Glo Kobo Glo PDF Support

[Zistmo]

I got my Kobo Glo from WHSmith (UK) last friday. I use my ereader mainly to read PDF files. Happy enough with my Kindle Keyboard, I wanted something a bit better: cover thumbnails, table of contents, more storage, better support for two columns documents and fantastic resolution...

I found a great improvements on all these aspects.

The landscape mode works well, I can use a very handy slide bar to go from one page to other and I can jump from one chapter to the following/previous with ease...

The experience is good enough to consider it a good improvement comparint it with my old Kindle Keyboard, but... I am considering the possibility of returning my Kobo Glo, because despite all these improvements the overall experience is not so good for the following reasons:

— No annotations. And "no annotations" means no annotations: I have not been able to find a way to select and highlight text on any of the pdf files I tested. And I have not been able to add notes on the text.

— No bookmarks.

— Turning pages when the zoom is on is possible (tapping the black areas on the sides), but that still keeps you in the same part of the page you were. For example, if you are finishing a page, reading the right area at the bottom of a pdf file and you want to continue your reading, after turning the page you will not start from the top left corner of the following page, but from the same right righ area at the bottom... so you will have to drag the whole page before you start reading that page. Painful.

— No contrast settings for pdfs. That would be useful even when te light is not on (and very very useful when you read with the light is on)

If someone have any suggestion on any of this issues it will be very appreciated. Or any other comment about PDF support on the Kobo Glo or any other device (Kindle Paperwhite, maybe... that is the alternative that I am considering now...)

[jusmee]

PDF support is a big fail IMO. Until they can reflow a PDF document and present it formatted to fit the different page size of the reading device, I will avoid PDF format entirely. Early Astak/Bebook/Hanlin readers could do it, and someone said that a Sony reader can do it. Kobo can't.

[Zistmo]

I think Sony PRS T1 could do it and probably the T2 can do it as well. But it was never a feature very appealing to me: reflow relies on the quality of the layer of text behind the PDF image. In scanned documents that layer of text is frequently full of errors and inaccuracies, and sometimes is simply missing (in this case no reflow, highlight or annotation is possible). Headers, footnotes, etc. are elements not easily managed with reflow...

Reflow is useful for large documents (A4 or any other format in which text lines contain more that 15 words or so), but for pdf books landscape orientation has worked well enough for me on my Kindle Keyboard.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by Zistmo

— No annotations. And "no annotations" means no annotations: I have not been able to find a way to select and highlight text on any of the pdf files I tested. And I have not been able to add notes on the text.

— No bookmarks.

Bookmarks are possible, and adding a note through the bookmark is also possible (so no highlighting a section to add a note, but you can add a note to a certain page).

You CANNOT bookmark while zoomed in. That is annoying, but if you double tap when no menus are showing, you can get back to a non-zoomed state. Then set the bookmark as per usual, and then go into the menu, into annotations, see the bookmark, click on the symbol to the right of it and click "Add a note". Not pretty, but it IS possible.

One note of warning. If you don't want your note to be suddenly deleted, be careful about unfolding the dogear when tapping in a non-zoomed state. This deletes your note as well, no warning.

[Zistmo]

Thanks Uschiekid. Your message has been useful. I probably tried to bookmark a zoomed page.

Now I see that is certainly is possible, but... still very unusable. Double tapping can be tedious, but trying to set the zoom back to its previous state is even more obtrusive: you put the bookmark, and then you want to continue with your reading... bu when you double tap again you get the default 200% magnification factor, no matter what you had selected before. So the only solution is setting the zoom again throug the menu...

Unfortunately, this can work for someone that does not need to do a lot of bookmark/notes, but that is not my case. I will return my Kobo Glo today because after trying to get used to it I cannot get a smooth reading experience with pdfs.

There is also another curious detail. I have noticed that the contrast is not uniform: the area of text that is behind the zooming visor is darker than the rest of the page when you hide the visor. It's not very noticeable but clearly visible.

I am sad to see that pdf reading is so deficiently implemented on ereaders. I understand that they are considered devices to sell content through, and therefore naturally reluctant to support any format that can reduce the purchase of ebooks. The marketing approach there is probably ok, but the hardware is plainly bad or, at least, capped by poorly developed software.

[Uschiekid]

no problem. too bad it wasn't enough to make a difference.

yeah, it's definitely not optimal. I am hoping they improve pdf on upgrades, but as you say, it's not their main goal, which of course is making money .

i was definitely disappointed as well, i was counting on being able to do proper annotations (and highlighting) on pdf, but since it's only about 50% of what i wanted the glo for, i decided to make do with those functionalities, which at least were much better than it seemed when i first got my glo.

the kindle PW does seem to have better zooming abilities on pdf, but i haven't seen any evidence that annotations and highlighting is well implemented (or evidence to the contrary either)

good luck finding a reader that suits your needs!