N00b questions

astra · 10-30-2007, 01:06 PM

I am contemplating purchasing Illiad.

The main and probably the only reason is reading PDF files related to IT.

I know that battery life is about 10h of reading.

The question is how would you estimate your experience in reading pdfs on Illiad?
Any Sony Reader users - is it comparable to a satisfactory level of reading RTF/LRF files on sony reader?

I know the screen is bigger, yet...you have to read it in landscape mode, correct? Is it enough to display A4 pdfs? How long does it take to turn a page? How big are letters? If you compare to (sorry about it) Sony Reader LRF file made in BD. What is the font size? Similar to at least 10 or it is much smaller?

Thanks a lot.
Astra.

JSWolf · 10-30-2007, 01:08 PM

pdflrf makes PDF pretty good on the Sony.

ddavtian · 10-30-2007, 01:32 PM

I've owned Sony since June and iLiad for 3 weeks. Both are great devices :-) I agree, pdflrf makes pdf files readable on Sony. But I like dropping the technical pdf books on iLiad without any conversion. Very few times I changed it to landscape. Portrait mode is good enough after zooming the page to get rid of white margins.

For me Sony is a great device to read fiction books (and, sometimes, NY Times). It's lighter and smaller, so it's easy to hold it in one hand when standing in subway. iLiad is great to get news wirelessly from my computer (hopefully soon from internet), it's good to take notes, play sudoku and chess, and of course, read A4 pdf files.

astra · 10-30-2007, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

pdflrf makes PDF pretty good on the Sony.

Well, not as good as I would like it to be.

ddavtian

Do you know if there are any pics around here that shows how PDF looks like on illiad?

tribble · 10-30-2007, 03:39 PM

PDF on the iLiad look really good. I use the fullscreen viewer to read A4 with cropped margins page by page. Font is small but very well readable in most cases. Otherwise i use the landscape mode.

I personally would say A4 PDFs on the iLiad are the only way at the moment.

Hunter42 · 10-30-2007, 03:42 PM

Just to give you my first impression:

My reading experience with the Iliad is just great! I have not used another ebook reader before. I bought the Iliad only after having another guy (Kaipora , thx again :-) showing me his v1 Iliad. And now I must say: Its exactly as I expected. I transfer PDF-Files (tryied up to 8 MB) to the device (mostly text books) via USB from my PC without any trouble. They open faster than on my PDA, and definitly fasft enough for me. The reading experience is like reading a book. I can confirm, that turning a page on a real book sometimes takes longer than on the iliad (dont know with grafics intensive files). I have read like in 10 different books know, all worked great.
I do not use landscape mode, and I did not reformat the PDF files. All I do is zooming into the PDF (which works without any problem). Sometimes I zoom only half the page and go into continuous mode, which shows me after switching the page the next part of the text.

Font size depends on the zoom of course(btw, your annotations are zoomed also).

Hope that helps !

Michael

Quote:

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

I am contemplating purchasing Illiad.

The main and probably the only reason is reading PDF files related to IT.

I know that battery life is about 10h of reading.

The question is how would you estimate your experience in reading pdfs on Illiad?
Any Sony Reader users - is it comparable to a satisfactory level of reading RTF/LRF files on sony reader?

I know the screen is bigger, yet...you have to read it in landscape mode, correct? Is it enough to display A4 pdfs? How long does it take to turn a page? How big are letters? If you compare to (sorry about it) Sony Reader LRF file made in BD. What is the font size? Similar to at least 10 or it is much smaller?

Thanks a lot.
Astra.

ig88 · 10-30-2007, 04:38 PM

1. You do not HAVE to read PDF's in landscape mode

2. The text will be displayed larger in landscape mode

3. As to the question of how big the text is in a PDF, well, it depends on how the original PDF was formatted. Any other answer is simply not accurate.

4. As to how do A4 PDFs look on the iLiad, again, it depends on how the original PDF was formatted. For example, many PDF files have huge white space borders with small fonts. These will look completely different from a PDF with a small border and large fonts. Any other answer is simply not accurate.

5. I equate page turns to roughly the same page as turning a paper book (a tinsee bit longer), when you account for a casual page turn, and allowing your eyes to focus on the next sentence and your mind to focus on what you are reading. I would never trade the conveniences of the iLiad for a real-world-no-difference page turn issue. Disclaimer: Where you will get frustrated is if you are turning several pages in a row to try to find something, or frequent changes between documents.

6. The iLiad provides many tools to try and optimize the viewing of PDF files, including, zoom area, and landscape reading, and you can also try reformatting particularly bad PDF files.

One of the main reasons I purchased the iLiad is to hold all of my manuals (I am a sys admin), and if there is one area where you will find a wide assortment of PDF formatting, it is in manuals for tech products. Odd paper sizes, odd margins, font sizes all over the place, using light blue for text (an Apple favorite), etc. All of these factors go into your PDF experience.

Here are some nooby answer to questions you did not ask:

1. By far the biggest issue I have with my iLiad is the lack of a find feature at both the OS level and the PDF reader level. Makes all of this great info I could potentially have at my fingertips for all practicality, non-existent.

2. I have not found a product better than the iLiad for reading PDF's, including my laptop. My laptop is just not a comfortable device to hold when reading for long periods, takes longer to boot, requires power cables for extended reading, is hot, and is much harder on the eyes. (but it does give me search, and has a VERY high resolution view of the material! Disclaimer: I have not tried a tablet PC, but I can't lower myself to use Windows.

daudi · 10-30-2007, 05:01 PM

Readability was my major concern before getting an iliad. For documents that are letter or A4 sized, single column (as books tend to be) I prefer landscape with continuous view. That way with the standard irex ipdf you get about 80% of the original size. If you install the fullscreen version of the ipdf then you get about 90% of the original size.

For multi-column journal articles I used to rotate to landscape view and then use the stylus to move the page around to go up and down the columns. Once I got used to it this worked well. Recently, however, wpd has created a patch that follows the text so I can now zoom in to make the text the same size as the paper version and just use the flip bar to move down the columns of text and then up to the next one. This is an awesome feature. (And people on here are in the process of combining the fullscreen and column-wise patches along with other goodies into one.)

[Edited to fix the URL]
Here's a few photos of a journal article

The first shot shows what it looks like in portrait view. This is about 56% of the paper copy. I can read this, but I wouldn't want to read for more than an hour or so at this scale. If you print this page to A5 (e.g. two pages per view) you get about the same size, but in my experience the quality of the paper printout is not as good as seen on the iliad.

The second shows landscape view. This is about 80% of the original paper copy.

The third shot is portrait again using the column-wise viewer. You can see the current block of text with the navigation box around it. This is the same size as the paper copy.

[Apologies for the lousy photography]

techReader · 10-30-2007, 07:14 PM

I would agree with most of the points made above, the fonts look fine at all but the tiniest of font sizes and you don't HAVE to look at it in landscape mode.

If you have a PDF document that was created for larger formats you can probably find a good zoom level and/or set it into landscape mode.

One thing that I miss on very large PDF docs is the direct access via the table of contents pane, that on a PC I have off to the left side of the main contents. I understand there would be an issue with screen real-estate, but it would be handy to move around on a large scale. On the iLiad, I have not found a way to view the TOC using the stock viewer - either I am just too new to the device, or it's a hidden function, or it isn't there.

Perhaps the community modified PDF viewers can display it / toggle it on and off?

astra · 10-31-2007, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ig88

Disclaimer: Where you will get frustrated is if you are turning several pages in a row to try to find something, or frequent changes between documents.

By far the biggest issue I have with my iLiad is the lack of a find feature at both the OS level and the PDF reader level. Makes all of this great info I could potentially have at my fingertips for all practicality, non-existent.

I was under the impression that iLiad has a search feature....

quek · 10-31-2007, 07:54 AM

Will this give you the final push?

You can provide a pdf file of your interest and I can take some photos for you.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15233

nekokami · 10-31-2007, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

I was under the impression that iLiad has a search feature....

The iLiad can search for a file with a specific file name from the Content Lister, its main interface. Within files, it depends on the software being used to read the files. For most non-PDF formats, I use FBReader, which has a nice search function. For PDFs, I use iPDF (either the iRex supplied one or one of the many community versions with extra features), none of which support searching within the file. This is a very frequently requested feature and I understand our amazing community of developers is working on it.

astra · 10-31-2007, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nekokami

The iLiad can search for a file with a specific file name from the Content Lister, its main interface. Within files, it depends on the software being used to read the files. For most non-PDF formats, I use FBReader, which has a nice search function. For PDFs, I use iPDF (either the iRex supplied one or one of the many community versions with extra features), none of which support searching within the file. This is a very frequently requested feature and I understand our amazing community of developers is working on it.

I see.
Thanks for the info.

astra · 10-31-2007, 10:43 AM

Another question.

If I take some notes on pdf file I am reading.
Can I transfer it later to my PC?

I just cannot imagine something like that:
on page 56 I circled one line and underlines another line on page 61.
Can I transfer something like that to my PC later? How would it look like?

daudi · 10-31-2007, 11:28 AM

You can merge the scribbles with the PDF file. The iliad comes with some companion software to do this, but I never once got it to work. There is a community merge program written in java that works really, really well. You can even tell it to only produce output that contains pages that have scribbles on. This is very handy when proofing docs, etc.

See this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9535

10-30-2007, 01:06 PM	#1
astra The Introvert Posts: 8,307 Karma: 1000077497 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: United Kingdom Device: Sony Reader PRS-650 & 505 & 500	N00b questions I am contemplating purchasing Illiad. The main and probably the only reason is reading PDF files related to IT. I know that battery life is about 10h of reading. The question is how would you estimate your experience in reading pdfs on Illiad? Any Sony Reader users - is it comparable to a satisfactory level of reading RTF/LRF files on sony reader? I know the screen is bigger, yet...you have to read it in landscape mode, correct? Is it enough to display A4 pdfs? How long does it take to turn a page? How big are letters? If you compare to (sorry about it) Sony Reader LRF file made in BD. What is the font size? Similar to at least 10 or it is much smaller? Thanks a lot. Astra.

10-30-2007, 03:39 PM	#5
tribble iLiad Maniac Posts: 1,382 Karma: 2369 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Germany Device: Bookeen Opus (i love that thing) and iPad (what an irony)	PDF on the iLiad look really good. I use the fullscreen viewer to read A4 with cropped margins page by page. Font is small but very well readable in most cases. Otherwise i use the landscape mode. I personally would say A4 PDFs on the iLiad are the only way at the moment. Attached Thumbnails

10-30-2007, 05:01 PM	#8
daudi Addict Posts: 281 Karma: 904 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Kent, UK Device: iRex iLiad, Psion 5MX, nokia n800	Readability was my major concern before getting an iliad. For documents that are letter or A4 sized, single column (as books tend to be) I prefer landscape with continuous view. That way with the standard irex ipdf you get about 80% of the original size. If you install the fullscreen version of the ipdf then you get about 90% of the original size. For multi-column journal articles I used to rotate to landscape view and then use the stylus to move the page around to go up and down the columns. Once I got used to it this worked well. Recently, however, wpd has created a patch that follows the text so I can now zoom in to make the text the same size as the paper version and just use the flip bar to move down the columns of text and then up to the next one. This is an awesome feature. (And people on here are in the process of combining the fullscreen and column-wise patches along with other goodies into one.) [Edited to fix the URL] Here's a few photos of a journal article The first shot shows what it looks like in portrait view. This is about 56% of the paper copy. I can read this, but I wouldn't want to read for more than an hour or so at this scale. If you print this page to A5 (e.g. two pages per view) you get about the same size, but in my experience the quality of the paper printout is not as good as seen on the iliad. The second shows landscape view. This is about 80% of the original paper copy. The third shot is portrait again using the column-wise viewer. You can see the current block of text with the navigation box around it. This is the same size as the paper copy. [Apologies for the lousy photography] Attached Thumbnails Last edited by daudi; 10-30-2007 at 06:08 PM.

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10-30-2007, 01:08 PM	#2
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 78,374 Karma: 142887248 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	pdflrf makes PDF pretty good on the Sony.

10-30-2007, 01:32 PM	#3
ddavtian Addict Posts: 274 Karma: 332 Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: San Francisco, USA Device: Sage, Elipsa, Oasis, Galaxy Tab 8U, S22U	I've owned Sony since June and iLiad for 3 weeks. Both are great devices :-) I agree, pdflrf makes pdf files readable on Sony. But I like dropping the technical pdf books on iLiad without any conversion. Very few times I changed it to landscape. Portrait mode is good enough after zooming the page to get rid of white margins. For me Sony is a great device to read fiction books (and, sometimes, NY Times). It's lighter and smaller, so it's easy to hold it in one hand when standing in subway. iLiad is great to get news wirelessly from my computer (hopefully soon from internet), it's good to take notes, play sudoku and chess, and of course, read A4 pdf files.

10-30-2007, 04:38 PM	#7
ig88 Gadget Guy Posts: 76 Karma: 84 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Minnesota Device: iLiad - iPhone - OSX	1. You do not HAVE to read PDF's in landscape mode 2. The text will be displayed larger in landscape mode 3. As to the question of how big the text is in a PDF, well, it depends on how the original PDF was formatted. Any other answer is simply not accurate. 4. As to how do A4 PDFs look on the iLiad, again, it depends on how the original PDF was formatted. For example, many PDF files have huge white space borders with small fonts. These will look completely different from a PDF with a small border and large fonts. Any other answer is simply not accurate. 5. I equate page turns to roughly the same page as turning a paper book (a tinsee bit longer), when you account for a casual page turn, and allowing your eyes to focus on the next sentence and your mind to focus on what you are reading. I would never trade the conveniences of the iLiad for a real-world-no-difference page turn issue. Disclaimer: Where you will get frustrated is if you are turning several pages in a row to try to find something, or frequent changes between documents. 6. The iLiad provides many tools to try and optimize the viewing of PDF files, including, zoom area, and landscape reading, and you can also try reformatting particularly bad PDF files. One of the main reasons I purchased the iLiad is to hold all of my manuals (I am a sys admin), and if there is one area where you will find a wide assortment of PDF formatting, it is in manuals for tech products. Odd paper sizes, odd margins, font sizes all over the place, using light blue for text (an Apple favorite), etc. All of these factors go into your PDF experience. Here are some nooby answer to questions you did not ask: 1. By far the biggest issue I have with my iLiad is the lack of a find feature at both the OS level and the PDF reader level. Makes all of this great info I could potentially have at my fingertips for all practicality, non-existent. 2. I have not found a product better than the iLiad for reading PDF's, including my laptop. My laptop is just not a comfortable device to hold when reading for long periods, takes longer to boot, requires power cables for extended reading, is hot, and is much harder on the eyes. (but it does give me search, and has a VERY high resolution view of the material! Disclaimer: I have not tried a tablet PC, but I can't lower myself to use Windows.

10-30-2007, 07:14 PM	#9
techReader Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2007 Device: new Iliad owner!	I would agree with most of the points made above, the fonts look fine at all but the tiniest of font sizes and you don't HAVE to look at it in landscape mode. If you have a PDF document that was created for larger formats you can probably find a good zoom level and/or set it into landscape mode. One thing that I miss on very large PDF docs is the direct access via the table of contents pane, that on a PC I have off to the left side of the main contents. I understand there would be an issue with screen real-estate, but it would be handy to move around on a large scale. On the iLiad, I have not found a way to view the TOC using the stock viewer - either I am just too new to the device, or it's a hidden function, or it isn't there. Perhaps the community modified PDF viewers can display it / toggle it on and off?

10-31-2007, 07:54 AM	#11
quek Enthusiast Posts: 29 Karma: 501 Join Date: Jan 2007 Device: Sony PRS500, Iliad	Will this give you the final push? You can provide a pdf file of your interest and I can take some photos for you. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15233

10-31-2007, 10:43 AM	#14
astra The Introvert Posts: 8,307 Karma: 1000077497 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: United Kingdom Device: Sony Reader PRS-650 & 505 & 500	Another question. If I take some notes on pdf file I am reading. Can I transfer it later to my PC? I just cannot imagine something like that: on page 56 I circled one line and underlines another line on page 61. Can I transfer something like that to my PC later? How would it look like?

10-31-2007, 11:28 AM	#15
daudi Addict Posts: 281 Karma: 904 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Kent, UK Device: iRex iLiad, Psion 5MX, nokia n800	You can merge the scribbles with the PDF file. The iliad comes with some companion software to do this, but I never once got it to work. There is a community merge program written in java that works really, really well. You can even tell it to only produce output that contains pages that have scribbles on. This is very handy when proofing docs, etc. See this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9535

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