The joys of software

I should have expected this.  Why did it surprise me?

After copying my downloaded Lonely Planet guidebooks to my PocketPC ("the iPaq") and constructing a little HTML menu for easy access, I tried to open them.  It should have worked — the device came with a built-in "ClearVue PDF" reader, after all, which has worked acceptably up till now, and the files are vanilla PDFs.  But no, ClearVue couldn't load them.  "ClearVue PDF encountered an internal error trying to load or display the requested file."

So here I sit, patiently downloading the Adobe Reader for PocketPC version 2.0.  I had version 1.0 on a previous device, and apart from a tendency to display greek when it ran short of fonts, that worked fine.  I'm hoping that it's just a version issue and that the OEM PDF reader will go where Microsoft's minion fears to read.

Edited to add:

OK, downloaded and installed.  I got it for free but, alas, I feel somehow defrauded.

It will open a PDF provided that the Reader is already running.  If the Reader is not already running and I click directly on a file or use a hyperlink, the Reader starts to fire up — then karks it.  When I fire up the Reader manually, it will only display files located in "My Documents".  Since I don't use "My Documents" due to stupid limitations on the depth of sub-folders in previous versions Windows Mobile, this means that I can only view my PDFs by:

• starting the Reader, and then
• clicking on the file from File Explorer or using a hyperlink from HTML.

I presume this is a memory allocation issue in the Reader.  The obvious workaround is to leave the reader running all the time — a complete waste of memory with the sole virtue that I can then use my HTML menu to open the desired guidebook.  I use the iPaq for many tasks, including managing my photos — a memory-intensive task.

Since Windows Mobile will close down applications that haven't been used for a while when memory gets tight, I can see a long series of frustrations ahead of me whenever I try to open a guidebook for reference while tagging photos, only to find that Windows has quietly decided to terminate the reader to free up memory in the meantime.

On the bright side — well, at least I can now read my guidebooks on the iPaq.

Edited to add:

Acrobat Reader 2.0 for PocketPC can't handle PDF versions later than 6.0 - which is getting pretty long in the tooth today. Since writing this blog entry I have booted Acrobat for Foxit, whose 2009 version not only handles later PDF versions but is not fussy about having to be running before it will open from clicking on a link. The catch: it's crippleware that pops up a dialog box before letting you in, and plasters a green banner across the rop of the page, unless you register it (US$20). Even the crippled version beats Acrobat Reader 2.0 for my purposes.