4 ms·
Ask HN: Is reading PDFs on mobile a pain?
I’m trying to understand how big a problem it is to read PDFs on mobile.
Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf.
But what do you think?
- mendeza 7y agoReading PDFs as html would Be nice, but as a ML engineer having high quality conversion would be very useful for large scale analysis and information extraction of pdf documents!
- ldenoue 7y agoWhat kind of analysis and extraction? Figures, tables? Other?
- udayrddy 7y agosame here. I mostly deal with text analytics, while the text PDFs do not create much issues, unless a crazy font is used, and the 2 column pages are a nightmare. In case you are looking for an API to extract structure rich content like tables from PDFs or images, look into this https://extracttable.com https://extracttable.com (p.s. I contributed to it)
- pwg 7y ago> I’m trying to understand how big a problem it is to read PDFs on mobile. The "simulated sheet of paper" aspect of PDF's make them a pain on anything with a screen size smaller than needed to show the whole "pdf page" at a readable size to the user at once. On anything smaller one has to zoom and pan around. However, you can see for yourself. Assuming you have a smartphone/tablet, just install a PDF reader if it does not already have one [1], then start viewing various PDF's. > Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf. I agree. [1] here is one you can install if your device does not already have a pdf reader: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.artifex.mupdf.viewer.app/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.artifex.mupdf.viewer.app...
- JohnFen 7y agoPersonally, reading PDFs on mobile is not really much more painful than reading PDFs on a desktop machine. PDFs are just painful, period.
- ldenoue 7y agothank you. I never considered it would be useful on desktops too. I guess we now have expectations about how web pages behave in a browser, and what we can do with them; but when the browser loads a PDF, all that is gone, or not working the same way.
- muzani 7y agoI avoid PDFs whenever possible, mobile or desktop. They're designed for printing. There are better formats for reading, for comics, and so on. The worst are anything done in dual column pages... it sometimes takes me days to fully read a paper because of the strain, and I've never finished reading any game books on PDF.
- kleer001 7y agoI have a huge XL phone so it's not a problem. Also I don't have to do it often. A small phone and frequent use would be a huge pain though.
- ldenoue 7y agoAnd on desktop you’re fine dealing with PDFs in the browser? Just posted a video demo of what a pdf could look like once reflowed as HTML (look at the HTML version after second 10) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSRFcLovatI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSRFcLovatI
- runjake 7y agoPDFs are great. I can download it to my device, scroll, pinch, and zoom, and I don't have to wait for new pages to load and hope my network connection is good. My use case for PDFs on phone are usually technical manuals.
- LarryMade2 7y agoDepends on how long the Document is... If its smallish like a sign where there is more art than text I'd image it (jpg, 150dpi) Small, prints OK and is quickly viewable. Maybe include the text copy along for indexing/ADA purposes. A couple pages (brochure content), then I'd try to do a mobile web version and also offer the PDF if the style is something that adds to the content. Long format (booklet, paper, guide, long story, magazine), where the audience is going to be reading it for a while PDF makes sense: you can style it, able to read off-line easier, and its no big to the user that they are breaking from the web to read. Been enjoying old magazines and comic books in the internet archive, can either use their on-line reader or download PDF. Either are OK, if I expect to travel, will DL some PDfs.
- ldenoue 7y agoPDFs of research papers are what I often read on mobile, and I find it hard. Check out the app I published if you have an iOS device: it’ll reformat your pdf so the content reflows to fit your screen. https://www.appblit.com/pdfreflow https://www.appblit.com/pdfreflow
- Jugurtha 7y ago>Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf. It's called epub. I read ebooks and documentation in this format, which is basically packaged html.
- ldenoue 7y agoYes but converting a pdf to ePub is not easy (to make the ePub reflow the text at least). What I’m working on could output as ePub.
- Jugurtha 7y agoI wasn't talking about a converted PDF to ePub. More like content originally designed as ePub (like Sphinx documentation you can download as PDF or ePub). I was about to check out https://readerview.app https://readerview.app as per your bio, but it doesn't seem to load. Can you reply to this when it's up again? Thanks.