As you can see, the Palm Reader Markup Language uses far less tags than HTML. In fact, this ebook uses only one tag, the \b tag, which specifies a bold font. Other tags let you specify page breaks, italic and underlined text, picture placement, and even items for the table of contents. You can consult http://www.palm.com/ebooks to learn more about the individual tags the Palm Reader uses.

By far the easiest way to produce an ebook for the Palm Reader, however, is to use Microsoft Word and the wordtopml template. Available from Palm at http://www.peanutpress.com/makebook/word2pml.zip, this template lets you use Microsoft Word's WYSIWYG text formatting, and automatically converts your formatting to Palm Reader Markup Language tags when you're finished. Simply write and format your document and run the word2pml macro. In fact, I created the ebooks in this article by writing the text in Microsoft Word and first saving the ebook as HTML (creating the first version of the ebook for the Palm MIK) and then running the word2pml macro to generate the Palm Reader version and save the resulting file as a flat text file.

To create the Palm OS version of the ebook, you use the Palm DropBook application for Macintosh or Windows. As the name indicates, it's a faceless application; you just drag the icon of the text file you'd like to turn into a Palm Reader ebook onto the Palm DropBook icon, and the application does the rest, creating a .pdb file with the resulting ebook.

Figure C shows my finished ebook in the Palm Reader.

FIGURE C

Here's my finished ebook in the Palm Reader.

Unlike an ebook you read with the Palm MIK, you can add bookmarks, save your place, and add annotations. You can also save ebooks on memory cards, letting you distribute far larger ebooks than would be practical with the Palm MIK. As you can see from Figure D, I carry an obscene number of ebooks on my memory card!

FIGURE D

Here are some ebooks on my Palm m505 handheld with its memory card.

Using the Palm Reader has several advantages over both HTML ebooks with a browser like the Palm MIK or Adobe PDF files. At the heart of these advantages is the simple fact that the Palm Reader is an ebook reader tuned for a handheld computer, not a desktop file format crunched to fit your Palm handheld. Consequently, the features ebook readers want--annotations, bookmarks, and readability--are readily accessible. Moreover, the Palm Reader application and Palm DropBook are free, making it economical to create ebooks for your staff.

Doc readers
Throughout this article, I've intentionally neglected the popular Doc file readers, one of the oldest ebook standards for the Palm OS platform. Developed during the dark ages of the Palm OS platform's history, the Doc format has emerged as a leading format for electronic books of all kinds, including fiction and reference materials.

There are a host of Doc readers on the market, most notably AportisDoc (at http://www.aportis.com) and iSilo (at http://www.iSilo.com). Many of these support either extensions to the Doc format or another markup language such as HTML that lets you add custom formatting to your document. These readers, just like the Palm Reader, use a desktop tool that converts the text document to a Palm OS database, which you then install on your handheld to read.