Writing
Introduction
A Palm OS device is perhaps not what most persons would think of when asked to recommend a tool or environment for serious writing—the creation and editing of, say, a book-length manuscript. Indeed, there are some issues with using a Palm OS device for serious writing—not the least of which is carpal tunnel syndrome.
However, doing serious writing on a Palm OS device is certainly possible. After all, people managed to write books long before computers and keyboards. Doing serious writing on a Palm OS device is about as difficult as doing writing on a PC 20 years ago: not as good as a PC today, where Microsoft® Word does everything but scratch where it itches, but certainly better than anything before the PC revolution. The portability of the Palm OS devices may, for you, tip the overall balance towards them: you can work on your essay or book while waiting for an appointment or commuting to work (unless you are driving, of course!).
You might think, given sizes of files generated by typical word processors, that a Palm OS device simply does not have enough memory to hold a book-length manuscript. Most books have less than a megabyte of text: a megabyte is 150,000 to 175,000 words. Even the smallest current Palm OS devices have two megabytes of memory. Your Palm OS device has plenty of room for your manuscript, as well as a few games to get you through episodes of writer’s block. (So what does Microsoft Word use all those megabytes of disk space for? That is a very good question.)
There are three absolute needs and one highly useful feature to doing serious, lengthy writing. The first two needs are to store, view, and edit large chunks of text, and to impose a sequence on those chunks. The useful feature is to organize chunks into groups, groups into bigger groups, and so forth: to outline, in other words. Finally, the third need is to get the text into a PC file for such things as formatting and spellchecking.
The Palm OS device straight out of the box does all of this, after a fashion; and with the addition of some freeware, does it all. This section describes applications that let you edit book-sized documents on your Palm OS device.
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Copyright © 2002 Brian Hetrick
Page last updated 15 July 2003.
