Sunrise Desktop For Palm And Letterbox

[+Ellteejak]

Well yesterday I tried to find the best software for downloading a web site list of pages to my palm pda. The pages I wanted to download were the www.letterboxing.org pages for my state and my area. Here are the choices.

 

1) Avantgo - slow, wants to download too much, takes too much space.

2) Fireviewer - works good on a single page, but nested pages does not always work.

3) Plucker - works good but a little slow

4) Sunrise Desktop - works fine

 

setting up sunrise desktop took some time. You will need to install Java (which is a 13 to 50 meg download depending on the version).

 

A) Create a SDL file which is a sunrise document list

Set the output of your converted files to a Plucker document, and set you output location to your palm and your palm ID.

C) set the depth of your file downlink to two. Also set you conversion to Black and White which will reduce page size. I am not sure about the pixel image size yet. Is 300x300 overkill? Maybe 100x100 is enough?

D) Name your files something short and understandable, like state abbreviation dash county.

E) Could not get the Internet Explorer plugin to work everytime. But I just cut and pasted the URL which was functional.

F) do an update of the pages to actually download and convert them. Try this a few times (takes several mintutes to accomplish). Mine got fairly far the first time, but got even farther the second round (more pages downloaded)

G) figure out some way to download the pages to your memory card, not your palm. The directory that works is Palm/Programs/Plucker/ as the output file will be a plucker file.

 

Good luck. This was not easy to optimize.

[+NightPilot]

1. Avantgo sucks big wind.

2. Never tried it.

3. True.

4. Again true.

 

A. ok

B. I set my output directly to my SD card, in the card reader. The drive letter will depend on your individual setup.

C. I set depth to 3, to get the hints. If you don't want hints, then 2 will work. I think one of the best things about Plucker is the color images, so I set mine to 320x320, but that's a matter of taste. Whatever size you want, and whatever color depth you want.

D. Yes.

E. IE is worthless. I abandoned it long ago, mostly because of the security issues, which Microsoft has admitted it cannot ever solve through patches. I like Firefox, and will never use IE again. Opera, Mozilla, and Netscape also are available, but IMO Firefox is the killer browser. The Adblock extension alone is worth a lot of money, even though it's all free.

F. The first time takes longer. Subsequent updates only bring in changed pages, and the ones already converted are just used as is.

G. Easy if you have a card reader. Just plug the card reader into a USB port before you start, and set the Output to that drive and directory. Plucker will find the files in either /Palm/Launcher or /Palm/Programs/Plucker, and Sunrise will write them directly to the drive/directory you specify. You can specify multiple locations, and those that don't exist are just ignored. I usually tell Sunrise to output to both c:\geocaching and to e:\palm\programs\plucker. If I forgot to plug in the card reader, or put the SD card into the built-in reader in my laptop, then I can still use Windows Explorer to copy the file from C: to the SD card quickly.

 

None of this is rocket science, but neither is it intuitively obvious to an inexperienced user.

[+K-9 Cachers]

I have been using Plucker for quite some time and am happy with it, but I have never figured out how to get the images! Can anyone help with this?

Thanks

[+ritzvin]

another option is cachemate. it's $8 to register and have more than 10 waypoints in it, but it's the most convenient to upload to, and the most convenient to wade through on the device if you have an older (read: slower processer) pda. GSAK will output to cachemate format and send the file to the palm install program in one step. no images though. my palm is an older non-color one, so pics would be of limited usefullness anyway.

Edited April 15, 2005 by ritzvin

[+Ellteejak]

Price out the PALM costs.

 

The Tungsten E goes for $100 to $125 on ebay.

 

I have seen the M130 and m105 etc. go for maybe $30. Add in cachemate and a printed road atlas, and you are a GEOCACHE god!!