Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

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.
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