Native PDFs on your Palm

The best PDF viewer I have used up till now on my Palm PDAs has been Repligo. This is better than Adobe's Palm PDF viewer.
The weakness of both however has been the fact that they require the original PDF documents to be converted. Hence you need to have a PC handy to do the conversion and you can't view native PDF files until you do so. Its inconvenient if you say receive the PDF files as an email attachment on your PDA and you have no way of viewing it until you get to a PC.

Well, there is a solution folks! From this thread in Treocentral, some smart folks have managed to extract Picsel viewer from a Samsung i539 and installed it successfully on a Treo 650.
The files, courtesy of Twizza are still available here so grab them while they are still there.
Installation (adapted from this thread in PIC forums):
- download all the files
- copy them to to a folder on your SD card using a Card reader
- DO NOT Hotsync the files to your PDA
- using a File utility like McFile, copy all the files to your Palm's Ram.
I have tested this on a T3 and a T5 and it works! There is a "document error" popup when first launched but this is a minor issue.
Some PDAs, perhaps the Treo650, may not have enough Heap memory, so you may need UDMH

Some screenshots:


When first installed Picsel viewer will be located in a category on it's own. If you have CJKOS installed it's in Chinese, otherwise it'll appear as gibberish.


The Options are available as a colourful circle of icons. Not all of them work as the Tools one in particular causes my T3 to crash.
The file browser, History, Rotation all work.


Hitting the file browser tool (3 o'clock icon) gives you this view of your SD card


Here I'm navigating to a folder on my SD where I kept a test PDF file.


I get this Document error message when I launch the file, but hitting the OK button seems not to generate further errors.


There is a quick view at the bottom panel which shows you which part of the document you are viewing and you can also navogate from page to page.


You can zoom the view in and out easily by the left vertical slider bar.


I figured out how to remove the quick view bottom panel - just hit the Menu button on the Silk Screen twice. A full view is nice but you can get only 320x320. 320x480 is not supported.
The Dpad rocker on the T3 will pan around the document. You can also use your stylus to drag and move around the document.


Text and graphs/images display quite nicely


I also got Picsel viewer working on a T5 (did not need UDMH on my T5). The difference seems to be the Dpad on the T5 works only for horizontal movements but not vertical. You can still drag and move around the document using the stylus.

My overall impression is that this is a great native PDF viewer for Palm PDAs! Thanks to the guys at Treocentral and PIC for the helpful hints. I only wish it could support 320x480 but beggars cannot be choosers....