By David Ransom

Every so often another file format shows up. Back in February, while looking through book listings in a newsgroup, I saw a file ending in .djvu. At first I paid little attention to it, and kept going until I spotted many more.

At that point I decided it was time for a Google search, and it brought me to "DjVu Home" at : http://www.djvuzone.org/

DjVu, pronounced "deja vu", is a new image compression technology. It has an option to include OCR as well. Its claim is that DjVu promises smaller file sizes than even jpeg. The sites example goes as follows: Tif 31.2MB, Jpeg 604KB, and DjVu 70KB. With numbers like that, I had to read on.

Since it was an image, then an viewer was needed. A company called LizardTech (http://www.lizardtech.com/products/) is selling software to make djvu files, as well as giving away some free plugins for web browsers. The browser plugins are available for Windows (98, 2000, ME, NT, and XP), Mac OS X (Safari), and Unix. Also, the website DjVuLibre, at: http://djvulibre.djvuzone.org/ has a variety of binary packages for the different flavors of Linux. Farther down the page I found listings for Java, the Sharp Zaurus and the PalmOS. This was quite an impressive set of listings.

The software to make djvu files was Windows only (98, 2000, XP or NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6). So with a Mac, I skipped that and went to Any2DjVu Server at http://any2djvu.djvuzone.org/

At the Any2DjVu Server conversions can be done for free, although they ask for support to keep them going. For converting you have the choice of PS/PS.GZ/PDF Document, Photo/Picture/Icon, and a variety of scanned documents. You can also select a URL.

At this point I realized how djvu could be important. It is supported by multiple OS's, the files can be created from multiple sources, and with the PalmOS supported, there was an additional option with huge potential to it for the handheld. So I decided to test it out and see if it lived up to this promise.

I tested the following:

• 2 djvu books that I found in the alt.binaries.e-book newsgroup
• a pdf made with Adobe Acrobat 5 for Mac
• a pdf from work (source unknown, I assume Adobe Acrobat for Windows)
• a jpeg of a scan of comic book
• I also tested the URL function
• the Safari plugin for Mac OS X
• the PalmOS image viewer GrxViewPro version 2.10.2 from inDev Software at http://indevsoftware.com/

I downloaded the Safari plugin and the demo for GrxView Pro version 2.10.2 (no free viewer for the PalmOS).

I started with my Mac and installed the plugin. To my surprise, Safari refused to open a djvu files by the usual drag and drop into the browser window. Double clicking one of the books caused the plugin to open like it was a application of its own, and the file opened in its own window. The resulting window reminded me of the Acrobat Reader, but although text could be selected, text could not be copied. There was a Find function, print, page resizing and zoom, page navigation forward and back, a drop-down menu to go to a specific page, page rotation, and excellent image quality.

Now to try this on my Zodiac, which has PalmOS 5.2.7. If I could convert files, in particular pdfs, and take them with me on my Zodiac, it would be an improvement over the current pdf viewers and image viewers. I haven't had good luck with pdfs on a Palm except with those that are relatively simple, and probably would have been better off if made as rich text files or Microsoft Word files anyway.

GrxView Pro is an image viewer for the PalmOS, and is the only one that I found that supports djvu. It comes with a 14 day demo. I started with one of the books that I had found. It was text with some black and white drawings, and was 1.1MB in size.


This is the (only) djvu file that worked for me in GrxView Pro. The pages are listed as though they are individual files, but the 1133K on the right is the size of the whole book, which has 157 pages.

I would rate quality on my Zodiac, sized to fit by width in its natural landscape mode, as just barely readable. Zooming the page showed that it was all there, and it looked good zoomed in, but that meant dragging the image back and forth to read the page. I tried the other book, which had color diagrams, that was 6.5MB. I got a "Fatal Alert" upon trying to open any of the pages.

This is a page zoomed to fit the Zodiac screen in its normal landscape mode. There is a grayed out icon with a "W" in it for Width" in the lower left that does this with a single tap. The main zoom tools are in the bottom center. The icon in the lower right shows/hides the icons for the tools.

Next came conversion. I converted two pdfs, one 356KB and the other 116KB. The larger one contained colored text and tables as potential complicators in the conversion. This larger file converted was 769KB, more than double! The smaller pdf, containing colored backgrounds and pictures, and when converted was 160KB. For both files I used the 300dpi default setting with OCR. Reading the files on the Palm (my Zodiac) proved nearly useless. Only a few of the pages of the larger file would open, and none of the pages on the smaller. I got the Fatal Alert error over and over.

I also tried a 428KB jpeg scan of a comic book. The converted file was just 36KB on the default setting of 200-400dpi for mixed scan. The quality had substantial deterioration, so I tried again at "Higher Quality" for > 400dpi. That didn't look any better. I tried again as "Photo" and "Higher Quality". This turned out excellent, but was 416KB. Not much help there in relation to the size. For the next I used the "Normal" setting. This one looked good enough that I didn't find any significant difference between it and the higher quality one, but it was 260KB. I also tried the "Higher Compression" and got a 297KB file back, which made no sense. Anyway, from there I sent the files the my Zodiac and tried opening them. Each time I got the Fatal Alert. I did not get a single success. From there I went back and tried the original book that had worked, and it still worked without any sign of a problem.

I also tried entering a URL. A converted webpage would still be a plus... But I got the "there was a problem" on every single webpage that I tried (this included articles from PDA Buzz).

Conclusion

For the desktop, these files display very well, including the converted files, and therefore djvu has proven worthy there. Converting pdfs however, produced larger files, making it better to leave those as is.

As for using djvu on the PalmOS with the demo of GrxView Pro, this was a nearly complete dud and should be avoided for now.

I hope work continues on djvu for Palm to handle the Fatal Alerts, and that a Palm is made with a 640x480 pixel screen.