While reading on your Palm may or not be something that many of you have thought about, the Palm IS an excellent way to carry research material, novels, poems, news, and anything that you need or want to carry with you. I used to carry about 4 or 5 novels on my Palm, and now, with my Visors Flash Module, I can carry even more. The only drawback to reading on the Palm is its smallish screen, but I'm sure that you'll find, as I have, that the size of the screen is an easy limitation to get used to. It won't be long before you don't even notice.

As I'm sure you know, there are quite a few available DOC readers. Some are freeware. Many are shareware. The main difference is obviously in the list of features. The better DOC viewers, while more costly, offer features such as auto scrolling, bookmarks...HTML?

Yes, Iambic Software claims that their DOC reader, Iambic Reader (formerly DocVis) will read HTML pages. It will even support hyperlinks between DOCs, even tables. Iambic sent me a demo DOC to install on my machine and it works flawlessly. The big claim to fame for the use of HTML pages is HTMLs ablility to hyperlink pages together. This would be HUGE if you regularly had to read a website. In theory, you could download the site, install on your Palm and instantly have access to all the information no matter where you are. AND, Iambic Readers incorporation of tables is especially neat.

You may or may not know that HTML pages cannot be loaded directly onto the Palm. Instead, any HTML page must be converted to DOC before it can be installed onto your Palm and recognized in ANY DOC reader. I thought that Iambics directions on this in their manual were vague, and opened a few questions in my mind. First, how the heck do you convert from HTML to DOC? Secondly, won't that remove any and all tags from the document when it is converted? And lastly, how will Iambic Reader know the difference? Well, I had some ideas about converting the HTML pages to DOC, so I tried them and this is what I found out. There are MANY ways to convert HTML to DOC as matter of fact. There is an application called MakeitDoc, which attaches itself to Internet Explorer, so that a right mouse click on any web page offers the option to "MakeitDoc". This will convert the page and save the DOC version anywhere on your PC that you choose. It works great, BUT when I installed the DOC onto my Palm, it was a DOC, no hyperlinks, no tables, nothing.

Step 2, Word will open HTML pages and I have the privilege of owning Palm Docs, which is a DOC conversion utility that attaches itself to Word and will convert, compress, and install DOCs automatically from Word, to your Palm. I gave it a shot. Open the HTML, convert to DOC, install on Palm. Worked great, same result. No hyperlinks, tables, etc. OK, so I tried opening the HTML, converting to Word Doc, then converting to Palm DOC, installing. Same result. Finally, in frustration, I sent an email to my contact at Iambic and after a few back and forth trial and error sessions, we found the problem.

Here's the situation. As I thought, MOST of the DOC conversion utilities WILL strip any and all HTML code from the page upon conversion to DOC. But not a freeware app called MakeDoc. Don't confuse MakeDoc, with MakeitDoc, which I talked about earlier. Where MakeitDoc only works within Internet Explorer, MakeDoc (Actually listed at PalmGear H.Q. as MakeDocW) is a standalone application that allows you to convert and Text or HTML file on your PC to DOC. The big difference is that MakeDocW does NOT strip the HTML code in the process, so that when you install the DOC on your Palm, all hyperlinks, tables, and code will be preserved. The big benefit to this is that color Palm owners will see converted web pages in their true color. For example, if the HTML page had a yellow background, the DOC in Iambic Reader would also have a yellow background. The same holds true for all the color HTML tags. They are in the DOC, so Iambic Reader is capable of displaying them. In regard to hyperlinks, remember that the hyperlink will only work if you have the linked page installed on your Palm as well. Otherwise, you'll get a message that the linked page is unavailable.

Once these HTML DOCs are installed on your Palm, it may be necessary to utilize the "Details" button at the bottom of the screen. You'll see three buttons: Open, Details, and Beam. Whichever button is highlighted is the action that will be taken when you tap on the title of a DOC. For instance it you wanted to Beam a DOC, highlight the Beam button and tap the title of the DOC. This can all also be done through the Menu button. Now, notice that all the DOCs have an icon in front of them. DOCs will have a page icon while HTML pages will have an "@" icon in front of them. If a converted HTML page is not being displayed with the "@", simply highlight the Details button, tap the title of the HTML doc and check the box that says HTML text. You can also; Change the Name, Check the Backup box to ensure that the DOC is backed up at Hotsync, Change the category, or choose to Delete the DOC from your Palms memory altogether. This Details Menu can also be accessed by Opening the DOC, tapping Menu-Navigate-Document Details.

In short, I think that there are a lot of possibilities for the inclusion of HTML into Iambic Reader. Let's say I wanted to create a DOC, that I could link to other DOC in places within the main DOC. Simple. By creating the Main DOC in Word for instance as an HTML page, including the hyperlinks as I created the HTML page and saving on my PC. I could then convert it to DOC with MakeDocW. The same for the pages that I wanted to link. Now, when I install all of them onto my Palm, Iambic Reader would be capable of handling all of this. Fantastic! I could go on and on all day about that, but in truth the HTML is just one facet of Iambic Reader that I have to cover, so I must move on.

While the HTML capabilities are the most impressive, Iambic Reader's best trait is its straight-forward, user-friendly interface. You'll find yourself very comfortable in Iambic Reader right from the start. I like the fact that there is no scroll arrow on the side by default, but you can add them to either the left or right sides as you wish. To scroll through a document, simply touch the bottom of the screen to scroll down, the top of the screen to scroll up, OR use the up and down hot buttons. I personally leave the arrows off and scroll using a touch of the screen.

The find feature is very nice with the trademark magnifying glass icon. Tap the icon to select a word to find, where to start the search within the DOC and whether or not case is important. Then, use the arrows on either side of the magnifying glass to navigate to the previous and next instance of that word within the document. I have used the find feature on a number of DOCs that I have written personally, but hardly use it for ebooks and the like.

As you would expect, the bookmarks are simple to setup and navigate through. You can even organize the list of them to view your bookmarks alphabetically or in order of percentage within the DOC. When you tap the book icon, all your bookmarks are listed at the bottom, with "Add Bookmarks" and "View Bookmarks" bolded at the top. To add a bookmark, simply go to the location where you want the bookmark and tap Add Bookmark. The bookmark will take its name from the first line that it finds, but you can assign any name that you wish.

You'll also notice the GoTo button. That's the button in the middle with a percentage in it. All DOC readers operated based on percentage within the DOC and Iambic Reader is no different. Tap on the button and you are given navigation selections. These are pretty self-explanatory, with the exception of the Section buttons. Iambic Reader allows navigation between sections of a DOC. Again, the section navigation works flawlessly in the demo DOC that I was sent.

I haven't done anything with Sections myself. I was thrilled to have gotten a handle on the HTML. From what I know, sections are within the DOC and allow you to jump quickly from one point in a DOC to the next, and vice-versa. This, to me, seems very similar to bookmarks, which are easy to use and have been standard in DOCs for some time now. That's all I can say about that.

Next to the bookmark button, you'll see a set of arrows pointing to the left and right. If you haven't guessed, these are forward and back navigation arrows and are only useful when jumping between linked pages, or when a table is accessed. When a table is in an HTML page and converted to DOC, it is replaced with an icon in the middle of the screen. Tapping on that icon will open the table on its own page and allow you to view the information as it was on the HTML page. You'll need to use the back arrow to get back to the main page of the DOC. They are just like the forward and back arrows in your web browser. Finally, the button on the far right is the button to start the "Auto scroll". It was set up to look like the play button on CD players and when you tap the button, the auto scrolling starts and the button switches to a "pause" symbol for you to tap to stop auto scrolling. I like the auto scroll feature in that it can be set to go in various time values and it allows me to read my DOCs hands-free. It resembles a teleprompter that I have gotten very used to reading, though for some, it may take time to adjust.

All of these built-in features combine to make Iambic Reader one of my favorites out there. I have used Iambic Reader since day one and have considered removing all of my other readers to save space.

The majority of Iambic Readers features can be accessed through the Preferences Menu. When you open a DOC, tapping Menu-Navigate-Preferences will allow you to select from the four default Palm fonts, Decide whether or not to show the scroll bar, set the orientation of the screen, so that DOCs are viewed sideways. (This feature really does nothing since the effective viewing area on your Palm is essentially square), the Linear Tables checkbox will take any tables and make them part of the DOC. This however ruins the formatting of the table, making it difficult to read the information as it would be displayed in it's table. Trust me in suggesting that you leave this box unchecked. Next, the View HTML Source box will display most of the HTML code right in the doc. Most of you will find reading through all that code disturbing, but if you are trying to teach yourself HTML, there is no better way then to read someone's code, and then see how it affects the text. The feature is there. Use it as you wish. The Show Last Line feature is one that I wish was in EVERY DOC reader. I personally don't like the last line of the screen to overlap as you scroll down. For some reason, it always throws me off. Being able to turn that off, saves me some aggravation. Another feather in the cap of Iambic Reader. Finally, you can adjust the Auto Scroll Speed so that it is comfortable to you. It may take some playing to find just the right speed.

While I hope that I haven't confused you, I thought it important to go through as many of the features that Iambic Reader has to flaunt. I continue to be impressed with not only their development but also Iambic Support who were instrumental in getting my HTML problems fixed. I was able to exchange a series of emails with them and get the problem fixed in basically one day.