[Q] pdf read experience

[gett]

Not sure if this is an appropriate forum to post… but here goes.

I am looking to buy Nook Color primarily to read pdfs. I would say part of my work requires spending a lot of time reading (and put comments in) pdfs.
My concern is how is the pdf reading experience on NC with 7" display. I'm especially looking to hear from anyone who uses NC to read pdfs.
Are all kinds of pdfs with different settings comfortabley viewable (that is, you don’t have to constantly zoom in and zoom out a page on a pdf book).
Thanks a lot in advance for your valuable insight.

 

[ponyboy82]

I've read a few PDFs on my nook and it's mostly good. The thing is, it depends very much on the formatting of the individual PDFs themselves. Since they're fairly static, the ones I've used don't reflow well (ie. you lose formatting or images) if you try to use that option. If they are mostly text, then it shouldn't be as much of a problem. The ones I have read most are formatted in a 4x3 aspect ration, so on the Nook's 16x9 screen, they are very small with a border on the top and bottom in portrait mode (unless you zoom and scroll), but in landscape mode they are very readable aside from some extra scrolling required. All in all, it's really not bad. By the way, I mainly use the ezPDF reader app instead of Acrobat.

 

[jgaf]

I've been using ezpdreader. It works for me, since I'm a grad student I read a lot of pdfs just like you. With this app you can do all sorts of annotations (comments, highlights, etc). It takes a little time loading big pdfs, for now it is the best app I have found for my needs.

It works better if you have your pdfs ocred. I use Acrobat Pro to ocr files before uploading to NC. Once it's ocred you can use the autozoom (full screen view) by double tapping the screen and you can read on landscape or portrait.

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk

 

[NCKevo]

Yeah, same here, grad student reading papers as pdfs with ezPDF reader. I've found it works great for new pdf's, where you can auto-zoom to fit columns and figures and use text reflow. For older pdfs (eg. scanned images) it's not that good. But I've not tried to run optical character recognition (ocr) on them either, I'll have to try try that. The best benefit though, is the fact that it keeps a full file cabinet of papers so I can always jump back to my 'favorites' or primary references, and if I'm at a conference I can find and add new ones.

 

[jgaf]

Yeah, same here, grad student reading papers as pdfs with ezPDF reader. I've found it works great for new pdf's, where you can auto-zoom to fit columns and figures and use text reflow. For older pdfs (eg. scanned images) it's not that good. But I've not tried to run optical character recognition (ocr) on them either, I'll have to try try that. The best benefit though, is the fact that it keeps a full file cabinet of papers so I can always jump back to my 'favorites' or primary references, and if I'm at a conference I can find and add new ones.

Yeah I have lots of scanned pdfs and I used, as I said before, Acrobat Pro in my PC to recognize text. As we all know ocr isn't perfect but at least it will let you highlight the words in the pdf (even when it didn't correctly identified the right word). So you might not be able to copy paste a sentence correctly, but you will be able to make annotations on the pdf.

 

[votinh]

I haven't tried ezPDF so I can't comment but I do strongly recommend you to try out the Mantano PDF Reader.

 

[popsnorkle]

I mostly use ezPDF too. I've looked at Mantano because people seem so enthusiastic about it, but it doesn't do the fit to the screen or column that ezPDF does.

 

[votinh]

I mostly use ezPDF too. I've looked at Mantano because people seem so enthusiastic about it, but it doesn't do the fit to the screen or column that ezPDF does.

You meant it auto zoom to fit the page on screen?

 

[skwalas]

I mostly use ezPDF too. I've looked at Mantano because people seem so enthusiastic about it, but it doesn't do the fit to the screen or column that ezPDF does.

Mantano allows fit to screen and several varieties of zoom, and can zoom on a column with the appropriate gesture. A number of solid ezpdf users have switched to mantano recently. However, if you want to do a lot of different types of annotations, repligo is still the way to go.

 

[jgaf]

Mantano allows fit to screen and several varieties of zoom, and can zoom on a column with the appropriate gesture. A number of solid ezpdf users have switched to mantano recently. However, if you want to do a lot of different types of annotations, repligo is still the way to go.

I had repligo before ezpdf but it wouldn't let me highlight ocr pdfs. So I switch and ezpdf hasn't failed me yet, it also has all type of annotations even free hand

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk