Read a PDF on one screen, write notes on the other?

Hello all,
I have purchased the entourage edge but have not opened it and I'm considering sending it back since it seems like the functionality that I want from it is not available. I'm a graduate student of mathematics and most of my work right now consists of reading articles and books, however written math requires a lot of "filling in the gaps", an author will make a claim that will require a lot of verification. My goal was to be able to open a PDF file on one of the screens and when I reached a sentence that needed to be expanded add a mark (sort of like a footnote) to the PDF and then have a journal open on the other screen where I could make the notes required to fill in the blanks. Ideally the two files would be linked together but I understand that this is probably not possible, but what is unbelievable to me is that according to entourage phone support its not even possible to have a PDF open on one screen and a journal on the other. Is this correct? even if the functionality is not available out of the box, is there some way to get it to work? Any help is much appreciated.

I need this functionality as well, but I wasn't thinking of using the Journal app for this. I was thinking of using a Doc file. I definitely understood this was possible, maybe not using the Journal though. I'm interested in seeing what responses you get.

You can't just write in the margin? That's what mathematicians have been doing for hundreds of years, and still do for the most part. (Fermat notwithstanding)

This is the way I do this:
Suppose you are reading a book on the eink screen and you find a problem or derivation in a page that you want to do. Then you can use the snapshot tool which will take a picture of that page and put it in the LCD (alternatively you can open the pdf on the LCD as well using pdf to go)
then change to journal on the eink and do your derivation. Make sure you save the journal.
then go back to the pdf on the eink side.
Then go to the library on the LCD and find the journal you just made. Press on the journal name and wait . This will bring a menu. Choose attach.
Then on the eink screen you need to select a text where you want the link to the journal to reside.
After this you will get an icon in the position of the document that you selected. When you click on it the journal will open.

Originally Posted by Jezreel

Hello all,
I have purchased the entourage edge but have not opened it and I'm considering sending it back since it seems like the functionality that I want from it is not available. I'm a graduate student of mathematics and most of my work right now consists of reading articles and books, however written math requires a lot of "filling in the gaps", an author will make a claim that will require a lot of verification. My goal was to be able to open a PDF file on one of the screens and when I reached a sentence that needed to be expanded add a mark (sort of like a footnote) to the PDF and then have a journal open on the other screen where I could make the notes required to fill in the blanks. Ideally the two files would be linked together but I understand that this is probably not possible, but what is unbelievable to me is that according to entourage phone support its not even possible to have a PDF open on one screen and a journal on the other. Is this correct? even if the functionality is not available out of the box, is there some way to get it to work? Any help is much appreciated.

Originally Posted by fgruber

This is the way I do this:
Suppose you are reading a book on the eink screen and you find a problem or derivation in a page that you want to do. Then you can use the snapshot tool which will take a picture of that page and put it in the LCD (alternatively you can open the pdf on the LCD as well using pdf to go)
then change to journal on the eink and do your derivation. Make sure you save the journal.
then go back to the pdf on the eink side.
Then go to the library on the LCD and find the journal you just made. Press on the journal name and wait . This will bring a menu. Choose attach.
Then on the eink screen you need to select a text where you want the link to the journal to reside.
After this you will get an icon in the position of the document that you selected. When you click on it the journal will open.

Do I understand correctly that when you do the snapshot, this snapshot will remain open on the lcd while the journal is open on the e-ink? if so this seems like it would work perfectly.

You can open a PDF on the LCD screen with DoctoGo or a PDF reader like Repligo, BeamReader etc, provided it is not a PDF with DRM. You can open a journal on the reader side at the same time and make your notes, however, there is no way to annotate, or mark a page in the PDF on the LCD side.
You can reverse the process and open the PDF on the reader, now use a note taking app on the LCD to make your notes. You can attach pictures (which have been added to library) to your PDF file at the point where you wanted that note to be, so if you use an app that saves in a picture format, you can attach your note to your marked PDF file. You can also attach word documents created in DocstoGo after adding the .doc file to the library.

yes of course. The only problem is that the snapshot is just an image of 1 page. If the info that you need to read while doing the derivation is in several pages then you should just open the pdf on the LCD.

Originally Posted by Jezreel

Do I understand correctly that when you do the snapshot, this snapshot will remain open on the lcd while the journal is open on the e-ink? if so this seems like it would work perfectly.

The only problem with that technique is that -- unlike the regular annotations -- the attachments will not be visible by other PDF readers, not even the DocsToGo reader on the Android side of the Edge. So if you're only going to be viewing it on the eink side of the Edge, that's a viable solution, but otherwise probably not.

I appreciate the help. I was totally confused because entourage phone support told me that it wasn't possible to have two applications running at the same time, which I thought was crazy, but your responses make it seems like you indeed can have two different applications running, one on each screen. Just as a follow up, I imagine this is the case then with any two applications? can you have any app open on the reader and then open any other up on the lcd?

Yes. If you need to have access to the derivations in a PC, for example, you would have to export the journal file and manually link it to the original document on the PC.

Originally Posted by Chubulor

The only problem with that technique is that -- unlike the regular annotations -- the attachments will not be visible by other PDF readers, not even the DocsToGo reader on the Android side of the Edge. So if you're only going to be viewing it on the eink side of the Edge, that's a viable solution, but otherwise probably not.

Originally Posted by Jezreel

... but what is unbelievable to me is that according to entourage phone support its not even possible to have a PDF open on one screen and a journal on the other.

Hi Jezreel. I have read elsewhere in these forums, if I remember right, that sometimes when you phone tech support, you get routed through call center staff members that are not knowledgeable about the eDGe. You probably connected with one of those. You may try emailing tech support instead the next time you have a question (unless you really need the answer immediately).

Regarding the two-screen utility - fgruber's solution is similar to what I do since I also read lots of academic articles. So far, this system is sufficient for what I need.

Not really. On the eink you can only have the reader or the journal. Everything else run on the LCD.

Being able to run any program on the eink would be awesome since we would be able to use the wacom digitizer with any program. The problem of course is the low refresh rate of the eink.

Originally Posted by Jezreel

I appreciate the help. I was totally confused because entourage phone support told me that it wasn't possible to have two applications running at the same time, which I thought was crazy, but your responses make it seems like you indeed can have two different applications running, one on each screen. Just as a follow up, I imagine this is the case then with any two applications? can you have any app open on the reader and then open any other up on the lcd?

Hmmm - a 2 page post for help and not a peep from Boris, anyone find that odd besides me?

robot was working on getting Android running on the eink side before the dark days came and he found worthier pursuits.

Technically each screen only has one app "running" while all others that have been opened are "suspended" in the background...maybe that's what they were talking about.

Hmmm - a 2 page post for help and not a peep from Boris, anyone find that odd besides me?

Not in the Darth Boris era it isn't.

Originally Posted by cheyennedonna

Hmmm - a 2 page post for help and not a peep from Boris, anyone find that odd besides me?

It's still 1 page on my system...

Besides, fgruber had the perfect answer. Why mess with perfection?