Reviews
Proporta
TomeRaider
Tome÷Noun:
a (usually) large and scholarly book. There are many Palm text,
doc and ebook readers out there, but most of them are geared towards
loading small files into RAM for reading, or trip over themselves
on huge texts. Suppose you want more. How would you like to fill
up a storage card and carry around an entire encyclopedia, the
Bible, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), the CIA World Fact
book, a few dozen full-length novels, hundreds of the latest news
stories from multiple sources, and other enormous files, and open
them with lightning speed, jump to specific entries, sections,
or chapters, bookmark them in up to a thousand different places,
even have them auto-scroll at different speeds so you can read
a long tome without touching your stylus? And I don't mean carry
just one or two of those huge texts in your hand, but all of them
at once.
This
sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky but TomeRaider 3 makes it all possible.
A multiple platform program, TR3 is a huge leap forward from Proporta's
earlier version, adds a slew of new features, and there's simply
nothing else out there that can do what it does. Through the use
of very clever compression, indexing and filtering, Palm TR3 is
aimed at those of you who want immediate and portable access to
huge texts and reference works that you simply couldn't access
on a Palm in any other way. There are over 3000 files out there
already in TomeRaider format, all of them free for the taking.
Some of the most popular can be found on Proporta's site www.tomeraider.com
and the rest at www.memoware.com.
But
you're not limited to just existing ã.trä (the older program's
versions, easily converted) or ã.tr3ä files. With a free Windows
accessory program called NewsRaider, you can go out to the Internet
and snatch hundreds of the latest news stories from multiple sources
like CNN, Wired, and the BBC, instantly convert them to PalmOS
.pdb format, do a HotSync, and read them with TR3, each story
indexed, with pictures, and just one tap away. Each news article,
or book chapter, or country in the CIA World Fact book, or film
in the IMDB is indexed and one tap away from display. Searching
through a long list in a TR3 file is dynamic ö suppose you want
to find all of Tom Cruise's films in the IMDB. Just run TR3, tap
the IMDB file to load its index, start scrawling each letter of
his name in a Graffiti window. ãCä will jump the list of actors
whose last names start with ãCä, ãrä flies to actors whose names
start with ãCrä and so on, until you see ãCruise, Tomä. Tap his
name, and you get a list of his films, each one linked to the
full IMDB entry for that movie. 
I
recommend you download the Windows version too. It'll let you
load in thousands of .tr and .tr3 files and instantly save them
back out in Palm .pdb format, ready for syncing. The PalmOS version
of TR3 is essentially a miniature of its Windows big brother.
If your Palm is Internet connected, you can simply browse to sites
like MemoWare who store TomeRaider files and download them directly,
with no need to use the Windows version at all! Proporta plans
to package and sell PalmOS TomeRaider 3 together with popular
reference works on an SD card and this option should be available
by the time you read this.
öHarv
Laser
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