# The Straight Dope on a PDA? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 18, 2004, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014 "2004-06-18T08:15:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/1 "2004-06-18T08:15:07Z")
This thread isn’t About This Message Board and its sorty of iffyishly a Comment on Cecil’s Columns, the difference being the columns as a whole whereas its usually a gripe about a possible inconsistency. Maybe it belongs somewhere else, I couldn’t decide 🙂 Ok so I have my PDA here and it has proved itself to be indispensible and a mandatory and welcome tag-along in my life. Not because I schedule my day on it - I’m just not that sort of a person - but because of the information I have available to me. As a college student I have found myself constantly irritated that when a topic comes up in class - a misplaced name, a confused fact, maybe an unknown word - we have to continue without that information because we don’t have the resources available. That is an unacceptable pet-peeve of mine. Right now on my PDA (among many other titles) I have Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and all 286,397 articles from [Wikipedia.org](http://Wikipedia.org). I am an ignorance fighting machine! The only thing I am missing of course, is Cecil’s columns. The Straight Dope could offer a compilation of Cecil’s columns for sale in a Microsoft Reader, eReader, and/or Tome Raider formats on the front page of their website for say $10.00 (a fair price). Not only could these be used on PDAs but they could be used by desktop computers as well, making it much easier to search through them. Is it a possibility? As these little devices become more and more commonplace this could be a cheap revenue source for the Reader, especially considering that you can completely bypass the publisher phase and its pretty (relatively) easy to get the articles into these formats. Unless of course there was some sort of contractual constituent with previous publishers. I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing. Its just an idea! ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/2 "2004-06-18T10:28:50Z")
This would be better suited to ATMB. Yes, technically this is very possible. I could do it for the Straight Dope if they are interested. For now, you could also use [AvantGo](http://www.avantgo.com) or a similar browser to access the boards on your PDA. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/3 "2004-06-18T11:31:10Z")
Yes but that is just a slow process 🙂 I hope they let you Xash! ---
**Author:** ![Earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2004, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/4 "2004-06-18T23:25:35Z")
The SD _used_ to be available on AvantGo, but no more. It hasn’t been that way for a while now, so I had to dig up the [announcement](http://web.archive.org/web/20020602111757/straightdope.com/avantgo.html) on [archive.org](http://archive.org), the [short version](http://web.archive.org/web/20020604071548/http://straightdope.com/) of which is: > [@](#): > > They started charging us to provide what we give out for free, so we said forget it. ---
**Author:** ![Hanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b3f665/32.png) [@Hanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hanna)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/5 "2004-06-19T00:04:14Z")
> [@xash](#): > > This would be better suited to ATMB. > > Yes, technically this is very possible. I could do it for the Straight Dope if they are interested. > > For now, you could also use [AvantGo](http://www.avantgo.com) or a similar browser to access the boards on your PDA. Yeah, but if you don’t have internet access (my college doesn’t have wireless, yet), accessing by browser wouldn’t be the way to go. I love having reference materials on my PDA, a Straight Dope resource would be great. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/6 "2004-06-19T05:04:01Z")
> [@Boscibo](#): > > Yeah, but if you don’t have internet access (my college doesn’t have wireless, yet), accessing by browser wouldn’t be the way to go. I love having reference materials on my PDA, a Straight Dope resource would be great. **Boscibo** , offline browsers for the PDA will download the content onto your device at the time of synchronization with your desktop. So you can then carry the offline content and read it at leisure. AvantGo works in both offline and online mode. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/7 "2004-06-19T12:57:47Z")
Xash, I checked it out and it doesnt seem very feasible to spider the circa. [2,480](http://www.google.com/search?q=site:straightdope.com+classics+OR+mailbag&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&start=600&sa=N) columns on the website. This weighs in at around 20 MB. This is almost as big as websters unabridged…! The fact that you would be accessing them via a web browser would also make it nearly impossible to search them, especially quickly. I haven’t actually tried AvantGo yet though so I will check it out anyways. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Llama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/8 "2004-06-21T04:55:02Z")
You could just buy acrobat writer and print everything to a pdf.Then convert it to the acrobat reader for palm format. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/9 "2004-06-21T05:49:59Z")
> [@The\_Llama](#): > > You could just buy acrobat writer and print everything to a pdf.Then convert it to the acrobat reader for palm format. I have Acrobat 6 Professional here at work. How does one go about converting it to acrobat reader for palm format? Also, how do you get it to spider all 2,480 columns, and how do you tell it to not download the SD banner and put it in every image? How big is the file going to be when you merge all these columns into one file? Sounds nightmarish… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Llama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/10 "2004-06-21T18:27:39Z")
There is a seperate [acrobat reader](http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readerforpalm.html) for Palm that came with my Zire. As long as you have a pdf file already made, you can just drag and drop it into the program. It will then do the conversion, automatically removing any pictures. Then it just sits in wait for your next hotsync. It’s really easy. It’s not always perfect (some e-books that I’ve converted from pdf had certain letters translated wrong) but overall the docs generally come out fine and readable. How big it will be, I’m not sure. I’m at work, so I can’t experiment right now, but I’ll see what I can find later. ---
**Author:** ![Earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/11 "2004-06-21T18:48:41Z")
No idea if this is going to help or not, but the Project Gutenberg’s FAQ contains a page on [converting online documents for PDAs](http://www.gutenberg.net/faq/R-33.shtml). In addition to the sources that page lists, there’s also the [iSilo](http://www.isilo.com) reader, which can convert from HTML. Sony has bundled the [Picsel Reader](http://www.picsel.com/menu.html) with some of their PDAs, but I don’t know if you can get this as a stand-alone program or not. If we decide on a HTML-to-PDA converter, I suppose this can be made into a voluntary collaborative effort to have people run the translations? The hitch I see, though, is that to make this thing useful, it’ll need either an index or a good search function, and I don’t know how well the readers so far mentioned works in that regard. My experience with Adobe’s Acrobat Reader on Palm OS PDAs has been pretty bad, though. ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/12 "2004-06-21T22:25:30Z")
I agree with Earthling, Acrobat for Palm OS blows ass. Also, a hijack: How’d you download Wikipedia to your Palm? I am unable to find it. ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/13 "2004-06-21T22:32:00Z")
> [@Chairman Pow](#): > > Also, a hijack: How’d you download Wikipedia to your Palm? I am unable to find it. Ah, Tome Raider. I see. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/14 "2004-06-22T08:20:36Z")
**Chairman** , yep there is a conversion script written in Perl which converts it to the Tome Raider format. I seem to have lost the link to the instructions. Did you find it by chance? ---
**Author:** ![Hanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b3f665/32.png) [@Hanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hanna)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2004, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/15 "2004-06-23T22:26:25Z")
> [@xash](#): > > **Boscibo** , offline browsers for the PDA will download the content onto your device at the time of synchronization with your desktop. So you can then carry the offline content and read it at leisure. AvantGo works in both offline and online mode. How do I do that? I have AvantGo and have a few sites synchronized, but they don’t appear to carry The Straight Dope? Is there a way to get sites that they don’t list? ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2004, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/16 "2004-06-24T03:16:07Z")
> [@alterego](#): > > **Chairman** , yep there is a conversion script written in Perl which converts it to the Tome Raider format. I seem to have lost the link to the instructions. Did you find it by chance? Not the conversion script, but here are a couple of links to guys who have done the hard work for you: [http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/](http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/) [http://www.memoware.com/?screen=doc\_detail&doc\_id=13861&back=main](http://www.memoware.com/?screen=doc_detail&doc_id=13861&back=main) Should be enough to get you started. I don’t know how often one would need to update that (if my DVD copy of EB is any indication, quarterly still doesn’t have an effect on my browsing). ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2004, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-a-pda/251014/17 "2004-06-27T17:34:12Z")
Ahh yeah there it is. That link is to the conversion script, if you scroll down a bit (There are [instructions](http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/#Conversion)). I ran it a month or so ago because the versions of Wikipedia they were offering for download were a bit stale.