GTD Wannabe

Getting HTML onto your Palm PDA

June 9th, 2007 | by GTD Wannabe |

I’ve just been turned onto a new way of getting HTML content into my Palm. Let’s assume that you’ve got a non-wireless Palm and you want to get either a web page, or an HTML file from your desktop onto it. I’ve used AvantGo before, and it’s great for setting up “channels”, and pushing a whole of bunch of fresh web content to your Palm during HotSync. However, it only handles actual Web page, i.e., online content only.

Now let’s say that you’ve got this HTML file on your computer and you’re just dying to put it onto your Palm in readable format. You could, I guess, convert it to text and then bring it in using DocumentsToGo or some such, but wouldn’t you rather have the file looking like it was meant to?

Enter Plucker, a plucky (haha) little (free) “offline Web and e-book viewer” for PalmOS handheld devices. From their web page, “Plucker comes with Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX tools, scripts, and conduits that let you decide exactly what part of the WWW you’d like to download onto your PDA.”

The reason I have an HTML file that I want to read in my Palm is that EverNote still doesn’t support mobile platforms. The topic came up recently (again) in the forums, and I was reminded of the suggestion that Plucker could be used to create a kludge solution, at least temporarily. Because this is something that many EN users may not be used to doing, I thought I’d write a little walkthrough here.

Get Plucker

Although Plucker offers a plethora of downloadable scripts, through mirrors, torrents, etc., it’s actually pretty easy to get it onto your computer and installed. Check out their downloads page, and look for the Plucker Desktop download for Windows. If you’re comfortable with torrents, choose that; otherwise, you can just download the exe straightaway. The desktop software also created the appropriate prc files for my Palm, so you shouldn’t need anything else from the download page.

Install Plucker. Easy installation. The first time you run it, the Plucker desktop walks you through a setup wizard. I chose all of the default options. When you get to the destinations screen, you can choose two things: (1) where on your Palm you want the Plucker files to live and (2) where on your hard drive you want the files to live. The way Plucker works is that it converts an HTML (or txt) file into a PDB file, which is readable on the Palm. This way, you’ll end up with a directory on your hard drive with all the PDB files, and the same files will be automatically ready for syncing to your Palm. I chose to keep the files on my SD card, since there’s lots of space there.

Get the HTML File

Now, if you’re not an EverNote user, you can skip this section. Otherwise, let’s assume there’s a category or two (or even your entire database if you’re really adventurous) that you want to see on your Palm. For me, there’s a category where I keep lists of books, sorted by author, that I want to get from the library. I’d like to have these notes with me so I can see what I need to read next.

In EN, select the category (or notes) that you want to export. Right-click on one of the note headers, and select Export…

Pick a file name, and the HTML extension. Now you have an HTML file that Plucker can work with.

Creating a Channel in Plucker for a File

Plucker offers a channel wizard which is really easy. You can find it under the File menu:

Follow through the wizard. First, you pick a name for your new channel. Then, you can either pick a URL for an online web page, or select “Start on a Local File” to suck in the HTML file that we’ve just created. You can just select the defaults now and head all the way through wizard. You can then run the Channel configuration afterwards; there you can do things like add in a schedule, which means that this file would be sampled at regular intervals. I think it would be easier to avoid the schedule and just resample the file after updating it. But that’s just me.

Now, if you look at the Plucker main screen, you’ll see the channels that are configured.

Updating the Channel

At this point, the channel has been set up, but Plucker hasn’t done any translation yet. If you just want to update this particular channel, you can right-click on it and choose “Update Selected Channels”. There’s also a button on the toolbar. Either way, get that channel updated.

You get a progress screen, showing you that Plucker is doing its thing. When it’s done, just click OK. Now, in the chosen directory on your hard drive, there will be a new PDB file, containing the information from the HTML page.

Don’t Forget to Sync!

There’s just one more step, and that’s to actually perform a HotSync to your Palm to get the PDB onto it. Plucker takes care of the overhead, i.e., putting the PDB into the queue, but you still have to push the button. Do it now.

On the Palm

Now on the Palm, you’ll have an icon for Plucker – looks like a big soother. If you open the application, you should see a list of the PDBs that are available to read. Open the file you’ve just created.

There are a host of options that you can play with, e.g., full-screen mode, size of font, even orientation of the screen. In the screenshot below, I’ve got the portrait orientation, with the font. It’s not necessarily the most comfortable for long term reading, but it’s great for packing in info when I’m just searching for something.

What’s even better is that there is a great search. If you click on the left lens of the glasses icon (or Find under the Go menu), you get a search box. Enter the item you’re searching for. In this test, I want to find my list of books by Reichs. If you want to repeat the search, i.e., find again, just click on the right lens of the glasses icon (a cute touch, I thought).

The search works well, and even remembers terms that you’ve searched for before. In addition, you can assign bookmarks to your file, to make finding key areas even easier.

What Else?

Plucker is obviously more powerful than just this one use case. For instance, you can also read in text files (say you don’t use DocumentsToGo) and images. It will also work with online web pages.

For inputting a favourite EverNote category into your Palm, it’s priceless. And it’s free (or donation-ware). Once you have the setup done, updating your information in the palm is as easy as:

1. Export notes from EN (keep using the exact same file and location to make it easy.)
2. Run Plucker and update the channel pointing to that file.
3. Sync your Palm.
4. Nope, you’re already done.

Oh, if you’re looking for more information about HTML and PDAs, Plucker has put together a nice comparison between the big three, i.e., Plucker, AvantGo, and iSilo. Check it out.