KOReader / k2pdfopt integration

[Thelele]

I feel that KOReader's integration with k2pdfopt could be improved. When one uses the k2pdfopt app (which is wonderful) by itself, it outputs a PDF where the text is exactly split between pages. But with KOReader's reflow function, the text is never paginated in the same way, which means one often has a line of words that is cut off at the bottom of the screen and then repeated on the next screen, which greatly slows down reading comprehension since one constantly has to re-read the split lines. Would it be possible to add this sort of pagination to KOReader?

[Frenzie]

Not easily unfortunately. There's some discussion about it here.

[Thelele]

Originally Posted by Frenzie

Not easily unfortunately. There's some discussion about it here.

This shows that part of the problem is that devs don't know what k2pdfopt is supposed to do; scrolling up and down should not be necessary on an ereader and completely breaks the flow of reading immersion. The whole paradigm of eink is based around pagination.

[Frenzie]

Regarding your first sentence, describing what is there is not a claim about what should be.

Note that scroll mode is a misnomer. It should probably be renamed to something like continuous. I use "scroll mode" as the default, but I seldom or never scroll. Conversely, you can still scroll in paged mode if a page is longer than the screen. As far as I'm concerned if you're scrolling (panning) you're doing it wrong, but to anyone reading: you do you.

The simple fact is that it would take several minutes to preprocess a PDF or DjVu, while doing it only one page at a time is speedy but also has some very real disadvantages. For one page at a time your choice is either a longer page or a page that'd look like the end of a chapter every few pages. I think a longer page is the lesser evil.

[Thelele]

Originally Posted by Frenzie

The simple fact is that it would take several minutes to preprocess a PDF or DjVu, while doing it only one page at a time is speedy but also has some very real disadvantages. For one page at a time your choice is either a longer page or a page that'd look like the end of a chapter every few pages. I think a longer page is the lesser evil.

Personally, I think the latter is better. What happens if a line is chopped in half at the bottom of a page? You will quite automatically read the line on one page and then read it again on the next page, which ruins immersion. Here the shorter page option with a bit of white space seems less obtrusive. (Plus, ereaders are getting faster all the time, so shouldn't the # of pages itself be adjustable?)

I might recommend a compromise: keep the current function for scroll mode, and use the shorter paginated view for the single-page view, which, as you say, right now you do not see the utility of.

[Frenzie]

I'll leave playing with reflow to someone who's more invested in the feature. I'm just saying that given the existing technical constraints, I consider the implementation as it was written the sanest option.

[oavaldezi]

I'm aware this is an old post, but I've recently been trying to read books in PDf format, and I have to say that KOReader could do better. Admittedly, and to quote the author of k2pdfopt, "PDF is just about the worst source format there is for displaying on e-readers", but KOReader's implementation of it in continous view mode of reflowed PDFs duplicates the last line on a screen as the next screen's first line. This seriously interrupts reading and cognition. The author of k2pdfopt also recommends the Book Reader Android app. I tried it, and it neatly separates pages in reflowed PDfs, without repeating lines. It's an open source project, so maybe the devs could take a look?

[NiLuJe]

(xref: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/4382)