Weasel is document reader for the Palm Pilot organizers, Weasel is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License v2. Unlike other doc viewers for the Palm, Weasel uses zTXT files as its primary format. These are similar in many ways to the de facto standard format, PalmDoc, but they feature much better compression. Weasel also reads PalmDoc files, though, so don't worry. It even supports bookmarks in both formats.

The zTXT compression is done using zLib, a Free compression library released under the zLib License. This results in much smaller files than with the PalmDoc method. For example, the Project Gutenberg e-text of "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" is approximately 600K in size. Compressed as a zTXT, it is only 261K in size, while with PalmDoc it is about 330K. Since the Palm Pilots do not have very much memory, this is a big savings.

Here are some key features of "Weasel Reader":

• Reads documents in zTXT and PalmDoc formats
• Uses zLib for compression (ala gzip and pkzip)
• Decompresses the text as you read
• Hi-res available on devices which support it
• Uses an age-based cache to keep the most relevant data in memory
• Remembers where you stop reading
• Full bookmark support. Add/Remove/etc.
• Jump around to arbitrary places in the text
• Number of allowable documents is limited only by memory
• You can select the text you\'re reading to copy it into other apps
• Export text to the Memo Pad
• Beam Weasel or books to other Palms or to a PC
• Full annotation support with references to where the annotation occurs (zTXT only)
• Search capability
• Smooth autoscroll or screen wrap-around autoscroll options
• Disable the onscreen controls and read full-screen
• Invert the screen
• Rotate the screen by +90 or -90 degrees
• Per-document preferences (optional)
• Multiple language hyphenation support
• Supports read-only documents in ROM/Flash/etc.
• Supports Palm OS VFS for reading from expansion memory cards/sticks
• Supports jog dial on Sony PDAs
• Absolutely 100% Free Software (licensed under the GPL 2.0)

Update Description:

• Major new features include fixed support for the Palm 5-way navigator (i.e. d-pad buttons) plus the ability to remap keys to perform user specified actions while reading.
• There is also a new "Most Recently Read" list maintained by Weasel Reader to help frequent users keep tabs on what they are currently reading.