Going from Palm TX to iPhone: A question...

M

Mads

举人
So i got this iPhone as a gift a few days ago...

- On the Palm TX I used to use TealDoc to read ebooks. I could easily highlight a word and have Pleco look up the word by the press of an assigned button.

With the iPhone version I have not yet found a way to do this. I even tried uploading an epub file to the "document file reader" but it doesn't seem to support this format.

Is there a way around this or does the TX simply beat the iPhone on performance here?! :shock:

Performance wise I surprisingly find that the TX is superior to the iPhone. HWR on the TX was just straight on the screen, very fast, no need for multiple choice or separate popup-screen for character input.

I was expecting fireworks on the iPhone but it feels a little "one step forward two steps back"'ish :cry: :wink:
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Mads said:
- On the Palm TX I used to use TealDoc to read ebooks. I could easily highlight a word and have Pleco look up the word by the press of an assigned button.

With the iPhone version I have not yet found a way to do this. I even tried uploading an epub file to the "document file reader" but it doesn't seem to support this format.

Is there a way around this or does the TX simply beat the iPhone on performance here?!
Click to expand...

Technically we weren't really supposed to do that even on Palm OS - we could because Palm had no way of stopping us, but we were basically looking into the memory of a different application and pulling useful bits of data out of it. Better memory protection makes it pretty much impossible on newer OSes without the manufacturer's help - too much of a security risk otherwise.

Anyway, there's no equivalent to that at the moment on iOS (though we're hoping Apple adds one - they've been making some moves in that direction), but if you convert your document from epub to text (using Calibre e.g.) it should load quite happily in our document reader after that. We also support HTML files (you might remember it was very difficult to get that text copying feature working correctly in those on Palm), though those can get unwieldy with book-length texts - usually best to chunk them up into a single file per chapter.

Mads said:
Performance wise I surprisingly find that the TX is superior to the iPhone. HWR on the TX was just straight on the screen, very fast, no need for multiple choice or separate popup-screen for character input.
Click to expand...

That's just the nature of capacitive touchscreens, unfortunately - finger control means fewer and larger buttons. With Palm and Microsoft both jumping on that bandwagon (and Google on it from day one) it's pretty much impossible to find a modern handheld that uses a stylus. You can make the background of the handwriting recognizer box transparent via Settings / Panels / Handwriting Interface, and there's also an experimental option to use handwriting to enter A-Z letters / numbers (so no need for the keyboard at all), but there's no way to get the handwriting box and the keyboard to be on the screen at the same time.

Mads said:
I was expecting fireworks on the iPhone but it feels a little "one step forward two steps back"'ish
Click to expand...

It takes some getting used to - really a radically different way of interacting with a portable device; ultimately we think the benefits exceed the costs, but if you can't reach a point where you feel similarly we're happy to help you migrate your license back to Palm.
 
M

Mads

举人
I hope you will invest more into the development of an advanced document reader (that supports different ebook formats) with Pleco integration.

I can see that you have invested a lot of development into add-ons like audio, OCR and stroke order animation. All great stuff for beginners, but personally I don't find them of much use and wont be investing in them.

I would definitely pay for an advanced Document reader with features like...

- Support for common ebook formats.
- Control of font size and screen colors.
- Highlight in text of words that are already in flashcard folders.
- Smooth autoscroll.

Thank you for a great product and support.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Mads said:
- Support for common ebook formats.
Click to expand...

That one's in the works - is there a format you care about other than EPUB?

Mads said:
- Control of font size and screen colors.
Click to expand...

Already supported - configure colors in Settings / General / Color Schemes / Standard Mode Colors (or just turn on Night Mode for a white-on-black color scheme), and configure font size in Settings / Reader / Font Sizes.

Mads said:
- Highlight in text of words that are already in flashcard folders.
Click to expand...

That one's actually very challenging to get working well - there's been some discussion of this before, basically we'd need to generate a special customized index file every time you updated your flashcard database (added / removed a word). So it's doable but it's hard enough that it might not happen for a while...

Mads said:
- Smooth autoscroll.
Click to expand...

So you tap a button and it starts scrolling down automatically? Haven't actually had many requests for that - I'm not sure how well it fits in with the reader "workflow" since one would generally be interrupting it frequently to look up words, but I suppose if you can recognize most of the text you're seeing and only need to look up a word every page or two it might be useful.
 
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