[rfog]

For those that want different margins in column mode, the solutions proposed aren't good enough. I think there must be some special options for that: inter-column margin and draw a vertical line as separator or not, because if you specify a little space is very common to jump over the columns when reading and a line between them solves the issue.

But I want to do a proposal to Buggins. Due new tablets of 7", 9" and 10" screen size, even two columns makes a lot wide text for a comfortable reading. More uncomfortable if you read in "skimming" mode (that's the reason normal columns in newspapers are shorter than opinion ones). However, the most ergonomic stuff comes with eye movement and strain. We read in eye jumps, more wide text, more eye jump on each line. A professional reader (read: hardcore) is capable to read a book with no more than two eye hits per line (and only one in a newspaper column). Then my proposal is have the ability to have as many columns as user will want, separated for portrait and landscape modes. That is, a user could have two columns for portrait and three or four for landscape.

This is an ergonomic stuff: normally user needs to move the hand to advance page. If you put wide margins, you will have one short column, but you need to move the hand (and perhaps the hand that is not holding the device) to advance page more frequently than if you have more text in screen, but reading with wide lines is very difficult and slow than read with shorter ones. Now translate this o a new 27" desktop screen or a 13" laptop (or the new Windows 8 tablets).

CoolReader is the best reading app for Android as it was for linux devices. Better than FBreader and other paying programs...