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Uschiekid · 06-30-2021, 08:24 AM

In my experience reading PDFs on Kobo Aura One, the software updates go from handling PDFs in a sensible way that makes reading them a cinch and doing the behaviour you've described (but probably worse because my ereader would be slower). I don't understand why.

The firmwares where it works well, you use the little 4 arrow icon at the top, choose fit to width, and it will show the top part of the page zoomed to fill the screen. Tap once, it "turns" the page to show the bottom half (ie it appears similar to do what it would do for turning pages, but shows the bottom half instead of actually going on to the next page), tap a 2nd time, and you go to the top of the next page.

In other words, once you've set the zoom, you just tap → tap → tap and that equals advancing to the top of the page → bottom → top of next page, etc.

No panning, no slowness, no murkiness of ghosting caused by endless panning. It just works. The only things I could see some people disliking is 1) you have to tap to advance (swiping fulfils a different purpose and you end up looking at margins) and 2) when looking at the bottom half of the page, unless your PDF divides exactly into half the screen when the width fills the screen, there will be some text repeated, so you have to re-find your place. Mostly this isn't a big issue, because you can "turn the page" ie tap to advance to the bottom differently, according to where the paragraphs fall on that page. ie you can do it a bit early and just note what word the new paragraph starts at.

I avoided updating my Aura One because I was trying to read a long, stuffy PDF that worked perfectly a couple of firmwares ago and I'd already updated my Glo and found they'd "broken" how it worked again. But I accidentally let it update the other day, so I will set aside that PDF til the next time it works sensibly again and read epubs instead.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the firmware is *capable* of making reading fixed layout PDFs easy, but it for some reason doesn't keep it that way from firmware to firmware. This is at least the 3rd time it was working in a way I could use it in a firmware, and it has been "broken" (IMO) for many more firmwares.

06-30-2021, 08:24 AM	#2
Uschiekid Tenrec Posts: 724 Karma: 1076988 Join Date: Oct 2012 Device: Kobo Aura One, Kobo Glo	In my experience reading PDFs on Kobo Aura One, the software updates go from handling PDFs in a sensible way that makes reading them a cinch and doing the behaviour you've described (but probably worse because my ereader would be slower). I don't understand why. The firmwares where it works well, you use the little 4 arrow icon at the top, choose fit to width, and it will show the top part of the page zoomed to fill the screen. Tap once, it "turns" the page to show the bottom half (ie it appears similar to do what it would do for turning pages, but shows the bottom half instead of actually going on to the next page), tap a 2nd time, and you go to the top of the next page. In other words, once you've set the zoom, you just tap → tap → tap and that equals advancing to the top of the page → bottom → top of next page, etc. No panning, no slowness, no murkiness of ghosting caused by endless panning. It just works. The only things I could see some people disliking is 1) you have to tap to advance (swiping fulfils a different purpose and you end up looking at margins) and 2) when looking at the bottom half of the page, unless your PDF divides exactly into half the screen when the width fills the screen, there will be some text repeated, so you have to re-find your place. Mostly this isn't a big issue, because you can "turn the page" ie tap to advance to the bottom differently, according to where the paragraphs fall on that page. ie you can do it a bit early and just note what word the new paragraph starts at. I avoided updating my Aura One because I was trying to read a long, stuffy PDF that worked perfectly a couple of firmwares ago and I'd already updated my Glo and found they'd "broken" how it worked again. But I accidentally let it update the other day, so I will set aside that PDF til the next time it works sensibly again and read epubs instead. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the firmware is capable of making reading fixed layout PDFs easy, but it for some reason doesn't keep it that way from firmware to firmware. This is at least the 3rd time it was working in a way I could use it in a firmware, and it has been "broken" (IMO) for many more firmwares.