One of the biggest complaints I've had with the Pocket PC is that I had to use Pocket Word to view my .TXT documents.
I spent a lot of time trying to find a good text viewer for the Pocket PC that wasn't as powerful as Word, but did more than the average text viewer.
My requirements were pretty simple:
- Must remember where you were in the document the next time you open the same file.
- Must go full-screen.
- Must page down by using the rocker or down position on the button.
I didn't think finding such a program would prove to be such a challenge, but it was. When I had my Visor (Palm OS), I used HandStory. But the PocketPC freeware version did not do all the things I wanted, and there was no demo available for the full version. So my search went on and on.
Then I discovered
Haali Reader. Finally, a reader that does everything I wanted, and so much more. Plus, it is 100% free.
Haali Reader was created by Mike Matsnev and is quite a powerful program. Here are a few of the features right from the author's site:
- Loads plain text and XML files.
- Cyrillic encodings support with autodetection.
- Last viewed position in file is saved on exit.
- ClearType support.
- Any font/size can be selected.
- Fullscreen and landscape mode.
- Colors can be adjusted.
- Text search.
- Dictionary support. Tapping a word opens a translation window.
- Automatic hyphenation (russian language only).
- Table of contents and bookmarks
- Multiple columns support (1-4)
- PRC/PDB files support (plain text and XML only, HTML is not supported).
- Builtin ZIP archives support.
- Autoscroll
Operation is very intuitive. In fact, it may take a while to discover all of the things it can do.
The program was tested on a Dell Axim X5 400 and had no problems on either PocketPC 2002 or the WM2003 operating systems. I really like that it uses clear type and allows me to set the font size. You can make your document full-screen just by double-tapping anywhere in the document and scrolling down to the next page couldn't be easier.
However, the most impressive aspect is that it is free. I've seen several commercial text viewers that can't do half of what Haali Reader can do. Equally impressive is the fact that Mike provides the source code for the reader.
If you are in need of a text viewer for your Pocket PC, then you probably won't need to look any further than Haali Reader. You may never need Pocket Word again.
Haali Reader - a book reader for Windows CE
Author: Mike Matsnev
Cost: Free
Supported Systems: Pocket PC, PocketPC 2003, WM2003, and Palm size PC
URL:
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/pocketpc/index.html.en
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