Mantano and PDFs... and PDFs in general!

inpariswithyou · 01-12-2015, 03:27 AM

I've recently switched from a Droid-based mobile system (Galaxy Note 10.1 and S4 phone) to Apple (iPad 2 and iPhone 6 Plus). When I was on the Droids, I used Calibre Companion, which I loved, and Mantano. Sadly, there's no CC for iOS, but I did purchase the iOS-version of Mantano.

It seems, though, that Mantano has issues with certain PDFs. I thought perhaps it's a size restriction, but after a bit of investigation, that doesn't seem to be it. In particular, I created a PDF of a bunch of scanned images, and the thing WILL NOT open in Mantano. I can see the first page, but all other pages are just a white screen, no matter how long I wait.

Any ideas what may be causing this?

Or, on the flip side, any ideas for another eReader app on iOS? It needs to handle both ePubs and PDFs, and I'd like there to be some sort of collection / tag feature. Annotations and highlighting are nice but not required. Ideally there'd be some way to share books across my various Apple devices, either through Dropbox or something else, but also not required.

Thanks!

harriska2 · 01-13-2015, 01:14 PM

Goodreader. The interface for book listings is a mess, but once open, it does a nice job. I have 250mb PDF image files with the OCR text underneath so I'm able to highlight, make notes, and export my notes and annotations.

tomsem · 01-16-2015, 12:11 PM

You might try another PDF creation tool, ideally Acrobat. Mantano uses Adobe RMSDK for PDF rendering, and third party PDF tools don't always do things correctly. You might also try Adobe Reader. It would not surprise me if it had exactly the same problem (due to shared code).

For example, I've seen cases where Mac OS created PDFs that didn't render properly in Acrobat. Adobe cannot fix these problems, and they have to be very strict about things due to security issues (which have been frequent over the years), even when it makes it look like it is the Adobe software that has a problem. Security is a much higher priority for them (and their customers) than being able to open malformed PDF files.

I would second Goodreader as a PDF viewer.

DiapDealer · 01-16-2015, 01:52 PM

Not sure if this has any bearing or not, but the Android Mantano app has/had issues with images that had a side longer than 2400 pixels. They resulted in blank pages being displayed as well. As long as the height nor the width of the image was greater than 2400 pixels, the problem did not manifest.

markom · 01-17-2015, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by inpariswithyou

...
Or, on the flip side, any ideas for another eReader app on iOS? It needs to handle both ePubs and PDFs, and I'd like there to be some sort of collection / tag feature. Annotations and highlighting are nice but not required. Ideally there'd be some way to share books across my various Apple devices, either through Dropbox or something else, but also not required.

Thanks!

There is no need to have a pdf/epub/file-manager reader in one app though i.e. you can use several good (free or charged for) pdf readers, epub readers and file managers.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...18&postcount=6

e.g. if you'd like to read pdfs with embedded multimedia therein (audio, video ...) then ezPDF is the only choice right now, I guess.

FlorenceArt · 01-20-2015, 11:10 AM

I know two apps that can handle both ePubs and PDFs: iBooks and MarginNote.

iBooks is a a pretty decent reader app if you don't want to customize your experience too much. It does everything you mention, though I don't know if it can handle annotations on PDF files. Probably not.

MarginNote is a less reliable and polished app. It is still under development and has issues (some things are very slow). But it's very useful if you read books with a lot of notes. And it does allow you to annotate PDFs.

01-12-2015, 03:27 AM	#1
inpariswithyou Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2011 Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1	Mantano and PDFs... and PDFs in general! I've recently switched from a Droid-based mobile system (Galaxy Note 10.1 and S4 phone) to Apple (iPad 2 and iPhone 6 Plus). When I was on the Droids, I used Calibre Companion, which I loved, and Mantano. Sadly, there's no CC for iOS, but I did purchase the iOS-version of Mantano. It seems, though, that Mantano has issues with certain PDFs. I thought perhaps it's a size restriction, but after a bit of investigation, that doesn't seem to be it. In particular, I created a PDF of a bunch of scanned images, and the thing WILL NOT open in Mantano. I can see the first page, but all other pages are just a white screen, no matter how long I wait. Any ideas what may be causing this? Or, on the flip side, any ideas for another eReader app on iOS? It needs to handle both ePubs and PDFs, and I'd like there to be some sort of collection / tag feature. Annotations and highlighting are nice but not required. Ideally there'd be some way to share books across my various Apple devices, either through Dropbox or something else, but also not required. Thanks!

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01-13-2015, 01:14 PM	#2
harriska2 Addict Posts: 272 Karma: 8000000 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Corvallis, OR Device: Kindle PW2, iPad Pro	Goodreader. The interface for book listings is a mess, but once open, it does a nice job. I have 250mb PDF image files with the OCR text underneath so I'm able to highlight, make notes, and export my notes and annotations.

01-16-2015, 12:11 PM	#3
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,478 Karma: 26425959 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	You might try another PDF creation tool, ideally Acrobat. Mantano uses Adobe RMSDK for PDF rendering, and third party PDF tools don't always do things correctly. You might also try Adobe Reader. It would not surprise me if it had exactly the same problem (due to shared code). For example, I've seen cases where Mac OS created PDFs that didn't render properly in Acrobat. Adobe cannot fix these problems, and they have to be very strict about things due to security issues (which have been frequent over the years), even when it makes it look like it is the Adobe software that has a problem. Security is a much higher priority for them (and their customers) than being able to open malformed PDF files. I would second Goodreader as a PDF viewer.

01-16-2015, 01:52 PM	#4
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 27,552 Karma: 193191846 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	Not sure if this has any bearing or not, but the Android Mantano app has/had issues with images that had a side longer than 2400 pixels. They resulted in blank pages being displayed as well. As long as the height nor the width of the image was greater than 2400 pixels, the problem did not manifest.

01-20-2015, 11:10 AM	#6
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	I know two apps that can handle both ePubs and PDFs: iBooks and MarginNote. iBooks is a a pretty decent reader app if you don't want to customize your experience too much. It does everything you mention, though I don't know if it can handle annotations on PDF files. Probably not. MarginNote is a less reliable and polished app. It is still under development and has issues (some things are very slow). But it's very useful if you read books with a lot of notes. And it does allow you to annotate PDFs.

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