What features would you expect from an e-book reader for scientific publications?

[Pismire]

On average sized devices, reading PDFs requires a lot of panning and re-sizing, and Images or formulas pose their own problems. What features would you expect from an A4-sized e-book reader for scientific publications? And what interactions of device and software would you find useful?

I am surprised there seems to be no market for A4 sized readers. Kindle DX (which seems to available on the amazon webpage again) is too small to make smaller text easily readable which in my mind disqualifies it for the purpose.

[markom]

Originally Posted by Pismire

On average sized devices, reading PDFs requires a lot of panning and re-sizing, and Images or formulas pose their own problems. What features would you expect from an A4-sized e-book reader for scientific publications? And what interactions of device and software would you find useful?

I am surprised there seems to be no market for A4 sized readers. Kindle DX (which seems to available on the amazon webpage again) is too small to make smaller text easily readable which in my mind disqualifies it for the purpose.

Text on Kindle DX is not to small if A4 sized pdf is zoomed to fit-to-document-content-size in landscape mode or by two-point-cropping (for scans without OCR layer), because its 20 cm screen width is wider than 17-19 cm text width on A4 page (21 cm with borders included).

To be able to zoom that way we should install kindlepdfviewer thereon.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=2466450

Downside for scientific use is lack of annotations (there is highlighting though), handwriting capability, dictionary support, color, multitasking, WiFi.

All those shortcomings are easily circumvent by using tablet or other e-ink device simultaneously for those tasks.

There are now 10" readers like M92, Icarus Excel, Pocketbook that has got all those capabilities barring color, but some people would complain about their speed compared to tablets or lack of lighted screen.

[RichL]

1. A simple "scientific" calculator.
2. Ability to take notes (a) across the page or (b) have a bookmark always visible on one of the screen edges to take you to the notes.
3. Page tabs or some such so a person can easily flip back and forth between pages.
4. Good color rendition.
5. Good graph line rendition.
6. Ability to highlight or underline in several different colors.

[rkw]

Originally Posted by Pismire

On average sized devices, reading PDFs requires a lot of panning and re-sizing, and Images or formulas pose their own problems. What features would you expect from an A4-sized e-book reader for scientific publications? And what interactions of device and software would you find useful?

I am surprised there seems to be no market for A4 sized readers. Kindle DX (which seems to available on the amazon webpage again) is too small to make smaller text easily readable which in my mind disqualifies it for the purpose.

The KDX failed if you want to call it that, well it failed as an academic or research tool not because of size alone. Maybe the biggest reason was the total absence of supporting software suitable to the task.

For me it needs to:

[ignore the numbers these are pretty much all must haves]

1. Color - pretty much excludes current EPD panels;
2. Penable hand mark-up with some sort of OCR (maybe?) to convert for keywords. So an active digitizer is what I would want...
3. Bright enough panel to outdoors. Of course no panel will win a contest with the sun for brightness but there is such a thing as good enough for brief use. Advantage here for EPD panels since they use the sun to beat it at it's own game;
4. Major factor would be the underlying support software. Beyond the OS and simple reading software. It needs to pretty much replace how one does pen, highlighter and paper research. It needs to offer the memory reinforcement that jotting down notes gives. I guess this means the OS or software needs to support having multiple books/papers open at the same time.
5. I've tried many current note taking apps for research and there are some good choices for almost every style. However, there is no seamless integration or interaction with whatever reading app the book/paper needs.
6. High end document management (i.e. bookshelf/file cabinet...maybe a device based version of Wiki software???);
8. Needs to either have a keyboard dock or Bluetooth with a well implemented BT stack to allow a keyboard and BT headset (with mic) to work. FYI, there is a known issue on current Android tablets where a headset mic never activates only the on-device mic works. Oddly it seems limited to tablets not phones...but it does seem to be a Google thing not a device maker thing...maybe...
8. Along with the keyboard thing the OS really must support what has become universal editing keystroke combinations. Too many of us know these things by heart and one thing we learned as the DOS word processor wars raged in the 80s & early 90s was editors had to support the same keyboard shortcuts for editing. Read up on the whole Wordstar, Wordperfect, Word, Write...heck even PC Write and others...it is really interesting to read how the issue evolved then MS pretty much became the standard because it was hardwired into the OS. Wordperfect really balked because their users had spent years learning their arcane and cryptic combos that I still say drove many WP users completely batcrap bozo.
7...many other things which do not immediately come to mind.

I have tried Evernote and just never warmed to it after it's 2nd or 3rd version. It just seemed to veer away from what I found handy or maybe I just quite on it. OneNote is a fav of mine but I have not been able to really push it since moving to Android devices.

A lot of these things are maturing and coming to various apps but there just isn't sufficient openness in mobile OS's like iOS or Android. I feel this is an area where Win8 (full not RT) might already have the high ground as almost all of the abilities already exist and are quite mature running on an OS that is quite excellent at allowing disparate apps to be used in concert. It's not perfect but developers in that world don't need to reinvent that wheel.

Android could be a contender but it would need to be a highly modded and optimized custom version. There is just no way Google will release an open version to allow end users to lock out the biggest resource drain which is ad and metrics tracking apps running all the time. And iOS, well I'll just say not now, not ever.

One device announced several years back really had my tongue sweating that was the Kno. They promised a LOT of what I feel I would need or want for a device for research and technical work. Maybe it's bones will rise soon in a different product? There was another device of the same size but I don't recall the name.

I also had higher hopes Pocketbook would deliver in this area. But they just seem mired in the politics of the way(s) things get done in Ukraine many of which simply do not xlate to the rest of the world. I liked their early larger devices and company focus on the education niche. Maybe they have had time to let things gestate enough to reemerge as a contender here? Sadly doubtful though.

Of currently in production devices I was an eyelash away from a Galaxy Note 10.1 when I was replacing my Asus tf300t. The reason I went with the tf700t was due to the marginal display on the Note 10.1 in comparison with the 1920x1080 600nit panel on the tf700t. That was the tipping point even over the digitizer. But maybe the next generation Note tablet will be a clear winner with the Tegra 4 or perhaps a different brand with Win8 Pro and 837TB of ram?

Sorry that was long but this is a device I've been hunting for over 30yrs...maybe I'll be able to buy one before I don't need a full year warranty anymore. So it better arrive sooner rather than later.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by RichL

1. A simple "scientific" calculator.
2. Ability to take notes (a) across the page or (b) have a bookmark always visible on one of the screen edges to take you to the notes.
3. Page tabs or some such so a person can easily flip back and forth between pages.
4. Good color rendition.
5. Good graph line rendition.
6. Ability to highlight or underline in several different colors.

I'd cut out highlighting and underlining (since a properly concise paper would have its entire text underlined), and add the ePub3 media functions that would allow it to play short video clips. Scientific publications and shop manuals both need to be able to play videos from time to time.

[forsooth]

easy bookmarking
instantly return to marked page
at least a dozen, more better

Originally Posted by RichL

1. A simple "scientific" calculator.

I'd like a proper scientific calculator. One of the great mysteries of the universe is why sophisticated computational devices are rarely bundled with calculators that can handle the entire high school math curriculum, never mind something that a scientist or engineer would want to use.

[RichL]

You're right of course. Practically speaking I suppose there's really no reason not to have a full service calculator (including graphing functions) that also reads pdf's.

As an addendum to my first post I will add

7. Minimum 2 memory slots.
8. Replaceable generic batteries.

[sony_fox]

Definetly fast easy display of graphics. - I'm currently on an older Sony E-Ink and even rendering simple black and white charts takes several infuriating seconds.

A text search

Flipability. For any lengthy non-fiction piece you need to be able to skim backwards and forwards to ideas and re-read passages. Bookmarks and search help, but it's hard to bookmark what you'll need until after you realise you need it.

I suspect A4 readers are just too large to be sensibly portable. I might as well have a tablet/laptop instead. Instead a sensible text reflow on a smaller screen is better, with zoom (again, fast).

[Elfwreck]

A4/letter-sized ereaders would be *fragile.* Something like the DX is plenty big enough for most academic purposes; the problem, as mentioned, is software. Device manufacturers have been pushing for ease of use of novels, plus bells-and-whistles: games, video support, instant access to a store.

Annotation and highlighting is very limited. Cross-references between books is nonexistent. Image support is lousy. Ability to write as well as read--switching easily between a user-created document and multiple books--is nonexistent.

While the academic market is small (solid, but small, as these things go), the corporate market is not--anyone who created an awesome usable-by-academics ereader would have also created the device that would replace iPads in boardrooms. Some companies are already giving their managers Kindles to read documents, but there's limited use for them; something that was good at reading corporate PDFs (which are mostly converted Word or PPT files) and allowed substantial markup would sell very, very well. Bonus points if it had a way to network with other nearby readers of the same document/ebook. (Which aca-research could also use.)

[Pismire]

To be honest, I just can not see any format smaller than A4 work for publications - unless you can convince journals to give up on their formatting ideas. There will always be images and descriptions covering several columns, and I cant see how a program could sensibly re-flow or rescale them. As long as journals use A4 formats, any non-A4 reader is going to be unsuitable to give an uncomplicated reading experience. From what several people say about the kindle DX, its just too small for small text.

That said, Sony seems to be on to something: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=213019 - a 13,3" flexible eink slate. It has been field tested at Japanese universities, and I would love to see Sony put some serious effort into the software. But the hardware exists...

For what it is worth, I think I could do without colour and videos. But might just be that these are not essential in my field of work. I would even go so far as to say that as long as the device displays PDFs reliably, I am willing to do all the note taking on an old fashioned notebook.

[markom]

Originally Posted by Pismire

...

From what several people say about the kindle DX, its just too small for small text.

That said, Sony seems to be on to something: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=213019 - a 13,3" flexible eink slate. It has been field tested at Japanese universities, and I would love to see Sony put some serious effort into the software. But the hardware exists...

For what it is worth, I think I could do without colour and videos. But might just be that these are not essential in my field of work. I would even go so far as to say that as long as the device displays PDFs reliably, I am willing to do all the note taking on an old fashioned notebook.

Kindle Dx in landscape mode has the same screen width as this 13.3" Sony in portrait mode i.e. 1200/150 dpi or 8 inch (20.2 cm).

This pdf for example is 8.5 x 11 inch ( 21.5 x 28 cm) with text lenght (without borders) at about 185 mm.
http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/examp...n_template.pdf

In native kindle dx pdf reader we can get the same text size in landscape mode i.e. 185 mm with fit-to-page-width or fit-to-actual-size, whereas in kindlepdfviewer we can stretch text across the whole 200 mm screen, using fit-to-document-content, two-point-cropping or some other type of zooming, getting 200/185 or 8% magnification in comparison to paper and native kindle reader.

Not big one but magnification nevertheless.


in native kindle reader in kindlepdfviewer

So, those who find some of the smaller letters on kindle or original paper to be to small for their poor vision will in all probability find those letters to small on 13.3" Sony (in portrait mode) too.

[medard]

First of all I'd like to see the ability to remove applications completely that I won't use or that are even dangerous for me, or my research, or my company; like:

- M3 Player
- Internet browser
- Internet access
- Cloud services for annotations or reading progress

On second thought there are only very few thing that I really expect for the Reader itself like

- PDF and ePub display
- Individual annotation files for every book (so that I can export the single book with my annotations)
- Good shelf management

But these few things should really work 100% without any flaws. Less is more, at least in science and with reading.

[HarryT]

The key feature that any device aimed at use by the academic community has to have is the ability to have multiple documents open at once, and be able to rapidly flip between them. Anyone who's ever done any research knows that it's common to have half a dozen reference sources open at once, and be constantly flipping from one to the other.

The only device I've ever encountered which has provided this capability was the old iRex iLiad, which had a "tabbed" user interface. You could have multiple documents open at once, and flip between them by tapping the appropriate tab.

Any device which doesn't offer this ability is no use whatsoever for the academic/scientific reader.

[din155]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The key feature that any device aimed at use by the academic community has to have is the ability to have multiple documents open at once, and be able to rapidly flip between them........
....Any device which doesn't offer this ability is no use whatsoever for the academic/scientific reader.

I would add capability to search within individual documents to the list.