Description:
Weasel is document reader for the Palm Pilot organizers, Weasel is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License v2. Unlike other doc viewers for the Palm, Weasel uses zTXT files as its primary format. These are similar in many ways to the de facto standard format, PalmDoc, but they feature much better compression. Weasel also reads PalmDoc files, though, so don't worry. It even supports bookmarks in both formats.
The zTXT compression is done using zLib, a Free compression library released under the zLib License. This results in much smaller files than with the PalmDoc method. For example, the Project Gutenberg e-text of "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" is approximately 600K in size. Compressed as a zTXT, it is only 261K in size, while with PalmDoc it is about 330K. Since the Palm Pilots do not have very much memory, this is a big savings.
Here are some key features of "Weasel Reader":
- Reads documents in zTXT and PalmDoc formats
- Uses zLib for compression (ala gzip and pkzip)
- Decompresses the text as you read
- Hi-res available on devices which support it
- Uses an age-based cache to keep the most relevant data in memory
- Remembers where you stop reading
- Full bookmark support. Add/Remove/etc.
- Jump around to arbitrary places in the text
- Number of allowable documents is limited only by memory
- You can select the text you\'re reading to copy it into other apps
- Export text to the Memo Pad
- Beam Weasel or books to other Palms or to a PC
- Full annotation support with references to where the annotation occurs (zTXT only)
- Search capability
- Smooth autoscroll or screen wrap-around autoscroll options
- Disable the onscreen controls and read full-screen
- Invert the screen
- Rotate the screen by +90 or -90 degrees
- Per-document preferences (optional)
- Multiple language hyphenation support
- Supports read-only documents in ROM/Flash/etc.
- Supports Palm OS VFS for reading from expansion memory cards/sticks
- Supports jog dial on Sony PDAs
- Absolutely 100% Free Software (licensed under the GPL 2.0)
Update Description:
- Major new features include fixed support for the Palm 5-way navigator (i.e. d-pad buttons) plus the ability to remap keys to perform user specified actions while reading.
- There is also a new "Most Recently Read" list maintained by Weasel Reader to help frequent users keep tabs on what they are currently reading.
Reviews:
**** [Aug 10, 2007] by ETItaly
Good sw, but the rotation +90° and -90° does'nt works on my iQue3600. Pluker is a better reader from this point of view
***** [Jun 20, 2005] by Ferenc Kudasz
Quick and handy, supports other language than English. Thanks!
**** [Dec 26, 2003] by David
I've been using Weasel Reader since well over a year now, and I'm curious about upcoming versions and what kind of neat improvements they might bring. So far, I think that I have read about 10-15 books, with about 300 pages on the average. The reader works fine with the Sonie Clie B/W hires, and fonthack makes things a lot more readable with OS5-like fonts. A beautiful app using an efficient file format: ztxt. Thumbs all up! The only thing this is lacking is an easier way to rotate the screen (on hardware button press, for example). When you read a lot, you sometimes change position or want to hold the device in another hand, so this would be very useful.
***** [Jun 13, 2003] by Arthur Montieth
A brilliant piece of software, unfortunately converting documents yourself can be a pain. If you have a high-res Sony Clie then this does have problems as I found out when I upgraded. A new beta is available from the writer's own site though which provides a workaround for this display problem. http://bach.as.arizona.edu/~johng/weasel/. Hope the site admin doesn't mind me putting this in :)
**** [May 8, 2003] by George E.
To make it perfect I would add some basic image support, but I'm not sure if zTxt allows for such features. Very nice program, especially when compared to others.
***** [Mar 18, 2003] by Matt Sommer
One of the best free readers around... I just bought a MemPlug for my visor, and was initially quite upset at the limited files you could access with the supplied software... Weasel Reader works beautifully with the VFS to store all of my books and documents on the memory card with absolutely no probelms. The texts also LOOK great if you use the optional hyphenation databases... autoscrolling, bookmakrs, annotations, ability to rotate the text... it's all here.
**** [Oct 13, 2002] by David McNab
Quite good. The time to favour this reader over CSpotRun is if you have more than 500k of documents in your Palm. That's when the advantage of zTxt compression pays for its overheads, and gives you a net gain. Sadly, the user interface is not as nice as other readers - many functions require several taps or a shortcut - not enough gadget icons. I'm sure later releases will improve on this though.
***** [Apr 3, 2002] by Daniel Mario Vega
The best Doc reader you can find. With all the features you can imagine. It supports DOC files and zTXT files (which are smaller). You can find tools for creating/converting to this format at http://gutenpalm.sourceforge.net/. It's Free and it's OpenSource.
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