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Originally Posted by Sight Seer
I have been reading the iLiad postings for months now - I am very interested in this device, but have one specific use in mind. I am a scientist and want to use the iLiad to read scientific pdf files that I download from scientific journals. These pdf files are generaly formatted to print on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. Would these files be readable on this device?
Oliverbogler apparently did try to read a science pdf but indicated that zooming would be necessary and cropping of excess white space. This is a bit more work than desired to make the device really useful.
It is my impression, based on the videos and screen shots that I have seen, that zooming and navigating no a page would be a difficult way to read these files. Based on the photo of the first page of the paper posted by Oliverbogler, could it be that the zoom feature would could be controlled to just remove the white margin? Perhaps a "custom" program to reformat these pdfs could be created?
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The quick answer is that at the moment PDFs that can be cropped aggressively are just readable. Ones that cannot, border on the unreadable, IMO and with my eyes (just turned 40 and everything is getting blurrier...).
Croppability depends on the source of the pdf - most journals allow it, but for example, Nature ones do not. If you have a specific example in mind, please send it to me or post it, and I can try it and upload a photo.
Reflow would be better, and would work great for some journals. I tried this with a random sample of the pdfs I have of scientific papers, and it only worked with a very few - those that provide a pdf of the typesetting information, I guess. Many however have pdfs that are images of a page. (The ones I reflowed, were exportable to html and thence to a word processor and could be made into a more readable document, but that took as long as it might to read half the paper - so not a good time investment.) If the iLiad PDF viewer gains reflow capability, that would be great - but only in a few cases. Zoom is likely to be more useful - a key would be to have good navigation around the zoomed document.
For me the cropping works best, and I can now read papers on a plane, or anywhere, and can carry hundreds with me, and not have to print and waste time, paper and ink. The 16 grays do make a difference, as does the size, when compared to Sony.