Ever Wanted to Read CHM Files on Pocket PC? MicroOLAP's CHM Reader 2.5 Is Out!

http://pocket-pc-ebook-reader.com/en/

CHM (Compiled HTML) is probably the most widely used format to publish/distribute technical literature, help and manual files. For example, the documentation of a lot of Unix utilities/applications is available as easily browsable/searchable CHM documents for example here and the same stands for Windows programs – just make a generic file search for CHM files in your Program Files directory on your desktop Windows computer to see how popular the format is. Therefore, anyone interested in reading/searching manuals or tech docs on his/her PDA, will definitely want to look into CHM reader solutions. Note that "classical" literature doesn't use the CHM format at all; that is, if you just want to read novels and other stuff on your PDA, LIT/Mobipocket/Palm DOC is the way to go. The format, in addition to the abundance of technical docs and tech e-books, has some technical advantages over the 'standard' PDA-oriented formats like the above-mentioned Microsoft Reader (LIT) or Mobipocket Reader; for example, indexing and easy tree-based content creation/management capabilities. On the other hand, it does have definite shortcomings too because of its being read-only HTML-based body rendered by an external application (Pocket Internet Explorer – PIE for short); for example, the lack of any kind of inserting notes/drawings in the text or highlighting it. All you can do is putting bookmarks in it if the given CHM reader is able to do this. There're several CHM readers for the Pocket PC, with radically different capabilities. In my previous roundup of CHM readers (you may also want to read this thread), I've reviewed and compared the Pocket PC-based CHM reader solutions. Without doubt, microOLAP's CHM reader has turned out to be the best of the current CHM reader solutions. Because the last, 2.4 version, while without doubt having some advantages over version 2.3, had several really annoying bugs, I have been eagerly waiting for the new version. Now it's here and I was really delighted to see the most annoying bugs have been fixed and long-waited capabilities introduced. The pros of the new version

• the most important bug introduced in version 2.4, the inability to show images in many O'Reilly Safari e-books, has been fixed. Now, all the images were correctly rendered in all the tested CHM files. Big thumbs up!
• it no longer seem to have the 'settings are all forgotten between restarts' problem sometimes (?) plaguing previous versions. The pre-2.4 'can't set different character size' problems are non-extisting too.
• it's able to make use of the jog dial (if present). Unfortunately, the amount of scrolling can't be set with using jog dial (unlike in some top-notch PPC web browsers like NetFront 3.3 TP1.02+); it defaults to the PIE default, that is, the next link in the same page or the next page if there're no links.
• it has freely definable hardware button support for, for example, easy D-pad/button-based navigation / switching between the normal and full screen mode. It is even able to handle the tap-and-hold (double button) functionality of, for example, the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 7xx. Incidentally, it is able to use most of the Pocket Loox 720 hardware buttons, except for the hold mode of Button 1 and the Record button in its entirety. It has no problems with the iPAQ 2210, the other Pocket PC I've tested it on. Of the most important and often accessed/required functionality, you can toggle the Full Screen and the Fit to Window mode. Unfortunately, it's not possible to map some of the following functionality to hardware buttons: toggle drag mode, decrease/increase font size and show/hide horizontal/vertical scroll bars. The list of the mappable functionality can be found here, here and here.
• also, the semi full-screen capability (hiding the program bar and, therefore, being able to render another – or two – row of text), which was removed in version 2.4, is here, in a greatly enhanced way: it is not only able to hide the program bar, but also the lower icon bar and, which is even better, the scrollbar(s). Hiding the latter can be done in both the full-screen and the regular mode, as with, for example, the PIE plug-ins MultiIE or PIEPlus: click here for screenshot An example of rendering a page in full screen, without the scrollbars: click here for screenshot
• as with MultiIE, NetFront or, as far as traditional book readers are considered, Mobipocket (which has support for screen dragging in image mode for ages) or the latest, 2.4+ Microsoft Reader versions, you can also use screen dragging: click here for screenshot This mode is exceptionally useful with large images with the 'Fit to window' mode switched off. Instead of using the scroll bars or the 'page scrolling by default' D-pad scrolling, you have a much more fine-grained and faster scrolling method.

These bugfixes/enhancements alone make it worth upgrading (which is free for all pre-2.5 users). The cons The reason for the existence of these problems is because the reader depends on the Pocket Internet Explorer engine. This also means these problems can't really be fixed without drastic changes to the engine, which is highly unlikely to be done (it's very hard to write a complete HTML + JavaScrip + JScript + VBScript engine!). These are as follows:

• if you have a VGA device, you won't be impressed with documents containing images in the standard SE VGA mode: images are still pixel doubled in there. An example (of the trial version of CalliGrapher; the help file is stored at Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync\ParaGraph\CalliGrapher\WritePad.chm on the desktop PC upon installing the application; I've also made it available here so that you can test this yourself without downloading and installing the app): in this image taken in native VGA mode, there's no pixel doubling: click here for screenshot While in the standard (SE) VGA mode, there is: click here for screenshot As can be spotted in the latter screenshot, the readibility of the text greatly suffers from the halved resolution. With even more dedicate images (for example, plans or technical drawings), the difference is even more staggering. Files containing images of the latter kind must be viewed in native VGA mode. Please read this article (alternatives: iPAQ HQ, AximSite x50/x51, AximSite - Tips and Tricks, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand) on these two VGA modes and switching between them if not sure. Also note that PIE-based rendering is weaker than that of the desktop-based ones. If you look at the rendered text, you'll see that there is some problem with the rendering of the text "Select fox jumps over a lazy dog in the application" – it's only "fox" that is highlighted (and it doesn't use a non-proportional font) and not the entire expression, unlike on the desktop: click here for screenshot Unfortunately, problems like this do exist in CHM Viewer.
• on pre-WM2003SE devices and unlike with uBook, the most important alternative CHM-capable e-book reader, there're no built-in landscape orientation change capabilities.
• there's no Pocket PC 2000/Handheld PC/Palm-size PC support, unlike with uBook.
• the scripting support is not really excellent. You'll inevitably run into some files that heavily depend on scripting. An example of them are the files in HelpDocs.zip on the Microsoft HTML Help Downloads page. In the "To flag a new table of contents entry" section in htmlhelp.chm, there's a section that isn't rendered at all by PIE-based CHM readers. It is rendered by the desktop CHM reader as follows: click here for screenshot MicroOLAP CHM Reader doesn't render the section that has a green ruler on the left: click here for screenshot Please note that uBook, which isn't based on PIE, does render the section in question: click here for screenshot Note that this is the case in the (by default) enabled scripting (also see Options/Display/More/Enable Script) and the above screenshot was taken after clicking the "Edit Selection" link (which doesn't do anything in CHM Reader) with the "Show 'Merged file open error' error message" option enabled (it's disabled by default). That is, you can't fix these problems with CHM Reader at all.
• the same stands for other, in-page objects. An example of this are in-page buttons. For example, the button at the bottom in Changing the Help Viewer/Customize the Help Viewer in Viewhlp.chm, the button isn't rendered. PIE just ignores these. In WM2003SE+, it displays the dreaded "Press OK to continue loading the content of this page" dialog; in WM2003, not even that. An example of how it should be rendered: click here for screenshot Note that the latest (0.9f) version of uBook can't render buttons like this either: click here for screenshot As far as the CHM rendering capabilities of the latest uBook is concerned (see my above-linked older roundup on the bugs of earlier versions), it still crashes upon trying to rendering any HTML files in CHM archives it in either the global (system-level) landscape mode or using its built-in landscape mode. And, of course, it still can't follow the built-in links in CHM files – for example, to easily step to the next page. You need to choose the next page from Start/Open, which is a real pain in the back: click here for screenshot There're no index/ global search capabilities in uBook either to be able to find anything. That is, the microOLAP reader is still far superior to uBook. Hope this will change in the future – uBook has much more potential than the microOLAP reader because of its being independent of the very constraining PIE architecture. I don't have much hope, though - CHM support in uBook hasn't been touched in the last 8-9 months. It's unlikely it'll be fixed in the near future. Hope I'll turn out to be wrong, though.

Conclusion This application, while still having some shortcomings not fixable in the current, PIE-based architecture, is really excellent and is really worth checking out.