After trying all sorts of pdf readers, I come close to the conclusion that reading pdf documents on a PDA is not practical at all and even irrealistic.
Due mainly to the fact that one cannot view an entire page with a readable font size without having to scroll sideways.
I end up converting pdf to lit.
Please, give opinion and eventually solutions.
Thanks all, and take care
Come on folks, just a few words about your experience with pdf...
donno i read a book as pdf once
on my pda
only had to scroll down not sideways
depend on the doc in question really i suppose
pref lit though because of bookmarks and cleartype
and not being as much a res hog as acrobat reader which i used at the time
VGA a requirement
I use an older version of Adobe reader on a VGA screen. My eyes are still good enough that I can zoom out, get a full page on the screen, and still read it. I have read an entire book this way. I am sure there are better ways to do it on a PDA. But my goal is to be able to grab a document off of the web and read it as I travel. If there is going to be conversion between formats, it would have to take place on the PDA.
That being said, it is still easier to read a word or text document than a PDF. But if you have the screen resolution and size to work with, PDF's are not impossible.
Thanks folks, that was my impression.
Answers
There are ways to improve PDF experiance. Using reflow when creating PDFs (available as an option when saving PDFs from OpenOffice, for example) greatly improves things.
Anothr good option is Repligo - you can print / convert PDFs to that format. It uses less space, documents open faster and look better (less jagged fonts).
Believe me, PDFs are annoying even in actual, desktop environments. >_>
That said, I'm using Foxit for the PPC. It loads 15MB++ files faster than Adobe, follows the original PDF format faithfully (doesn't try to rearrange like idiotic Clearvue), yet it is a standalone program that requires no installation.
That said, PDF reading is only for devices with a big screen. Definitely bigger than a Mini, let alone an Atom. Otherwise, at a big enough text to be legible, scrolling to the side is necessary - and that tends to lag a bit with bigger PDFs for devices with only 64MB of RAM or less.
I have train skeds and the Tokyo Metro Map plus a crap load more pdf files
that I use on my X01HT and yes you do have to scroll both ways but I mean
have you seen the detail of the Tokyo Metro Map?!?
It works for me. I actually like it.
Plus I get 'really cool' nods from Japanese when they see me looking
through the Tokyo Metro map on my X01HT because most of them
use the low tech pocket paper fold out.
Yes, I am a gaijin otaku and proud of it!!!
imexp then big pictures makes pdf useless on pda's as they can move the text to scale but in there is a picture in the middle they cant really handle scaling the picture down to match the width of the pda screen
I think converting to repligo is the most elegant solution since images are conserved...but it is not free
Otherwise, if pics are not important, converting to text then to lit and using microsoft reader is an acceptable free solution.
To "AquiEsta!": why don't you use the excellent "metro" freeware?
You can use the free xpdf (pocketpdf). It at least has better zoom functions then adobe and it has the option to read pdf as text files with associated functions. You lose pictures but pure textfiles are a breaze to read...
elio said:
I think converting to repligo is the most elegant solution since images are conserved...but it is not free
Otherwise, if pics are not important, converting to text then to lit and using microsoft reader is an acceptable free solution.
To "AquiEsta!": why don't you use the excellent "metro" freeware?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't know such a thing existed. Where would I find that? In English
would be great too!
Thanks
AquiEsta! said:
I didn't know such a thing existed. Where would I find that? In English
would be great too!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://nanika.net/Metro/
You will love it
elio said:
http://nanika.net/Metro/
You will love it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"more than 350 cities covered now"... I'm already in love with it because
I travel a lot and this hopefully will save me time and advils.
THANK YOU!!!
off I go to set it up...
Adobe Reader for PPC 2 works with my HTC Athena/Advantage VGA screen without legibility problems using its reflow function which wraps the text to your screen - no sideways scrolling needed.
Even if your documents were not prepared specifically for this Active Sync will do the necessary conversion when you transfer the docs from your PC (turn it on in file settings). If you bypass ActiveSync your reflow button gets greyed out.
For documents like maps you can switch to sideways scrolling whenever you want.
My only gripe is that the characters are a little fuzzy, so I'm looking for a fix for this.
UPDATE: fuzzy characters fixed:
Switch resolution to 95 dpi using RealVGA before opening Adobe Reader. Now works as it was meant to. Only downside is the the resolution switch involves a reset.
For reading articles and such offline I use ScrapBook (a Firefox extension) to capture the page/selection and delete ads/sidebars and then 'Save Page as...' and copy the html and corresponding images folder to my SD card. It's a pain but it's the best solution that I could find.
I use Mobipocket Reader to do the conversion and reading, it's free and works well for me www.mobipocket.com
For PDFs Picel Browser, and Foxit Reader for Windows Mobile are pretty good.
I second the picsel reader. http://www.picselpowered.com
Don't let the number of Cons over Pros put you off.
Even with these problems I still use it on a daily basis, and preferred to buy it over using free alternatives like Adobe.
Proof that mobile apps don't have to look like clunky old windows apps.
Pro
Excellent rendering of PDF files
Fine control over zoom, can use a gesture (tap & drag)
Cons
Out of memory errors with just a few other apps running
Remembers last document opened, but not page
No Search
No way of jumping to a page
pdemoore said:
I second the picsel reader. http://www.picselpowered.com
Don't let the number of Cons over Pros put you off.
Even with these problems I still use it on a daily basis, and preferred to buy it over using free alternatives like Adobe.
Proof that mobile apps don't have to look like clunky old windows apps.
Pro
Excellent rendering of PDF files
Fine control over zoom, can use a gesture (tap & drag)
Cons
Out of memory errors with just a few other apps running
Remembers last document opened, but not page
No Search
No way of jumping to a page
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I back this as well, it is bar far, THEE most impressive on a PDA.
It has no rendering lag, making it the fastest PDF reader on WM.
I would only recommend that VGA users view PDFs, QVGA isn't practical.
Hi Everybody,
I am serching and searching -- and do not find a solution to
- read mht files (I use pdf, chm, mht for my library / knowledge base) and
- edit pdf files.
Do you guys know how to realize it -- or is something in development?
Thank you very much
never heard about there being an editor
nor have i ever heard about the request before
so suspect the lack of demand is the cause
of there not being such an options
Thx Rudegar,
I am afraid you are right:
- no Adobe products for WM57/6 (2nd largest sofware comp. as far as I know)
- Tamosoft Commview WiFi PPC - discontinued (would have been a good combination with their desktop products)
... to name just a few.
Furtunately we have companies like Softmaker, who add powerful software to a powerful machine
see my MHT reader roundup in the Wiki
Alreader 2 is a nice ebook, doc, txt, etc reader for WM.
It has nice features like font/line sizing/spacing, memorizing last page read for any document, tap up/down to change page, full screen, etc. There's probably more features but those are the ones I use most.
Is there anything like it for Android? (I'm using HTC HD2 and since Android also runs on it... )
edit: Please move if this should be in the App/Games forum. (I just noticed it.)
I think the best is iReader. http://ireader.over-blog.com/pages/About_iReader-1955734.html
I've tried fbreader, aldiko, wordplayer and a few others. With the exception of iSilo and iReader, all were slow when opening an ebook, especially when the ebook is a few MB large. And its worse when they dun support txt, conversion to epub etc with Calibre or the online sites takes decades and often hangs with big files.
But iReader reads txt, pdb, chm, html, etc, and has no problems displaying other languages if you save your txt file in unicode. And when installed on my Samsung Galaxy S, it opens even 10+ MB .txt files faster than Alreader 2 on my HTC Touch HD can open a 6+ MB doc file. Similarly as Alreader, iReader can jump several thousand pages without more than 1-2 sec lag. Changing font size is fast too, apparently no repagination time needed at all.
And best of all it follows the same file opening procedure as Alreader, no crap with updating libraries, bookshelves, book cover displays etc which frankly is much more trouble than is worth.
Conclusion, bookreaders coded by russians and chinese are much more practical for actual heavy duty use. I've used tequilacat on java phones, alreader on WM phones, and now I'm gonna stick to iReader for Android
crandf said:
Conclusion, bookreaders coded by russians and chinese are much more practical for actual heavy duty use. I've used tequilacat on java phones, alreader on WM phones, and now I'm gonna stick to iReader for Android
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting. I'm pretty sure that the readers I ended up using on both Palm and WM were Russian in origin. Although, I can't remember the name of either. Gonna go check-out this one. Been using FBReader. Pretty good. But, the slow library opening is a real pain.
Hey guys,
I normally lurk the forums as I'm always able to come to some sort of solution, but this time I'm truly lost! I've tried everything to find a PDF viewer for WM7 that has a search function. I need an app that can search for keywords in a PDF by tomorrow and I have tried everything from:
1. DotNetNuzzi PDF Viewer-- incredible lag, completley inoperable.
2. Convert PDF to .doc ( using Adobe Acrobat X Pro, NitroPDF 7) to search keywords in WM7 Office-- PDF formatting goes to complete ruin, no use.
3. Convert PDF to ePUB (using various online converters/standalones) to read via eBook readers from marketplace (Freda, Bookvisior)--PDF formatting goes to complete ruin, no use.
I don't know what to do, and I need to be able to search large PDF files by tomorrow. Please helppp me!
Hmm... normally I wouldn't recommend this, but maybe something like Google Docs (plus, if needed the Find On Page commandlet for IE on Windows Phone)? Another, even hackier option, would be to use RemoteDesktop (an app, does exactly what it says) and open the PDF on a PC instead. Yeah, it would lag, but a "large" PDF is likely to realllly strain the phone anyhow.
Searching PDFs is surprisingly difficult; I believe the default viewer on Android can't do it either. What do you need this particular capability for? There might be a better way. For example, I think the Adobe app lets you jump by page, so you could search text in another tool (that messes up the formatting, so long as it leaves the page breaks) and then jump to the relevant page. Alternatively, does the PDF have headers? You could navigate by table of contents, if the headers are sufficiently fine-grained...
Hi folks,
I have recently purchased my Note Pro 12.2 and am loving the handwriting recognition. I want to use this to replace my day book, and have been playing with SNOTE and Hancom Office. Hancom is the current preferred app , as it is very microsoft like. I want to change the default font, text size and line spacing.
I can do this for every doc, but I want to set a template that includes these changes so every "new" doc will have these settings. Does anyone know how I can do this ?
I also want to change the icons on the toolbar on the right hand size of the page, if this is possible.
Ta
Great site by the way! Lots of great info.
Kpjuk
I'm not sure what your needs are, but also take a look at papyrus. I am a college student and have totally replaced paper notebooks using the note 12 and papyrus. It really doesn't get much better.
Serinety said:
I'm not sure what your needs are, but also take a look at papyrus. I am a college student and have totally replaced paper notebooks using the note 12 and papyrus. It really doesn't get much better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am a business user and am looking to replace my daybook noteswith the notepro.To do this I need to have an app compatible with Microsoft Office, that has a layer of text, and a layer for drawing/ notes. Hancom Office is great for most of this, just needs tweaks to the templates and the UI, and it come free with the Tablet. With the right template it will do everything I need.
I can't find a Manual on how to save a personalised Template though, or change the UI. I have looked at the Samsung & Hancom sites and no manuals!!