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nekokami · 02-20-2007, 05:23 PM

I'd say the literature review function is the critical area for me at this point. (The other functions would help to justify the cost of such a device, though.) I have a stack of articles I've read, and I need to reference them while writing papers. I want to be able to mark references and then find them again quickly and easily, so that as I read I build up my usable bibliography. BiBTeX as an output format seems like it would be especially helpful. It would be nice if the PDF browser could pick up as much metadata as possible from the document, but since we're talking about PDF and not some nice XML-based document system, probably some kind of half-screen form that allows you to select text and pull it into a BiBTeX interface would work. (For image scanned PDFs, you'd need a manual input method, and for some kinds of notes, not just quotations, you'd also need manual input.)

But then something that allows you to sift through your bibliography entries and pop back to the location in the document where they occurred would also be extremely useful. The iLiad doesn't create PDF bookmarks because it doesn't process PDF files (too processor-intensive, I guess), but it does keep track of annotations in a parallel XML file, as I understand it, so maybe something like this could be used for the bibliography entries. It seems to me that this would be useful for nearly any doctoral student, and many other students as well (especially if textbooks start to become available in e-versions).

I wonder if it would make sense to have a TeX interpreter directly on the iLiad (or other reader)?

02-20-2007, 05:23 PM	#15
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	I'd say the literature review function is the critical area for me at this point. (The other functions would help to justify the cost of such a device, though.) I have a stack of articles I've read, and I need to reference them while writing papers. I want to be able to mark references and then find them again quickly and easily, so that as I read I build up my usable bibliography. BiBTeX as an output format seems like it would be especially helpful. It would be nice if the PDF browser could pick up as much metadata as possible from the document, but since we're talking about PDF and not some nice XML-based document system, probably some kind of half-screen form that allows you to select text and pull it into a BiBTeX interface would work. (For image scanned PDFs, you'd need a manual input method, and for some kinds of notes, not just quotations, you'd also need manual input.) But then something that allows you to sift through your bibliography entries and pop back to the location in the document where they occurred would also be extremely useful. The iLiad doesn't create PDF bookmarks because it doesn't process PDF files (too processor-intensive, I guess), but it does keep track of annotations in a parallel XML file, as I understand it, so maybe something like this could be used for the bibliography entries. It seems to me that this would be useful for nearly any doctoral student, and many other students as well (especially if textbooks start to become available in e-versions). I wonder if it would make sense to have a TeX interpreter directly on the iLiad (or other reader)?