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Introduction Palm Desktop HotSyncing Archives |
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Those of you who know me well know that I tend to write. Whether it be email, web pages, diary pages, or whatever, I write a lot.
Those of you who know me also know that I hate paper, in spite of the fact that I also like to read. I dislike paper so much, in fact, that I usually forsake it's content if the same information can be obtained electronically.
For those who like to read and write on the run, the Palm isn't a bad device to assist in the endeavor. The ability to compose, capture, manipulate, edit, review, or share informative content is to blessing to some of us.
Indeed, one of the primary reasons I obtained my Palm was for it's ability to store large quantities of textual information, and to display it when I was away from my PC. I also imagined the ability to edit this large quantities of information, and I thought that the memo pad would serve as a useful manner in which to do this. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I learned that the Palm's memo pad was limited to 4k memos! To circumvent this limitation, I spread my text across multiple memos, and hobbled along a little disheartened for the time being.
Then I discovered the Palm DOC format. This would allow me to create large text documents on the many PC's I have access to, convert them to the Palm DOC format using MakeDoc, and view them on the PDA using an unregistered version of TealDOC. Within a few weeks of discovering TealDOC, I encountered through Warez SmartDOC, which also provided me the opportunity to edit DOC files on the PDA. SmartDOC also provided me the ability to download text files from a server via HTTP or FTP, and to upload to a server via FTP. Since I have a fairly decent working knowledge of rudimentary HTML code, I could create web content on my PDA and upload it to a web server.
Shortly after this, I discovered DocEdit, a Windows 9x based application that allows you to edit Palm DOC files on your PC. This meant that the requirement for using MakeDOC or it's derivatives (MakeDocW) was minimized, as the Palm could be HotSync'ed with the PC, DocEdit used to edit the .PDB (or .PRC) file on the PC, and the file reinstalled back to the Palm for transport. Some editing tasks are just too inconvenient to be done on the PDA; these include spell checking or large amounts of cut-and-paste operations, or reordering massive quantities of text. For these operations, a PC is required! None the less, the ability to edit, compose, or review text in the field is still a blessing, and the Palm isn't a bad platform for such rudimentary operations. Considering it's size and portability, and I believe it's an excellent platform. Although admittedly, the majority of the text for this page is being entered from my home computer, but the system I've developed will allow me to review and modify this document from a variety of environments.
While the Palm's Graffiti (handwriting recognition system, or more appropriately, gesture recognition system) is adequate for quick notes, it's not adequate for lengthy document creation. Thus, alternative text input systems are required. For the most part, a keyboard is the preferred solution, but if the content you're wanting to include or review has already been created from another source, such as a web page or existing text document, then these are viable input mechanisms too. If you have a scanner and an Optical Character Recognition system, then there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to relatively easily convert printed text on paper to a document for carrying around in your PDA. There are even portable scanning solutions with OCR software integrated into them, that look like pens, that beam scanned content directly into your PDA. Not the ultimate solution for acquiring a book's worth of information, but not a bad solution for extracting important text from a book or magazine article if you're so inclined. Imagine highlighting text in on a printed page, and having it transformed into something that rides in your PDA with you!
The focal point of this document at present is editing and composing text, though, and as such we'll turn our attention to some keyboard solutions. There are other alternatives to textual input for your PDA though, but I'll just be documenting what I know and use. The photos below are images of my home PC and Palm IIIc PDA.
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A photograph of the Palm and Portable Palm Keyboard (PPK),
the PC's monitor, and Infrared Keyboard. If you look at the middle right edge of the image, you'll notice the Wacom Digitizing Pen I use. As I rarely use the eraser function of the pen, I have a Concept Kitchen's Pen Cap on the "back" end of the Wacom stylus so that I may also use it on my PDA. I do not have a mouse on my PC! I switched to the Wacom stylus a year or so before picking up a Palm, so I was already comfortable with using a pen device as opposed to a mouse (puck) device. |
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A close-up of the Palm and PPK, and the PC's Infrared Keyboard;
notice the similarity of the keyboard layouts; I am equally
as comfortable on either. If you look at the upper right edge of the image, you'll notice the Wacom Digitizing Pen. In the upper left corner of the image is the cell phone that I hook to the Palm to connect to the internet. |
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A close-up of the PC's Infrared Keyboard for comparison with the Palm's Portable Keyboard. Again, the similarity of the keyboards is startling, and is an asset in my opinion. | |
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A close-up of the Palm's Portable Keyboard for comparison with
the PC's Infrared Keyboard. Again, the similarity of the keyboards
is startling, and is an asset in my opinion. If you look closely on the keyboard, you'll also see the Pentopia 3-in-1 stylus that I use. |
The potpourri of equipment that I use is somewhat interesting. As of this writing, I am employed by a firm that specializes in digital image editing for the textile engraving segment. As the majority of the associates in the field are traditional artists, the editing system was developed to use pens, as opposed to mice, to capitalize on the artist's familiarity with those types of tools. As I developed a personal interest in photo retouching and manipulation some time back, I traded in my mouse for a Wacom ArtPad II tablet with a pressure sensitive pen. For simplicity's sake, and to force myself to learn to use the pressure sensitive pen, I disconnected my mouse. As my desk is somewhat of a pig's sty, the mice were constantly getting dirty and mistracking any ways. And I always preferred absolute pointing devices such as pens and pucks, as opposed to relative devices such as mice and track balls, thus the migration from a mouse to a pen was an upgrade for me, although most people won't share my belief. I'm glad I made the move; I was very familiar with pen based input before I bought my PDA.
After a minor mastery of image manipulation, I decided to expose myself to a little bit of animation, as well as video manipulation via a video capture/playback card I purchased. As to get the full effect of the efforts of my work, I have to sit back to view the results on a fairly large screen television as opposed to the tiny 19" monitor, the corded keyboard I was using wasn't cutting it. Thus, I picked up an infrared keyboard, and initially griped because it's keyboard layout was very different than the 101-key keyboards I have grown used to over the last 15 years or so. When I later acquired a Palm Portable Keyboard for my PDA, I initially complained about it's keyboard layout too, until I noted the similarity between it and the keyboard that's on my home PC. Interestingly enough, although I have no need for a laptop at present, this keyboard arrangement seems to be very prevalent on laptops! As the Palm Portable Keyboard folds to a size a little larger than the PDA itself, it's convenient traveling companion. Also, solutions exist that allow you to use your PC's keyboard to type directly in your PDA, and some of these solutions will be explored here.
With this and other keyboard solutions, decent alternatives to the Palm's Graffiti system exist for entering large quantities of text into your PDA. By using keyboard solutions to enter text directly into your PDA, you can keep sensitive and/or highly portable documents from ever residing on a PC that you don't want prying eyes to see.
The holy grail in the endeavor of entering text into the Palm platform of PDAs is that of entering formatted text, and carrying this one step further, text that links to other text, either in the same document, or in documents that exist elsewhere, either inside or outside of the PDA. Solutions exist, but they are cumbersome at best; it's a matter of how much you're willing to sacrifice to get the functionality. For my needs, I'm willing to make those sacrifices.
Not that it matters, but I abhor MicroSoft. I don't want to turn this document into a rant against the company, so I hope it will be sufficient to say that I prefer to minimize my dependence on Microsoft products as much as possible. The only product of theirs that I use is Windows 95 OSR2, commonly known as Windows 95B. I have no interest in the bloat ware product known as Office, instead preferring to handle my modest word processing with the open standard of HTML. As it turns out, you can use your PDA to display HTML formatted text using iambicReader, and if you know basic HTML code, you can write the HTML code yourself using SmartDOC. SmartDOC's successor, QuickWord, provides a nice interface into Microsoft's Word product, and Microsoft consumers may be interested in this solution. QuickWord provides basic WYSIWYG in-Palm HTML editing, but has some drawbacks outlined later that make it unsuitable for my use; your mileage may vary! It's been my experience that the Palm users in the know prefer the Palm platform due to it's lack of dependence on Microsoft's "standards"; those who prefer Microsoft's standards most likely would be using a WinCE based PDA, and wouldn't be reading this document. For my desktop WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML formatting, I use NetScape Composer, which is part of the NetScape Navigator 4.7 package. This allows me to create documents that can be viewed on a variety of platforms, even non Microsoft based, and I get the advantage that the content can be published to a web server, as well as that the word processor is free!
Ok, I'm sorry; I'm going to rant for a second. Microsoft has, in their license statement, a clause that prohibits you from using Microsoft products to make negative remarks about their products. Personally, I think their work should speak for itself, but that a company has to have a legal method of preventing people from speaking negatively about it should speak volumes in and of itself.
As a result of my exploring methods by which to meet my goals, I have discovered some solutions to problems that I didn't know I had, and thus my list of goals grew. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
Text reviewing/searching away from a PC. This is a wide ranging goal, allowing me to carry web content, books, email, etc., with me. I wanted the ability to be able to read a book or refer to a web page, and to do so in a manner that wasn't terribly inconvenient. It's nice to be able to retrieve information when someone asks you about something by extracting your PDA and executing a Find operation. It's also nice to be able to catch up on your reading whenever a dull moment pops into your day, such as when you're waiting in a long line at the fast food joint.
Text composition/editing. The ability to edit the aforementioned text was a primary reason for my purchasing my PDA. I wanted the ability to compose textual content for later inclusion on a web page, or for responses to email.
What I found in my journey is that there are a lot of tools that can be used to help you accomplish these goals. While using the Palm as a platform for a major amount of word processing can be a chore, the device itself can be used as a rudimentary device for entering reasonable amounts of text when you're not near your PC. Then, when you are near your PC, all of the new text can be moved from the Palm to the PC, to reduce the amount of time you would spend typing at your desktop. If you're looking for a finished or seamless product, the Palm PDA may not be the platform for you. However, if you're the technical type who doesn't mind getting their hands a little dirty, and prefer open standards to Microsoft's closed, buggy, and insecure methods, the Palm Platform may be of value to you.
Before I went digital, I had tons of little pieces of paper lying around, with various notes jotted on each; my desk was covered by scraps of paper and post-it notes. Searching through them was a nightmare, and it always appeared that I needed the information on one of those notes when I wasn't at home.
Palm to the rescue! It didn't take long to recognize some of the value in having a PDA. The notes quickly got transposed into the Palm Desktop's memo pad, and HotSync'ed into my PDA. The pile of paper notes then rode in my pocket, and then propagated to my home or work PC. Even better was some of the stuff that I used to scribble onto those pieces of paper was information retrieved via email or the world wide web. By using the clipboard, I could select and copy from the email or web page, and paste the content into the Palm Desktop's memo pad. The next time I HotSync'ed, the information would move from the PC to the Palm, and I could refer to it later. Even better was that I could perform the reverse of that operation, copying text from the Palm Desktop software to an email, to share something with a friend if I so desired.
Searching through the stack of memos was never easier; instead of digging through scraps of paper, I press the memo pad button on the PDA, and then tap the icon for Find that is in the lower right corner. Enter what I'm looking for, and as soon as it appears, tap it, so that I can display the information that I need. Quick tip for power users: While the Palm's "Find" function searches for information in almost all Palm applications (and certainly the four built in Personal Information Management functions), starting the search in the application you think the information in greatly reduces the amount of time you'll spend searching. This is a handy tidbit if your PDA is stuffed with information like mine is.
What happens when you accumulate a mass of memos that you don't want to dispose of, but you don't want cluttering your memo pad? I archive mine to a DOC file. This allows me to retrieve this information at a later time. This also allows the information to be compressed, taking roughly half the space (memory) that it normally would take.
Here's something I like to do. To spell check my memos, I select the range of memos in the Palm Desktop to spell check, select the "Copy" option, and then paste them into UltraEdit32. I then use UltraEdit32 to spell check the pasted text. After the spell check is completed, I switch back to the Palm Desktop, and Cut the selected memos. Then I switch back to UltraEdit32, select all, and cut. Switching back to the Palm Desktop, I paste back to the memo pad. Note that this can cause duplicate memos to appear; the way to prevent this from happening is described in the section under HotSyncing.
I HotSync my Palm(s) to, as of this writing, five PCs. I synchronize to each PC with different needs. To all PCs, I synchronize to maintain a backup of the four PIM databases: appointments, addresses, to dos, and Memos. For documentation purposes, I synchronize to different PCs for different reasons. The five PCs I synchronize with are two computers of my own, a work computer, and one computer each of my parent's.
I keep my PIM loaded with documents that are both work and personal related. Some of my personal documents I don't want on my work PC nor on either of my parent's machines, so I don't allow these documents to get synchronized to those desktops. I don't mind if the work documents get synchronized to the non-work PCs; these texts are pretty small. However, it's trivial enough to guarantee what is synchronized and what is not.
The term "Archive" is rather vague in the computing world, although it generally means a collection of one or more files, usually compressed (but not always) to save space (memory).
