Best device for reading Sanskrit from PDF

[R o d]

Hi all,

My first post. I am a graduate student studying Sanskrit. I need to be able to read PDFs that contain Devanagari (Sanskrit) text. I've read a lot of posts about reading PDFs as technical documents with tables, equations, etc. My needs are simpler. I just need to be able to read multiple pages of the text comfortably, much the same as one would read a book in English. Will some readers handle this requirement better than others? Will a 6" reader suffice or do I need a 9 or 10" reader? The attached PDF will give you an idea of what I need to read. Thanks for any help.

-Rod

[DDHarriman]

Hi

Tested your file with the Cybook and the Sony 505 and both look perfect for reading.

The zoom options of both readers are more then enough to let you to get a detail if the normal size does not let you understand a detail.

Best,

[R o d]

Thanks for taking a look at the file and rendering an opinion. A couple of follow-up questions, please:

1. In normal size view, is the full pdf page viewable? I realize you may not be able to read Sanskrit, but are the individual characters large enough to read comfortably?

2. When you zoom, as you say, does that cut off text reading left to right? Wouldn't this require you to switch to horizontal mode in order to see a complete line?

3. In horizontal or zoom mode, do you then scroll down to see the continuation of text or is it more like turning a page? How convenient is that? What I'm really getting at here is whether I would be better off with a larger reader so as to avoid scrolling or turning pages in order to read a one page pdf.

4. And finally, I see the term PDF Reflow being used, but I'm not sure what it means. I even saw a YouTube video of it (drown out by an Evanescence song), but for the life of me I couldn't tell what was happening. Could you kindly explain?

Thanks.

[DDHarriman]

Hi

1) Yes. In your example I do not think so, but as you say, I can not read Sanskrit. Still if you cut most of the white margins of the original PDF (look into the forum for tools, free and paid that can do that), then yes;

2) it depends the Cybook has several zoom levels, so per example if you choose zoom to the width of the page, it puts a signal in the bottom of the page showing you have to pan down to see the rest of it). The Sony when zooming passes directly to landscape.

3) turning a page, in the Cybook it can be 2, 3 or more times (depending of the zoom chosen), in the 505, it just “cuts” the page in half and they “became” 2 new pages. It’s convenient. The choosing for a larger reader is a personal choice of course;

4) normally what you would have is a A4/letter page PDF represented in a less then A5 size screen.
How is this represented, the page shrinks, and normally the letters are so small that one can not read it.
If someone gets rid of the white margins the original page has, the page becomes less in size then A4/letter, so representing it in the same size screen, shows the letters bigger, and sometimes, in landscape it’s readable.
Now, reflowing: the reader in the Sony (505 and 700) has the option of reflowing
the text in PDF’s. It does this by trying to “see” marks of separation between words and if one of those is near the end of a line, it cuts the line there instead on where it was doing it originally. It’s supposed to do this automatically for each zoom option (the Sony as 3 text sizes, small, medium and large, and it zooms when one chooses medium or large).
How is this in reality: the reader in the Sony behaves very strangely sometimes, it cuts the end of the lines in the meddle of a word (it was not supposed to do that), and other strange situations. It does not deal well with tables, formulas and or graphics. If these are text and numbers, it reflows them and one looses them purely, or even some disappear, if they are images, they are shown as images and normally they show acceptable.

Best,

[HappyMartin]

I irex is not my favorite company but would the Iliad not be better for this. I own a Cybook and used to own an Iliad and feel the larger size makes pdf more usable on the Iliad