Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.net) is a wonderful project. They distribute public domain books and ones that are outside of their copyright period. All books are converted into plain text, and several are in HTML and other formats.

I created this page to redistribute the Palm versions of the texts that I have read. Feel free to download and read them yourself! The Project Gutenberg legal notice is still at the top, so you will need to page down a little to get to the story, but that should not bother you too much.

As for the file formatting, I have decided to use Plucker (look at my Palm OS page for the reader). It was a hard decision that was based upon several factors. The list of factors is at the bottom of this page. So, for your reading enjoyment, I provide three versions of each book:

• ZIP - Zipped copy of the text version, just like it is on Project Gutenberg.
• HTML - Formatted as a web page, then zipped up. Converted by a modified version of gut (my version is here).
• Plucker - The HTML version make into a Palm OS database. Use Plucker to view it. Converted with JPluck. These are ZLib compressed databases, so make sure you have ZLib on your Palm, in addition to Plucker. Also, your version of Plucker must do seamless breaks. Version 1.6.1 is known to work wonderfully with these documents.

Book	ZIP	HTML	Plucker
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Verne, Jules	2000010.zip 217 k	2000010-html.zip 215 k	2000010.pdb 246 k
20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (Translation of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) Verne, Jules	2000010a.zip 334 k	2000010a-html.zip 332 k	2000010a.pdb 381 k
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Carroll, Lewis	alice30.zip 57 k	alice30-html.zip 57 k	alice30.pdb 64 k
Count of Monte Cristo, The Dumas, Alexandre	crsto12.zip 962 k	crsto12-html.zip 968 k	crsto12.pdb 1 m
Dorothy And The Wizard In Oz Baum, L. Frank	doroz10.zip 89 k	doroz10-html.zip 88 k	doroz10.pdb 102 k
Island of Doctor Moreau, The Wells, H. G.	dmoro11.zip 96 k	dmoro11-html.zip 96 k	dmoro11.pdb 107 k
Journey to the Interior of the Earth Verne, Jules	8jrny10.zip 169 k	8jrny10-html.zip 168 k	8jrny10.pdb 194 k
Swiss Family Robinson Wyss, Johann David	sfrbn10.zip 274 k	sfrbn10-html.zip 273 k	sfrbn10.pdb 309 k
Through the Looking-Glass Carroll, Lewis	lglass19.zip 66 k	lglass19-html.zip 67 k	lglass19.pdb 75 k
Treasure Island Stevenson, Robert Louis	treas11.zip 144 k	treas11-html.zip 145 k	treas11.pdb 162 k
United States Bill of Rights United States	bill11.zip 4.9 k	bill11-html.zip 5.1 k	bill11.pdb 5.1 k
United States Constitution United States	const11.zip 15 k	const11-html.zip 15 k	const11.pdb 16 k
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Baum, L. Frank	wizoz10.zip 77 k	wizoz10-html.zip 76 k	wizoz10.pdb 87 k

The reason I picked Plucker over the numerous other etext readers out there is for the following points:

• Great compression ratio. The uncompressed text format of Swiss Family Robinson is 697k. In DOC format, it is 411k. For the zTXT format used by Weasel Reader (a.k.a. Gutenpalm), it is 325k. For Plucker, it is 303k.
• HTML is the base, meaning you can get formatting, bold, italics, links, and much more. DOC and zTXT do not do that.
• The format is open (not proprietary). If the Plucker project dies, the format will live on. If Peanut Reader dies, the format is dead.
• Autoscrolling support. Yes, I know that CSpotRun, Weasel Reader, and others also have it. This is just one thing I looked for.

The big differences between Plucker, zTXT, DOC:

Aspect	Plucker	zTXT	DOC
Compression	Uses Zlib Awesome compression	Custom format Great compression	Custom format Good compression
Program Size	~180k (~250k for hi-res) +30k for Zlib	~100k	~20k - 300k Varies greatly with different readers
Formatting	HTML - bold, italics, font sizes, images, document links, etc.	Plain text	Plain text
Cool Things		Also reads DOC files	Supported by many programs

Summary: Plucker was chosen because of the superior compression, HTML markup, and the ability to show links and images. When I travel around with ten or more books at once, the extra 20k or more per book that I save makes up for the larger reader. Weasel Reader (zTXT) was a close competitor, especially since it can also read DOC files, but lost in the end due to the lack of image support and because it doesn't do any HTML markup. DOC is a great format for a tiny viewer, but Palms have grown to have more memory and the better compression scheme should be used for ebooks.

Plucker has its issues too; for example, when stopping autoscrolling it needs to refresh the screen. Also, I need to have Zlib installed, and that library isn't small (about 30k). But I only want one text reader on my Palm if I can help it, thus I use Plucker. Now, if Plucker could read or convert DOC files, I would be in heaven.