3 ms·

what I would love is an app that would reformat portrait PDFs as 2-column landscape for reading on my screen

by vbuwivbiu 9y ago

mpweiher 9y ago
Most PDF viewers I am aware of (including my own, PostView) have 2 up modes, are those not sufficient?
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  that's still presenting the pages in portrait orientation. I want the pages to be landscape and for the text to flow in at least 2 columns.
  - sk5t 9y ago
    PDF is used primarily for pre-paginated media and does not reflow text; if the PDF author wanted the pages in landscape orientation, or using some other paper dimensions, he would have specified that. Same goes for margins and the like.
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      Doesn't mean the author isn't wrong for my reading situation... Or isn't doing it just cause everyone else is.
      - userbinator 9y ago
        I think what the parent is trying to say is that PDF is not like HTML or text or other formats where the viewer is primarily responsible for a lot of the formatting --- in fact, a PDF page contains not much more than primitive instructions of the form "move to X, Y"; "set font to F"; "draw text 'Some text here'" (some pathological cases issue individual moves and draws for each character) --- so expecting all PDF viewers to be able to somehow "reverse-engineer" or "decompile" that set of low-level drawing instructions into more semantic entities like lines of text or even words in order to reformat the text is a little too much. Anyone who has tried selecting text from a two-column PDF page will also quickly realise the nature of the problem.
        grogenaut 9y ago
        I totally get that; however since these days a standard sheet of papers is no longer the main reading mechanism... I'm not sure it's the best layout for reading. My brother is a PhD and reads papers all day. He hates the two column format and paid for a reflowing reader. PDF is terrible on screens with different ratios than paper... Eg good computers and mobile. As I get older I use my plethora of giant screens to crank the fonts way up and sit back relaxed. PDF is terrible in that situation. Just a thought... Maybe highly formatted PDFs for paper print shouldn't be the standard anymore. Eg my original point.
    - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
      ok, that's what the author wanted, but they're wrong. We are reading our text on computers in 2017 - we should be able to choose the format that reads best for us.

what I would love is an app that would reformat portrait PDFs as 2-column landscape for reading on my screen

mpweiher 9y ago

Most PDF viewers I am aware of (including my own, PostView) have 2 up modes, are those not sufficient?

vbuwivbiu 9y ago
that's still presenting the pages in portrait orientation. I want the pages to be landscape and for the text to flow in at least 2 columns.
- sk5t 9y ago
  PDF is used primarily for pre-paginated media and does not reflow text; if the PDF author wanted the pages in landscape orientation, or using some other paper dimensions, he would have specified that. Same goes for margins and the like.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    Doesn't mean the author isn't wrong for my reading situation... Or isn't doing it just cause everyone else is.
    - userbinator 9y ago
      I think what the parent is trying to say is that PDF is not like HTML or text or other formats where the viewer is primarily responsible for a lot of the formatting --- in fact, a PDF page contains not much more than primitive instructions of the form "move to X, Y"; "set font to F"; "draw text 'Some text here'" (some pathological cases issue individual moves and draws for each character) --- so expecting all PDF viewers to be able to somehow "reverse-engineer" or "decompile" that set of low-level drawing instructions into more semantic entities like lines of text or even words in order to reformat the text is a little too much. Anyone who has tried selecting text from a two-column PDF page will also quickly realise the nature of the problem.
      - grogenaut 9y ago
        I totally get that; however since these days a standard sheet of papers is no longer the main reading mechanism... I'm not sure it's the best layout for reading. My brother is a PhD and reads papers all day. He hates the two column format and paid for a reflowing reader. PDF is terrible on screens with different ratios than paper... Eg good computers and mobile. As I get older I use my plethora of giant screens to crank the fonts way up and sit back relaxed. PDF is terrible in that situation. Just a thought... Maybe highly formatted PDFs for paper print shouldn't be the standard anymore. Eg my original point.
  - vbuwivbiu 9y ago
    ok, that's what the author wanted, but they're wrong. We are reading our text on computers in 2017 - we should be able to choose the format that reads best for us.