.KEYWORD acrobat
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Acrobat Reader for Palm OS makes documents a lot more portable
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Contributing Editor Bob Draper has found a powerful enterprise tool, allowing mobile professionals to carry and share valuable, easy-to-read information. Adobe’s Acrobat Reader for Palm OS allows you to view documents with images and other visual elements, such as tables. Most importantly, it brings the industry standard PDF format to your Palm OS handheld.
.AUTHOR Bob Draper
When I was in high school–last century in the mid-1980’s–I remember reading copious science fiction and fantasy stories that prognosticated about our future. One advancement that was supposed to revolutionize the world of information was the electronic book. More than any other idea that was floated about in that genre, the ebook captured my imagination. Well, okay, that and interstellar space travel.
Understandably, when I first held a Palm handheld, its potential to replace the volumes of paper I dealt with daily was foremost in my mind. So I’m sure you can understand my disappointment when I discovered that most Doc readers only handled text-only documents. AvantGo brought me closer to the ebook nirvana I sought, but saving files in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), uploading them and the accompanying images to my personal Web site, and then synchronizing them to my Palm handheld was decidedly tedious.
Earlier this year, though, I finally discovered what could very well become the ultimate ebook application: Adobe’s Acrobat Reader for Palm OS. I discussed the public beta in a PalmPower Tip in early May, and by the end of that month, Adobe had released the final product. Finally, I had found an application that would allow me to view documents with images and other visual elements, such as tables, and the program used an industry standard format, PDF (Portable Document Format), as well! True, to get optimal performance you should use PDFs created with Acrobat 5, but you can view all types of PDF files with varying results.
.CALLOUT With its extensive support for graphics and tables, it can be a powerful enterprise tool, allowing mobile professionals to carry and share valuable, easy-to-read information.
You can find Acrobat Reader for Palm OS and all the sundry details at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readerforpalm.html. While you’re there, you ought to download the four sample files that were created with Acrobat 5. These files will allow you to experiment with the many features that Acrobat Reader for Palm OS offers, and they also show various uses for this versatile program.
Of course, Acrobat Reader for Palm OS is much more than just a fancy ebook reader. With its extensive support for graphics and tables, it can be a powerful enterprise tool, allowing mobile professionals to carry and share valuable, easy-to-read information.
.H1 Getting with this program
Acrobat Reader for Palm OS consists of two components. Naturally, there’s a Palm OS application that allows you to view the files on your handheld, but that program wouldn’t be worth its compiled code without the Windows desktop conduit, pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A The desktop conduit prepares the PDFs for handheld viewing.
This prepares the PDFs for handheld viewing and transfers them to your Palm handheld when you perform a HotSync operation.
There’s a reason this window looks a lot like the Palm OS install window. It serves essentially the same purpose. Just like the Palm OS install application, you can drag and drop the files you’d like to install onto the open window, and they’ll be added to the list. Once you have dragged a PDF to the install window, the desktop conduit begins to convert the file for viewing on your Palm handheld. You’ll then be asked how you’d like to handle any images that might be present in the PDF, as shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Images can chew up a lot of RAM, so it’s no wonder you’re asked this question.
Additionally, if your PDF wasn’t created using Acrobat 5 (and in this case, the file wasn’t) you’ll be warned of potential problems. Selecting the More Info button will explain how you can avoid these problems in the future, as shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Non-tagged PDF files may not turn out as you’d like them to, but you can do something about it.
Since non-tagged files may get scrambled in the conversion process, Adobe wants to warn you about this up front. Of course, most of the non-tagged files I experimented with turned out just fine. The one notable exception was the Society for Technical Communication’s Year 2000 Salary Survey. Of course, one look at the table-intensive file (which you can find at http://www.stc.org/PDF_Files/00Survey.pdf), and it’s fairly obvious why the results were so poor. However, in theory, were this file to be recreated using Acrobat 5, the layout would no longer be a problem.
Next you’ll see the Add PDF to transfer list window pictured in Figure D.
.FIGPAIR D If you’ve ever created a PDF using Acrobat PDF Maker, this window will look quite familiar.
If you’d like to install any additional PDFs, you can add as many more as you have RAM for on your Palm handheld. Then click Exit, place your handheld in the HotSync cradle, and press the HotSync button. At some point during the HotSync process you’ll see the window shown in Figure E.
.FIGPAIR E As the files are installed, you’ll be able to track the progress.
Once you’ve installed a file (or more) on your Palm handheld, it’s time to fire up the handheld program, as shown in Figure F.
.FIG F Here it is, complete with a splash screen, just like a desktop application.
When you first you run Acrobat Reader for Palm OS, you’ll go directly to the document list, which shows every PDF file installed on your Palm handheld. Not only can you open your PDFs from this screen, but this is also where you go if you want to beam or delete a file. Simply check one or more document titles and tap the appropriate button. You can also tap the All checkbox to quickly select the whole shooting match.
Acrobat Reader for Palm OS also offers a number of helpful navigation tools for you, once you’ve opened a file, as seen in Figure G.
.FIG G Acrobat Reader’s clean interface makes navigation a breeze.
The page slider bar on the right side of the screen allows you to scroll up and down on the page. When the PDF is converted for handheld viewing, the page breaks remain intact. Moving to the bottom of the page, the folder icon in the lower left corner returns you to the file list.
The next icon opens the Table of Contents and Comments list. To toggle between the two lists, simply tap and select the other list from the dropdown menu. Not only is it nice to be able to navigate through a document using the table of contents headings, but if your organization uses Acrobat for electronic document markup, Acrobat Reader for Palm OS can be a great time saver. Although you cannot mark up documents using this program (yet), this feature provides a great way for you to at least read through your team’s comments while on the go and assess the status of the review process and the project as a whole.
The next interface element is the document position bar at the bottom of the screen that allows you to jump through the document page by page. Tap the arrow to the left to go back to the first page; tap the arrow on the right to go to the end of the document. You can also tap and drag the position bar to quickly move though the document. The page indicator in the lower left corner of the screen will update to show you which page you’ve selected as you move the stylus across the bar. You can also jump directly to any page within the PDF by tapping the page indicator.
Another nice innovation Adobe implemented involves the shortcut strokes for common commands, such as /C for Copy. Feel free to omit the command stroke up front; in other words, to copy text, just select the text you’d like to copy and simply write a C in the Graffiti area. The text will be copied to the clipboard. Writing the letter O (for Open) takes you to the document list. In short, any of the shortcut letters included in the menus can be executed without the command stroke. It may be a small thing, but it sure is a time saver.
.CALLOUT The one feature that really wowed me the first time I saw it was the table support.
Image support is adequate but not overly impressive. After all, most Palm handhelds only have a 160 x 160 pixel grayscale screen. Of course, if you create your images as simple, 256 color (or shades of gray) graphics, the results can be rather nice, as is the case with the Acrobat logo on the splash screen.
The one feature that really wowed me the first time I saw it was the table support. Acrobat Reader for Palm OS can fully render tables in tagged PDF files, allowing you to read and scroll though the tabular data. And since many of today’s business documents tend to contain a lot of data tables, this feature can really come in handy.
Simply tap and hold the table with your stylus (what’s generally referred to as a "tap and a half" in laptop touch pad parlance), and the screen changes to show the table in a magnified format.
A couple of other features that make working on a Palm handheld easier are the full screen mode, which hides the navigation tools and frees up more screen space, as well as the ability to hide images while viewing a document. You can also scroll up and down on any given page simply by dragging your stylus up or down. There are a bevy of other tips, tricks, and shortcuts in the Poweruser_Tricks.pdf and UserGuide.pdf included with the program, so I won’t go into those details now.
.H1 Now to wrap it all up
Acrobat Reader for Palm OS is a powerful application that has enormous potential as both an enterprise tool and a personal ebook reader. I must admit, when I first heard that Adobe was porting Acrobat Reader to the Palm OS, I was quite skeptical. However, after I began using the public beta, my skepticism quickly faded!
I was particularly impressed with the approach to handling tables. If you have ever used AvantGo to view a Web page that used HTML tables to present information, you know how awkward and hard to read that solution can be on a Palm handheld’s screen. On the other hand, this "pop-up table" technique keeps the table minimized and out of the way until you want to view it, at which point you can scroll up and down, right and left, gathering the needed information.
On the other hand, one missing feature that disappointed me was lack of support for commercial, encrypted PDF ebooks. For those who have used the Acrobat eBook Reader (for either Macintosh or Windows), you know that the PDFs are downloaded directly into the application and cannot be moved to another computer. After all, you have purchased a license for one copy of the title in question. However, Adobe is currently working with its ebook publishers to allow users to purchase titles that are licensed for both the desktop and the Palm handheld. Of course, there are still several questions to resolve before this can happen.
Another issue is the lack of optimized PDF files, but this problem will fade over time as the use of Acrobat 5 increases. Of course, creating optimized, tagged PDF files is still a bit of a challenge, as this is a new standard. Currently, the only tools available are the Web Capture utility in Acrobat 5 for Macintosh and Windows; the PDF Maker utility in the Windows version, which only works with Word 2000, Excel 2000, and PowerPoint 2000; and the recently released Adobe PageMaker 7.0, which can also save files as tagged PDFs. Adobe has stated that future versions of their software, such as FrameMaker, InDesign, Illustrator, and others will fully support tagged PDFs as well.
Also, as ebook support comes to Acrobat Reader for Palm OS, a number of features from the desktop ebook reader program will likely follow, including the ability to highlight text and insert bookmarks and annotations, which would allow for mobile document mark-up and review. Soon you may have one less reason to haul your laptop with you on that next business trip!
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I was extremely impressed with what this program has to offer. The desktop conduit software is currently only available for Windows, although I’ve been told that a Macintosh conduit is in the works and development is progressing nicely. All in all, Adobe has certainly laid a solid foundation for future growth in the handheld market.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Acrobat Reader for Palm OS, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readerforpalm.html.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
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.BIO
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