Palm or Pocket PC? Help!!!!

[skylee]

Hi. Since my old Sony Clie is dying, I've just bought an iPAQ rx 1950 and am now trying hard to learn to use it (not very successfully, though)

I need a software (preferably freeware) for reading novels in Traditional Chinese and English. The novels are in .txt and .pdb formats. I've found and installed this but the books (I have only tried the Chinese ones in .txt) are not shown properly, only gibberish in there. Is this because the handheld's OS is Windows Mobile 5.0? Anything I can do to get the files shown properly?

And any suggestions on such e-book reading freeware?

Thanks.

[smalltownfart]

Your books are probably in GB* or Big5.

Try this freeware reader: Text Viewer, but I think it has a 64K file size limitation.

There are some others like CJReader that are more full-featured, but alas, are not free.

Another solution is to use a converter like the one in Mandarin tools to convert your text files from GB/Big5 to UTF-8:

http://www.mandarintools.com/zhcode.html

After that, they shd be readable using the pocketpc notepad as long you have chinese fonts loaded.

PDB files might pose a challenge, as I don't think they are plain old text files.

[skylee]

Thanks for the reply. Actually I can read the txt files using the pre-installed Word Mobile. It's just that there is no way to place a book mark and there is no search function so going back to where I stopped last time in a Jinyong novel is difficult.

[Harvey]

I heard a new Palm OS Version is supposed to be coming out sometime soon. I think I'll wait for that and then upgrade.

[skylee]

Re my posts above. I have tried again, i.e. uninstalled CEBook, removed all ebooks, then reinstalled CEBook and reloaded all ebooks. And now I can use CEBook to read both txt and pdb files. And as all I ask for is bookmarking and search functions, I think the software is good enough (and it is free ).

Mysterious computers ...

[Shadowdh]

Hi Skylee,

Is it free...?? As I am reading $440 for it unless thats a different version.. (I had to change to the english lang version of the website as my chinese is not very good yet...) If it is... good find...

[skylee]

Hi Shadow. Click on the download button and you can download it. And the price is in New Taiwan Dollars, not USD. And the purchase option doesn't work ... and I have no idea why it can be downloaded for free ...

[Shadowdh]

Nice find indeed... thanks for the info...

[roddy]

Going to be needing the advice in this topic a lot sooner than I thought, I think. Guess what I just put through the washing machine . . .

Big bump for a follow up.

For the last eighteen months that T5 has lain around at the bottom of a cupboard and every few months I'll notice it and plug it in on the off-chance it works and mutter to myself about how I really must get it fixed, or sell it on to someone who wants to try and fix it, or just chuck the damned thing out. And today . . . it works! Appears to have slowly regenerated itself over the last year and a half, and is functioning perfectly.

Course, I prefer my TX now for the wireless (although I do have the wireless card for the T5) and I can't really see what I would do with a second PDA. Any ideas?

Edit: Double plus miracle. My previously broken laptop is now working again. Anyone got any electronics they want me to lay hands on?

[gato]

Course, I prefer my TX now for the wireless (although I do have the wireless card for the T5) and I can't really see what I would do with a second PDA. Any ideas?

Sell it to someone who wants to use PlecoDict, I guess, though probably should tell the victim that there's a chance it might go dead again.

[roddy]

Yeah, I probably will unless I can think of a use for it. Will obviously have to advertise it as pre-washed

Has retained all my old data and music as well. The internal speaker seems to be dead, but earphones still work and battery appears to be holding a charge no problem. Digitizer also works still. Annoying thing is that there's an 18 month old list of things to do on there, featuring at least two items I haven't yet done.

[imron]

featuring at least two items I haven't yet done

Learn to write characters and take the Advanced HSK?

[atitarev]

Posted by Smalltownfart

...

* MDict ( free dictionary reader by Rayman Zhang )

....

MDict can support multiple dictionaries, I am using one created from Unihan (character dictionary) compiled by Konglong, as well as some other word-based dictionaries (all free). Please take a look at the screenshots, the dictionary is well formatted and well designed, very colourful.

Also, MDict can also be setup to run separately in the background, so that if you highlight a word in any PocketPC application and click on an icon, it will do the dictionary lookup in a popup. Very handy, it works in a very similar way to KDict in Palm.

...

Thanks for your suggestions. I followed your advise and installed MDict.

Smalltownfart, I would appreciate if you could let me know in details how you set up the dictionary for MDict. I recently bought a Pocket PC and installed MDict.

EDIT: all sorted

For inputting Chinese characters I am using CE-Star. Works OK so far.

[smalltownfart]

Do you have a specific step you are stuck on?

You need to copy the file into your pocketpc. You can do this via "Explore" in Activesync on your host Windows PC while your pocketpc is connected.

[atitarev]

Oh, thanks, I missed your reply. No the problem is sorted (I edited my post, rather than putting a new one).

I wonder if there are more dictionaries for MDict, looking for both Chinese and Japanese. Are there conversions of EDICT and CEDICT (mdx files one could download)?

I am also after a decent Chinese word processors fro PPC's. I miss Wenlin and NJStar WP, I hope there will be good editors soon. Can you advise a good one? I sorted this problem with the Japanese texts using JWPce for Pocket PC's. Its good feature - you can enter larger texts and look up words in the same editor without having to open new window - a big issue on Pocket PC's. I can't find anything similar for Chinese texts.

Issues with current Chinese IME's for Pocket PC's: they convert 1 character at a time, not full words, very awkward when you have to type JI, SHI, etc.

[smalltownfart]

atitarev:

You shd look into "d-Ear Chinese Input", it features sentence input similar to what you'd get on windows and linux pinyin IMEs.

[atitarev]

Thank you, what is Chinese "d-Ear Chinese Input"? I may already have it in options somewhere (CE-Star or Effy). Is this the method to input characters wordwise?

[smalltownfart]

It's a commercial IME, I believe it was under $10 the last time I checked:

http://www.d-ear.com/Technologies&Products/Products-d-Ear%20IME_en.htm

Btw, thank you for your tip about JWPce, it looks very promising. Porting it for Chinese shdn't be that hard, maybe I can find some time to work on it this summer (wishful thinking!)

[gato]

Maybe you can 梅花 or 海鹰, which are popular IMEs among Chinese users.

http://soft.cool-net.cn/software/soft_info.asp?SoftwareId=6498

PlumSIP|梅花输入法 For PPC V5.0中文版

http://www.pdasun.com/ppc_list.asp?id=846&classid=20

海鹰飞翔输入法 v1.4

[atitarev]

Thanks, Gato. I'll probably wait for English language interface and downloads, since I don't know what is free and what is safe to download

Smalltownfart, apart from JWPce there is NJStar word processor (not Communicator) for both Chinese and Japanese. They both work with free dictionaries - CEDICT and EDICT. There is no port for them for Pocket PC. NJStar is not a free product, though.

(www.njstar.com)

Good luck with porting JWPce if you decide to do it. JWPce has some annoying features when working on a Pocket PC but I learned to overcome them, let me know if you have questions.

I'll take a look at your link. Thanks