Our new author Alexander Panek(ok, yet another Alexander) inspired me to create this howto-thanks go to him! The discussion started off with ebook formats(and which are best suited for the Palm OS). He lacked a CHM viewer, not knowing that I LOVE chm ebooks because they are so easy to view on the Palm OS.

This tutorial will show you how to get the book showing. All you need is:

Plucker Desktop(open-source freeware)
A Windows box

Step 1-decompiling the CHM file
Essentially, a CHM file is just a archive of HTML files. So, what can be compressed, can also be decompressed. Open a Windows command shell(Start menu-run-enter cmd-hit enter) and navigate to the chm file. Putting it into the root directory of a drive and calling it a simple filename like the.chm simplifies the process.

Then, do the following:

C:\>hh -decompile c:\targetfolder the.chm

C:\>

This should generate the folder c:\targetfolder, into which the files contained in the chm file will be decompressed. Please don’t wonder if the command executes in less than a second, the decompilation runs in the background!

Step 2-having fun
Now that you have a nice bunch of html files, you can start the party. Find the index file(mini view and a bit of luck can help), and add it to plucker as a local channel. Or, copy the entire folder to your SD card and open it with a Palm OS web browser. Or, um,… you know what we mean!

Hopefully, this article takes the feat out of CHM files. There may not be a dedicated CHM viewer available for the Palm OS, but this method can be just as effective as a dedicated CHM viewer for the Palm OS.

BTW; if you ever wonder what the benefits of web browsers and dedicated viewers are, this old TamsPalm editorial covers it all:
http://tamspalm.blogspot.com/2005/01/web-browsers-vs-offline-readers-whos.html