There's no full screen, no icon or pop-up menu for adding bookmarks (you have to use the menu bar), and bookmark options cannot be set within a document. It's worth considering, though. The program requires 83K and is priced at $12.50. iSilo is pictured in Figure C.

FIGURE C

iSilo displays HTML files and has many good features.

MegaDoc 1.6
PalmGear's description of MegaDoc 1.6 (at http://www.iambic.com/megadoc.htm) reads as follows: "MegaDoc is a text and document editor and viewer for the following formats: .txt, .rtf, .doc, .html/htm, and .pdb." The latest version can be installed from Macs. It has grab-it bookmarking, but it requires multiple taps and takes a long time to add them (in most readers, it's near instantaneous).

The software needs a graphic designer. It's got inelegant screens, with large boxy icons and banners that span three sides and hem one in. The menu button doesn't invoke menus, rather it opens a dialog box. The program takes a long time to load and exit documents, so if you inadvertently tap the wrong document name, you're in for a coffee break.

There's no full screen available in read mode and no font selection, so if you're looking to read ebooks, as opposed to editing or reading different formats, pick a different reader. It requires 265K and is priced at $25.

MegaDoc has been acquired by iambic, Inc., and they will soon introduce a new iambic branded word processor for Palm OS handhelds based on MegaDoc with an estimated release date of June 2001. All currently registered owners of MegaDoc as well as any new customers who purchase MegaDoc before the new release will receive a free upgrade to the iambic word processor when it becomes available.

QED 2.50
QED (at http://visionary2000.com/qed/) has most of the features I'd want, plus the ability to create and edit files. It's got advanced bookmarking (not grab-it), full screen (clean but toggled via the menu bar), and the best text copying system: simply drag across the text and copy (tapping remains active for scrolling).

QED offers a special condensed mono-spaced font, with ample spacing around letters and lines. It shows 14 lines at a time and is quite readable (better than Palm's standard small font). Document opening and bookmark scanning are fast, faster than similarly featured TealDoc. Speaking of TealDoc, both programs read each other's bookmarks.

The Find and bookmark dialog boxes are irritatingly small; you'll find it hard to decipher the choices because the buttons are labeled in a squashed, tiny all-caps font. And there's still no searching backwards. QED needs standard Find-backward and Find-again icons. Although one can paste text into the bookmark window, it takes too many steps and won't copy text from the bottom or top lines.

The document selection interface is awkward--the pop-up dialog box displays only a few menu items at a time. Changing a document's category messes up TealDoc's assignments, so they don't co-exist peacefully. Overall, though, it's got a lot of power in a staggeringly compact footprint. It's my top contender. It requires only 34K and is priced at $20. QED is pictured in Figure D.