MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Which eBook Device is best for PDF docs and notes

maxwed · 01-07-2009, 04:04 PM

I have an Iliad with 8 inch display which simply is too small for some pdf's, so I'm astonished to hear that the Sony, which has a 6 inch display, "is very good at them within screen size limitations"...

pdf is not a format that is adapted "on the run" to your screen, it doesn't flow (usually)... so if you have a DIN A4 pdf with text which uses a font size that results in let's say 100 characters per line (and that's not even a small font size), there's no way to be able to read that comfortably on a 6 inch screen, even in landscape mode (if there is such a thing with the Sony) and reading it on an 8 inch Iliad is not easy too.

I've heard that with the Sony you can switch between different font sizes, although I doubt that this is possible with pdf's... with the ILiad you definitely can't do it... and it would only make sense to be able to do this if the device at the same time would REFLOW the document, which again the ILiad can't do, and I doubt the Sony can do (IF pdf's are tagged to be able to reflow them at all, which more often then not they aren't)... there is no sense in trying to make a 100 character line more readibly by zooming it without reflow... you would have to scroll all the time, EVERY LINE!

So the gist of all this is that my experience with the 8 inch Iliad tells me that the limit of a device is X characters per line, with pdf's... the bigger the display, the bigger X can be... it's difficult to put a number to X... if X is bigger than your device's screen can display using a zoom that renders the text still visible, the only thing you can do is convert the document, into a format that reflows on the device, or reflowing the converted format yourself into "smaller than X"-characters per line and printing it back into pdf. This destroys layout and can be a lot of work, depending on the type of pdf.

So, it all depends on the type of pdf documents you want to read and if they will reflow on the device (impossible on the ILiad) and if they don't, what their characters per line average is... to be flexible buy the biggest device, which to my knowledge is the Irex Digital Reader 1000 S, which has a 10 inch display which should allow a comfortable read of 100 chars per line pdf's (MUCH longer lines on DIN A4 pdf's are unusual because reading them printed out on a DIN A4 paper would be difficult)...

01-07-2009, 04:04 PM	#7
maxwed Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2008 Device: Iliad IRex	I have an Iliad with 8 inch display which simply is too small for some pdf's, so I'm astonished to hear that the Sony, which has a 6 inch display, "is very good at them within screen size limitations"... pdf is not a format that is adapted "on the run" to your screen, it doesn't flow (usually)... so if you have a DIN A4 pdf with text which uses a font size that results in let's say 100 characters per line (and that's not even a small font size), there's no way to be able to read that comfortably on a 6 inch screen, even in landscape mode (if there is such a thing with the Sony) and reading it on an 8 inch Iliad is not easy too. I've heard that with the Sony you can switch between different font sizes, although I doubt that this is possible with pdf's... with the ILiad you definitely can't do it... and it would only make sense to be able to do this if the device at the same time would REFLOW the document, which again the ILiad can't do, and I doubt the Sony can do (IF pdf's are tagged to be able to reflow them at all, which more often then not they aren't)... there is no sense in trying to make a 100 character line more readibly by zooming it without reflow... you would have to scroll all the time, EVERY LINE! So the gist of all this is that my experience with the 8 inch Iliad tells me that the limit of a device is X characters per line, with pdf's... the bigger the display, the bigger X can be... it's difficult to put a number to X... if X is bigger than your device's screen can display using a zoom that renders the text still visible, the only thing you can do is convert the document, into a format that reflows on the device, or reflowing the converted format yourself into "smaller than X"-characters per line and printing it back into pdf. This destroys layout and can be a lot of work, depending on the type of pdf. So, it all depends on the type of pdf documents you want to read and if they will reflow on the device (impossible on the ILiad) and if they don't, what their characters per line average is... to be flexible buy the biggest device, which to my knowledge is the Irex Digital Reader 1000 S, which has a 10 inch display which should allow a comfortable read of 100 chars per line pdf's (MUCH longer lines on DIN A4 pdf's are unusual because reading them printed out on a DIN A4 paper would be difficult)...