iPhone as a documentation reader
With the Apple iPhone there is now an even smaller device that can render HTML and PDF files. The small form factor makes it easy to use as a portable reading device while travelling. At the same time the screen is relatively small, though with a high resolution. The iPhone tries to help with the possibility of easy zooming in and out of text and just moving the displayed content with the finger.
Since the iPhone usually comes with some kind of Internet flatrate one can just point the iPhone's browser to a web server that provides the documentation in HTML form. LispWorks has all the documentation accessible from their server. Bookmarks on the iPhone then are handy to have entry points into often used documentation pages.
HyperSpec:
HyperSpec zoomed:
HyperSpec landscape:
Publish your documentation
Another option is to use your own server to publish documentation. I have a personal documentation directory published on my CL-HTTP server where I put the documentation for online reading. The documentation could also be in PDF format, though PDF files may take some time to download to the iPhone and they are usually not hyperlinked (there are exceptions).
Put the documentation onto the iPhone
Another option is to actually put the documentation on the iPhone. There are now several applications that can store files on the iPhone and make them viewable. I have been using the iPhone application 'Files' for that. It provides a WebDAV server on the iPhone for file transfer. The WebDAV directory can be mounted on the Mac and then one can copy files with the Mac's Finder onto the iPhone.
I have copied the full LispWorks documentation to the iPhone. That are several thousand (mostly HTML format) files. Takes some time to copy. Now the drawback of this method is that the initial backup of the iPhone takes a long time (like 'hours'). The 'Files' application provides a viewer for PDF and HTML (among other formats). It also understands the local hyperlinks. Navigating in the HTML-based documentation works very well.