Sunday, August 12, 2012

Touchscreens make PDFs almost tolerable

I have long hated reading PDFs on my computer.  Especially 2 column papers. PDFs often require scrolling up and down, back and forth, in order to read.

On a traditional PC or laptop, this requires use of scroolbars and mouse, sometims keys.

The PDF reader, e.g. Acrobat, sometimes allows you to just use arrow down in a text flow, but it often jumps around disconcertingly.

Reading it on my touchscreen tablet makes PDGs almost tolerable.  Direct manipulation to move what I want to look at around is much better tnan scrollimng.

I still wish it was a single directional flow.  But I can live wth this.

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I conjecture that if the PDF reader just allowed mosuing to drag around the viewport, like Google maps, it would be better, almost as good as touch.

2 comments:

  1. Wasn't so bad on modern macs. The magic mouse or trackpad allow pretty reasonable selection. I agree the touchscreen is better for just reading. But for doing markup, annotation, etc the computer is better. At least if you have a usable one ;>

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  2. You can scroll around the viewport.
    Right-click -> select hand-tool

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