Source Project. What this means is the format is open and available for anyone who wants to support it. You can even download the source code for it yourself if you were inclined to do so. Not only is the reader free, but they also provide a free converter. Using zlib compression it can create files that are very small. The format is intended to allow you to view HTML web pages from the internet on your handheld. Because of this it supports special character formatting like Bold and Italics. It also supports hyperlinks, and even pictures and illustrations in the document. There is a free converter can be used in Windows or in Linux. After installing it in Windows it sets up file associations for html and text documents. What this means to the user is that converting a document is as easy as clicking on the filename with your right mouse button. This will pop up a window of things you can do to that file and one of the options is "Convert to Plucker". Plucker is perfect for reading webpages on your handheld and it is also great for manuals or reference books that utilize hyperlinks. It would also be perfect for regular books too, except for the reader. This isn't a problem with the format really, but a format is only as good as the readers that can read it. The Plucker reader doesn't autoscroll well in my opinion. To get it to scroll fast enough it becomes choppy and difficult to read. Ideally it would scroll like the scroll feature in the ReadThemAll reader. If it could do that, Plucker would be just about perfect.

Isilofree - ToGoToGo - There is a format called Isilo. It will be described next. Isilo is a nice format, but I am trying to list these in the order of my preference and anything that is free is going to get listed above anything that costs money. So apparently what Isilo does now is default to a free version after a trial period expires. The free version disables certain features like hyperlinks and things in your documents. Seeing as how Plucker is free and all of these things work, I can't see why anyone would chose the free version of Isilo over Plucker unless they needed to read isilo documents someone else had created. I also found while I was testing out the Isilo reader that some Isilo versions seemed incompatible with other Isilo versions, which was very frustrating.

Isilo 3 - ToGoToGo - The Isilo format you pay for is pretty good. Like Plucker though, the last time I used it, its reader was a little less robust than some of the other free readers. Plucker handled webpages as well as, if not better than Isilo. Other free readers like PalmReader, CspotRun and ReadThemAll handled regular books as well as, if not better, than Isilo. So, since Isilo costs money, $17.50 at the time of this writing, I am not really sure who the ideal user for it would be. It is user friendly. It has a good converter program and it converts hyperlink documents and supports hyperlinks, special text codes and images. Basically, it works pretty much like Plucker. Since it isn't an open source format though, if you used it to distribute your documents, they may be more secure than Plucker documents. This isn't a concern for me though so Isilo has been removed from my Palm and won't be finding its way back any time soon. Isilo does seem to be very popular though. If you need a one stop solution and you don't mind paying money for something you can get for free. There is really nothing wrong with it that I can see.

PNRdPPrs - Better know as PalmReader format or Peanut Format and now eReader. Can these guys make up their minds what their name is? eReader formerly known as the Palm reader, formally know as the Peanut reader format, is free and very nice. It is Palm's ebook format. They also have a reader for handheld Windows devices. I guess maybe that is why they changed their name again. This means if you put documents in the eReader format they can be read by almost the entire handheld world. They have a free version and a pay version. It looks like now they offer an ebook creator to that they want you to pay for. You used to be able to make them for free with free software from their website. The free documents I made back then still work in the latest version of their reader software, so I am not sure why you would pay for it now. See the HANDebooks converters page for more help converting documents. Basically you creat a text document with Markup code in it similar to HTML, but called PML. These PML files (peanut markup language) can then be converted with a free converter program they also provided. This is a Windows application. You can also convert HTML files to PML in the same way because Microsoft Word will automatically convert them when they are opened into Word. Although I really like the peanut reader/Palm reader/ereader application, there are still things I don't like about the format. The first is that you have to convert your files no matter what format they come in before you can convert them to a format for your Palm. To do this you have to have Microsoft Word because their converter is really just a Word Macro. If you don't have Microsoft Word, you can't do it. Well, you could do it by hand. Even though the reader supports links and images, the handy little Macro didn't handle those for you and you have to go through and do it all by hand.
Another problem with the Peanut format is that the files are pretty big eating up your precious memory on your Palm.
Yet another problem is, if you read the user license agreement when you get the converter, anything you convert to the peanut/palm/ereader format using their conversion program isn't really yours. You can't sell it. So if you had something to distribute and you wanted to do it in this format and you thought you were going to do it with their free converter, think again.

MobiPocket - I haven't tried Mobipocket so I honestly can't give you much information about it. A lot of people seem to use it, but the free alternatives I have already listed should be able to meet the needs of any Palm user, so why look for something else? I am thinking maybe the Mobipocket advantage might be that you can distribute stuff you convert more freely than with Palm reader, but I haven't checked. Anything you convert with Plucker though you can distribute to your hearts content and the reader is free, so I still don't see the point.

TEXtTIDc - Better know as Teal Document

ToRaTRPW - Tome Raider Format