Plucker Downloads

The Plucker project consists of three basic components:

The "distiller" or "parser" component, which you run on your desktop machine to gather web pages and compress them into a Plucker "document"
The graphical desktop component (if you decide to use it) which allows you to build Plucker "documents" with a GUI environment, and
The viewer application installed on your Palm or mobile handheld device.

These come in many languages and other formats that may or may not be suitable for your needs or your device. Installing a German viewer on an English Palm handheld or installing a hi-res viewer on a lo-res device wouldn't make much sense, for example.

Read on to see what each component is used for, and which ones might be best for you.

The Distiller, or Parser

Plucker's "distiller" is a series of scripts, currently written in Python, which are used to "spider" or crawl webpages you specify, fetching more links and pages as it goes, until it reaches your specified maximum depth.

The "distiller" is the core of Plucker, and without it, you will not be able to fetch webpages or local files to convert to Plucker format. In other words, you need this component, at the very least, to create Plucker documents.

The Desktop

If you ever found editing configuration files by hand difficult, Plucker Desktop is the tool for you.

Plucker also has many options for desktop components. This is a GUI or graphical application that allows you to configure your Plucker "channels" for fetching. Through an intelligent GUI, you can create, manage, edit, and begin converting your specified webpages or local files and ebooks, to Plucker format.

The Plucker project has an optional desktop component called "Plucker Desktop", written and maintained by Robert O'Connor. This is a wxWidgets-based interface that sits on top of the Plucker Python "distiller" scripts, and is used to configure, manage, and fetch your content.

Plucker Desktop includes everything you need to use Plucker, including the viewer, the parser/distiller components, and a great GUI to configure and fetch your content.

You can find out more details, including a full tour of the application, by visiting the Plucker Desktop project page.

The Viewer

Plucker's "viewer" is the actual application you want to install on your Palm handheld device. This is the application that is used to view/read and interact with your converted Plucker content.

Plucker's viewer comes in many languages (currently 15), and also has two formats: hi-res and lo-res. The hi-res viewer is used for devices with high-resolution screens. Most modern Palm handhelds have these screens. If your Palm handheld is older, or only has a 160x160 pixel resolution (square screen), you'll want the lo-res version of the Plucker viewer.

Beta Builds

If you wish to test the latest unstable features of Plucker, you can also try these beta builds. They are not guaranteed to work at all, and if it breaks, you get to keep the pieces.

Seriously though, these will give you an idea of the new features and capabilities that are being put into the new Plucker versions not-yet-released. Even-numbered releases are always considered "stable" releases, and odd-numbered releases are always considered "unstable" releases.

Give these a try, but please remember to report back any bugs you find, in our bugtracker. so we can try to help you fix them.

Please remember to search the existing bugs before you post your new bug. Many times, someone else has already reported the bug you've found. Please check first to be sure!