The Futura replacements, while ugly, were serviceable, as they affected mainly the headings. The Palatino replacements, on the other hand, affected some of the body text -- a definite no-no. You never use a display type for body text. Primer did, and unfortunately, I couldn't find a means to reassign the fonts, so I was stuck with what Primer decided I should use, as shown in Figure E.

FIGURE E


Unfortunately, Primer decided which fonts should replace each other. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Size matters
Yeah, size does matter when it comes to reading materials. While I suspect that using Primer on a H/PC, with it's wider display, is much more practical, working on a palm-sized PC still has possibilities. When loading a file, the default size is less than 100%. I don't know what it is, as the program doesn't seem to say, but I'd guess it's somewhere around 70%. The Zoom menu is very flexible, offering a magnification range of 25% to 200%, along with Fit Width, Fit Visible, and Zoom in options.

All of these rates work as expected, but each time you select a magnification, the screen must be redrawn, causing a wait of 15 seconds or more. Often much more. Strangely, Primer doesn't seem to greek text below a certain point size, so that even at the itty-bittiest size, the fonts are fully formed, albeit unreadable. Greeking the text would likely save a lot of time. The Free, Online Dictionary of Computing defines "greeking" as:

To display text as abstract dots and lines in order to give a preview of layout without actually being legible. This is faster than drawing the characters correctly which may require scaling or other transformations. Greeking is particularly useful when displaying a reduced image of a document where the text would be too small to be legible on the display anyway.

While viewing your document, you'll use the scroll bar a lot. Fortunately, both bars are quick and responsive, so scrolling through a page is smooth and easy. To be able to read the text, you'll probably want to Zoom the page to 100% for most documents. My documents included ample borders, so at 100%, I could see about half the page width at a time. Yeah, I hear you, that's a lot of scrolling, and I'll have to agree with you. This is definitely a case where HTML rules. But with HTML, you give up a lot in formatting aesthetics. Choose your own poison.

Table of contents and hyperlinking
Fortunately, Primer implements the Table of Contents as a separate screen, as you can see in Figure F.

FIGURE F


Primer implements the Table of Contents as a separate screen. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The Table of Contents and the Index will be invaluable in searching for information. Heaven forbid you come across a document that doesn't have one or the other, or both! The good news is that the hyperlinks work, so clicking on an entry in the Table of Contents takes you to the page in question. The bad news is that it takes soooo long for the page to load.

Can't find find
Earlier, I said that I was impressed with the interface, and I stand by that statement. The only glaring omission I found was a Find function, which is nowhere to be found. It's absolutely necessary on a device so small. Being able to quickly jump to a topic or word would make using Primer on a palm-sized PC almost, well, bearable.