Quote:
Originally Posted by mobama
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There is one important (important to me) missing feature in Koreader: It cannot do arbitrary columns when the pdf consists of, for example, old-time newspaper with five or more irregular columns, feuilletons and whatnot. Pocketbook's inbuilt reader can navigate those very well. If Koreader implements this, it could very well be the app to meet all the needs.
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Yep, three-column, and four- or more column pdfs are currently problematic for original pdf reader, as well as Koreader and Plato reader.
Koreader should not really have those problems because k2pdfopt has got 4-column modes and Koreader in my Kindle DX has got all the necessary additional zooming options, so, it would probably be a trivial thing just to change its default setting from 2 to 4 columns.
In the meantime those who have got a lot of these 3-4-5 column documents can quickly and easily crop those pdfs using free applications like Briss and k2pdfopt beforehand, and then transfer those cropped pdfs to Kobo or any other e-reader they own if they are not satisfied either with its cropping ability of multiple-column pdfs, the speed of page flipping thereafter, ability to use dictionaries, scribblings thereafter etc.
http://briss.sourceforge.net
http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/
e.g. Attached pdf is 3-column document cropped with Briss (I've just copied the same page several times to make it bigger document and it was a matter of seconds for Briss to crop it after I've selected the overlapping areas).
I've cropped it on purpose including the part of the next column, so that it is smaller text-width size in portraite mode (12 cm on Kobo Aura One) and as a kind of orientation during the reading/flipping.
We should use k2pdfopt in the case of documents with a variable layout i.e. 2, 3, 4 or 5 columns on different pages, instead of just uniform three or four throughout the whole document.
There could be problems with some complex newspapers and magazines though.