MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - V3update Hanlin V2.10 2009-08-03 released

Dragon_Well · 08-17-2009, 04:48 PM

Been playing around with the new firmware, and I have to say that in my experience, the reflow works very well - for the RIGHT pdf. I read a lot of two column journal articles, and many of these render extremely well with the new firmware - whatever algorithm is being used is pretty good at breaking the text up and reflowing it in a logical way. The exception to this is if there is any kind of table on the page. And herein lies the rub...

Since the new firmware now only includes reflow, any pdf or text not capable being "reflowed" (ie. text with an embedded table) is only able to be viewed at original resolution. This means that many of the pdfs I used before which could be viewed at least reasonably well using the zoom function have been rendered useless by the new firmware.

So, in spite of my original delight when I reflowed a journal article, I have reverted to the older firmware, which lacks reflow, but at least allows viewing of pdfs containing tables.

To me, on of the great strengths of the EZReader is that it can read many different formats, including pdf. However, given the diversity of pdf formatting out there, firmware should include as many options as possible to make documents usable -ie users should be able to select reflow, zoom, or zoom and pan functions. Just my $.02.

08-17-2009, 04:48 PM	#15
Dragon_Well Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 46 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Astak EZ-reader, Sony PRS-600	New Firmware: One Step Forward, One Step Backward? Been playing around with the new firmware, and I have to say that in my experience, the reflow works very well - for the RIGHT pdf. I read a lot of two column journal articles, and many of these render extremely well with the new firmware - whatever algorithm is being used is pretty good at breaking the text up and reflowing it in a logical way. The exception to this is if there is any kind of table on the page. And herein lies the rub... Since the new firmware now only includes reflow, any pdf or text not capable being "reflowed" (ie. text with an embedded table) is only able to be viewed at original resolution. This means that many of the pdfs I used before which could be viewed at least reasonably well using the zoom function have been rendered useless by the new firmware. So, in spite of my original delight when I reflowed a journal article, I have reverted to the older firmware, which lacks reflow, but at least allows viewing of pdfs containing tables. To me, on of the great strengths of the EZReader is that it can read many different formats, including pdf. However, given the diversity of pdf formatting out there, firmware should include as many options as possible to make documents usable -ie users should be able to select reflow, zoom, or zoom and pan functions. Just my $.02.