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PDF reading

T

tonieee

SOC-8
I'm beginning to mellow towards PDFs for game books. I've bought a few from Drive Thru RPG. I'm probably not ready to give up on physical books yet but I'm finding reading them on my computer quite convenient.

However I'm finding the two column format that most of them are printed in a bit fiddly to use, having to constantly scroll up and down rather than just scroll forward and was wondering if anybody had any tips on how to deal with this?

I'm using evince as a reader (which seems to be the best one I've come across) on a netbook and have to have the zoom set to page width to have the text readable.

I think getting a tablet would be the best solution and have been considering one for some time but can't afford one just yet. Or getting a laptop with a bigger screen so I could view a whole page at a time (which is also something I'd like but again not enough money). I've tried rotating the pdf and turning the netbook on its side but that doesn't really work.

I'm a linux user but I'd still be interested to hear solutions that are specific to other operating systems.
 
Well, I hate the two column format in pdfs. Two column format works in books, but not on a 10 inch Asus tablet. Its okay on my home computer, but it has a 39" screen.
 
tonieee said:
I'm beginning to mellow towards PDFs for game books. I've bought a few from Drive Thru RPG. I'm probably not ready to give up on physical books yet but I'm finding reading them on my computer quite convenient.

However I'm finding the two column format that most of them are printed in a bit fiddly to use, having to constantly scroll up and down rather than just scroll forward and was wondering if anybody had any tips on how to deal with this?
Click to expand...
Maybe not what you are looking for, but the very best thing I've found is a large high res display. When my 21" panel went south I shopped around and got a 27" for a great deal.

Adobe pdf reader two page wide side by side just like a book and scrolling is like turning a page, you get the next two.

Another option from days of old, a full size display that can be adjusted to go sideways so that its footprint is more like a page of paper. http://mywindowshelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/cewq.jpeg

With my small 15" display laptop I often "dock" it at the desk with the large display, full sized keyboard, and a good old mouse.

If I start to use a tablet more for mobile, I will probably look into ways to "dock" it too for at the desk ease. I already have an adapter for mouse and keyboard, although I can't get them both to work at the same time with a usb hub - suspect possibly the usb on a tablet can't "multitask".
 
CosmicGamer said:
If I start to use a tablet more for mobile, I will probably look into ways to "dock" it too for at the desk ease. I already have an adapter for mouse and keyboard, although I can't get them both to work at the same time with a usb hub - suspect possibly the usb on a tablet can't "multitask".
Click to expand...


My Asus tablet's usb port can be used by a mouse, or to transfer files. I haven't tried to hookup a USB hub to it, but I kinda remember the manual saying that wouldn't work.

My tablet has trouble loading large pdfs to. Kinda odd, my older e-readers can handle the same pdfs just fine.
 
JimMarn said:
My Asus tablet's usb port can be used by a mouse, or to transfer files. I haven't tried to hookup a USB hub to it, but I kinda remember the manual saying that wouldn't work.

My tablet has trouble loading large pdfs to. Kinda odd, my older e-readers can handle the same pdfs just fine.
Click to expand...

that could be the pdf reader you are running on it. Or it could simply be not enough free ram
 
My tablet has a gig of ram. I don't know of a way to add more, except buy a newer tablet. The e-readers don't have that much. I think they use paging to show part of the pdf.
 
JimMarn said:
My tablet has a gig of ram. I don't know of a way to add more, except buy a newer tablet. The e-readers don't have that much. I think they use paging to show part of the pdf.
Click to expand...

You can tweak the settings on most android tablets (turning off unneeded stuff) to recover more usable ram. Many are keeping a bunch of things running that don't need to be.
 
For iPad users I'd suggest an app called St@sh. Simply because you have a few more organisational options over standard PDF readers: You can have multiple 'accounts' each with a tree of folders that have a mix of PDFs and pictures. Though I use it less for general game books and more for 'handouts'.
 
Ok, now you have me thinking. I'm on my Dell mini-9 running Xubuntu 14.04, and I have Wine installed. I'm goign to see if I can get the Win32 Sumatra pdf reader installed on this thing. See you all in 10 minutes!:frankie:
 
MikeinBallard said:
Ok, now you have me thinking. I'm on my Dell mini-9 running Xubuntu 14.04, and I have Wine installed. I'm goign to see if I can get the Win32 Sumatra pdf reader installed on this thing. See you all in 10 minutes!:frankie:
Click to expand...
Please do let us know!
 
aramis said:
You can tweak the settings on most android tablets (turning off unneeded stuff) to recover more usable ram. Many are keeping a bunch of things running that don't need to be.
Click to expand...

I'll check after I move next weekend. I don't think I have much running, I've checked the list of running programs last year. But I could have missed something.
 
aramis said:
Please do let us know!
Click to expand...

It worked just fine, as I posted just after that. Like I said, I don't know if Sumatra is any better than the Evince reader that comes with most Linux distros. Wine and the Mono runtime allow many Win32 programs to run on Linux, so if there's a favorite on Windows it's worth a try on Linux.
 
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