Remote Computing

AportisDoc is a proud member of the new eBook Reader family that resides on a palmtop computer, operating under the Palm OS. Equipped with a versatile feature set. AportisDoc enables users to read electronic documents once an e-document or e-book is downloaded by Palm synchronization.

When AportisDoc is opened on the Application Picker on your Palm, a Document List screen lists available documents and their size. Reading an electronic document is initiated by simply tapping on its name. To scroll through the document, either tap the proper portion of the text screen or press a Scroll button on the Palm Panel just above the HotSynch button.

To walk down the document as you read, either tap the bottom half of the text screen, or press the Scroll Down button. To scroll back up the document, tap the top half of the text screen or press the Scroll Up button. To scroll rapidly to jump a page or two, you can tap-and-drag or tap-and-hold the stylus.

AportisDoc provides a turbo-scroll mode that allows you to automatically scroll down a document according to predetermined settings.

First, you set the autoscrolling unit to be either a line or page. You may specify the four built-in Palm buttons (on each side of the Scroll buttons) to represent stop scrolling (Calendar button), start scrolling (Phone button), slower scrolling (To-Do button) and faster scrolling (Memo button).

Then, you enter the time between sequential scrolls, and you’ve effectively triggered reading autopilot. Once this optimal interscroll time is ascertained for a specific document based upon your reading speed and comprehension, you will be in reader’s heaven.

A neat feature of AportisDoc is the ability to select one of four fonts: regular, big, bold and monospaced. These font selections are conveniently located on the Button Bar at the bottom of the text window.

With a simple tap on one of these font buttons, you can determine the best choice for reading text under particular lighting environments, and, accordingly, avoid eye strain. Monospaced text is recommended for reading aligned text that inherently populates databases and spreadsheets, tables and source codes.

Any respectable reader or viewer must provide you the ability to search or find particular text in a document. AportisDoc has a conspicuous Find button on the Button Bar. When this Find button is tapped, the Find In Document dialog box appears.

Once a character string is entered and whether case matters is indicated, the Find operation is executed, searching from the current page to the end of the document. When an incidence of the search string is found, it’s highlighted in the text, and the approximate percentage of the document that has been traversed to get to the search string is shown on the Button Bar to the immediate left of the Find button.

To seek another incidence of the search string, tap the Find Again button on the immediate right of the Find button. Text may be selected and copied for copying-and-pasting into another application.

Probably the funkiest feature of AportisDoc is the ability to beam an e-document. By invoking Beam Document under the Options menu, the currently open document is airborne — beamed to another Palm.

The User’s Guide is written with the same focus as the underlying computer program: to make the plethora of features easy to use and understand. The index is complete and intuitive so that an explanation of every feature is immediately available.

To convert text documents to Palm-readable format, Aportis provides the MakeDoc utility. Since MakeDoc conversions are limited to documents in text format, you must first manually convert word processing, database and spreadsheet formats into text.

Although this is only a minor inconvenience, it would be user-friendly for MakeDoc to handle this pedestrian task. Nevertheless, MakeDoc provides many useful data conversion options, including impressive compression. This is the primary reason that Aportis is able to offer a substantial library of freely available eBooks.

AportisDoc Version 2.2 may be downloaded from the company Web site to Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems and is designed to work on all models of handhelds operating under the Palm platform, including all models of Palm devices, Handspring Visor, TRGpro, IBM WorkPad, Qualcomm pdQ, Symbol SPT, etc.

$30

Reviewed by Al Harrison, intellectual property attorney, Harrison & Egbert, Houston.

Dec/Jan '01 Issue

PROS
AportisDoc Mobile Edition enables you to scroll through e-documents and e-books on the Palm either manually by tapping or scrolling or automatically by invoking a reading “autopilot” mode. In addition to an easy-to-use search feature, documents may be beamed from one Palm to another.

CONS
The Selecting-Text option must first be enabled in the Preferences menu before text may be selected for copying.

VERDICT
AportisDoc provides a complete set of features that makes reading e-documents and e-books on the Palm convenient.

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Updated 09/19/01
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