Academics using Edge?

Originally Posted by borisb

I was going to suggest trying software that converts PDFs to EPUBs (since EPUBs adjust to the screen size easily), but apparently the conversion is never easy: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32185.

Thanks for the suggestion - it's an interesting thread.
I've found doing conversions in general to increase the labor required to get what you want to do in the first place! (For example, when you OCR a document, even if it's 99% accurate, the remaining 1% on a large document can amount to soul-destroying/time-consuming manual corrections).

Ultimately, it seems that PDF isn't an easily manipulatable format. The bluebeam PDF Revu I referred to is probably one of the most sophisticated pieces of windows based software for pdf manipulation, and yet I still found it to be hassle. But then again I'm expecting it to seemlessly mimick the workflow of marking up a paper pdf.

I doubt the Edge can improve on the feature-set/usuability of something like PDF Revu, but it needs to improve on its current usuability if academics are going to take it up for serious use regarding pdf annotation.

Edge can improve on PDF Revu in one, for me, critical area (if I read the web site properly): you're annotating on eink. So if you read PDFs for long periods of time, it's easier on the eyes.

Originally Posted by jsfiller

Edge can improve on PDF Revu in one, for me, critical area (if I read the web site properly): you're annotating on eink. So if you read PDFs for long periods of time, it's easier on the eyes.

Agreed, e-ink is the way to go for long term readability (though some folks don't seem to have a problem with LCD).

One development the Edge may want to look into is the new Pixel Qi display - a hybrid of e-ink/lcd. I don't believe it's good as e-ink but appears promising, and supposedley is going to be used on the Notion Ink Adam Tablet and the Innoversal Lattice (if they materialize. And these new devices would need to also have good software for pdf annotation).

Originally Posted by jaggy

This is useful to know, as that's how exactly I plan to use the Edge. It's really unfortunate that it's not usuable as it should be at the moment for marking up pdfs.

Though anotating academic PDFs can be tricky, as it depends how they've been formatted. I've used annotation software on a Windows pc tablet (e.g. Bluebeam PDF Revu), which has sophisticated zooming and I still found it awkward.

When marking up converted MS Word docs as pdfs, it's usually not difficult as font-size & margin spacing is fine. But often, you find on academic pdfs, the text can be natively small and there is not much margin space to hand annotate comments (and instead inserting comments in a box via the pdf software, rather like MS Word comments system, seems easier). Or you zoom in and write comments and then zoom out. But the Edge doesn't have that feature properly working yet. Even if it sorts out landscape rotation, this ends up restricting how much of the article you can see, which is a rather artifical way of reading a (dense academic) document. On a tablet pc, I found zoom in/out for writing comments hassle, and I got impatient when using it as it went against how I interact with pdf articles via quickly scribbling notes and marking up, going back and forth etc. (Of course everyone has their own method of working with texts, so my comments here may not be relevant!)

It makes me wonder if apart from simple highlighting and underlining, properly annotating academc pdfs is ever going to be really practical on e-readers (or tablets). Sure, Edge/other e-readers are great for allowing you to carry huge numbers of academic articles. But for close reading and interaction with a text and making hand-written markups, whether printed paper pdf and a fine-tiped pen ultimately leads to a simpler life?

Instead of investing in the Edge, I buy a decent light weight 10/12in e-reader (lots of new ones coming on the market) for general pdf reading, and invest in a sheet-feeder scanner/printer and actually re-scan my marked up pdfs....heretical thing to say on an Edge forum

You make some excellent points. By far, it is easier to do the ol' pen-and-paper method of annotation for academic PDFs. However, the time, weight, storage, and cost (monetary and environmental) of printing out every PDF I want to thoroughly read verges on demoralizing. For me, if the annotations would just stay with the particular area of the paper I put them on while I scroll around, zoom, or whatever, the EE would be a perfect device. Rescanning my marked up PDFs would defeat the purposes of saving time, money, and energy, even if it would alleviate the storage and weight issues.

Thanks for the insight, though! I really do appreciate everyone's comments!

Originally Posted by Dr. T

... Rescanning my marked up PDFs would defeat the purposes of saving time, money, and energy, even if it would alleviate the storage and weight issues.

Indeed, I was thinking out aloud...my disappointment of not having a ready made/hassle free solution for pdf markup. It's retrogressive to suggest a paper solution, though if it's the case that an alternative requires too much effort, it'll only be adopted by enthusiasts. My technophile tendencies grind to a halt when the technology comes in the way of being productive.

I will admit that I have pretty good eyesight so I rarely zoom in on pdfs, even the ones with tiny font. One thing to think about is that you can adjust the size of your margins in the EE settings. this actually makes the font smaller to fit the screen but you can zoom in and write in the margins and the writing stays in place when you move around. It doesn't help with all of the problems but it is another way to work around the problem until there is a software fix.

I also use my EE in the applied mathematics field, but I find it fine for annotating pdfs. But it does not surprise me that IEEE journals are not very suitable, with their 2 columns and small fonts - they should also publish in epub format - this might be feasible because epub is compressed xhtml, and my limited experience with converting latex to html has been relatively successful. I agree that a landscape half of page mode would be very useful.

For me as an academic with over 1000 papers on my EE, the release of Dingo has been fantastic, I can now access things from my library quickly, unlike before. The software/OS has greatly improved since I bought my EE a few months ago.

As well as reading and annotating journal articles, I also find the EE good for proofreading and editing. When I am writing a paper or something similar, I would export it to pdf, open it in the Edge, and read over it, and annotate it (now in a different colour). I would then export as a pdf on a USB stick, open it on my computer, and make the changes.

I contacted Tech Support about this a week or so ago. They say that they are working on making sure scaling, zoom, and annotation all work properly within the EE's software. They said this would be part of "a future patch". I was just wondering if anyone had some insight into when in the future that patch would come out. It is really critical to my (and all academics's) productivity with the eDGe.

Epub for me would not work well. Epub seems to have a problem displaying Greek (and I assume other foreign) fonts. This is critical for me. I hate to say it, but Amazon has really got the ebook formatting thing down. I wish I could read my Kindle books on the Edge.

Originally Posted by jsfiller

I wish I could read my Kindle books on the Edge.

Technically you can by installing the Kindle for Android app (http://www.4shared.com/file/iJO3dpjR...nkindle-2.html) on the LCD side...

Yeah LOL

Originally Posted by Dr. T

I contacted Tech Support about this a week or so ago. They say that they are working on making sure scaling, zoom, and annotation all work properly within the EE's software. They said this would be part of "a future patch". I was just wondering if anyone had some insight into when in the future that patch would come out. It is really critical to my (and all academics's) productivity with the eDGe.

Well, it's good to hear that this is being worked on at least!

There is a thing with rendering of certain pdf files that are converted from a doc(x) or a htm(l) file with Times New Roman fonts. These files are unreadable, since half of the sentence is displayed in some strange gray, and small, hardly visible fonts. I have a bunch of these articles, so I have to convert them to Epub. However, Epub is great, but only for books/articles written in English.

Originally Posted by emen

There is a thing with rendering of certain pdf files that are converted from a doc(x) or a htm(l) file with Times New Roman fonts. These files are unreadable, since half of the sentence is displayed in some strange gray, and small, hardly visible fonts. I have a bunch of these articles, so I have to convert them to Epub. However, Epub is great, but only for books/articles written in English.

Thanks for this info, I never could figure out why my PDF conversions were so weird. I use Tahoma 12 Bold to create a .doc that I need in PDF for the edge.

Originally Posted by cheyennedonna

Thanks for this info, I never could figure out why my PDF conversions were so weird. I use Tahoma 12 Bold to create a .doc that I need in PDF for the edge.

Arial fonts are displayed fine. My Astak reader displays these PDFs in a strange way too, so I guess there is a problem with the Adobe software.