Animation-Free Pdf Reader for iOS, Android, or Windows?

[MarjaE]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend an animation-free pdf reading app?

Especially an app that can render large images, can render jpeg2000 images, can reliably render transparency without gray rectangles, can hide layers, and can read epub and/or mobi in a pinch.

What I've seen so far:

Librerator works fairly well, but it's no longer maintained, and no longer recommended.

Preview, iBooks, and other Quartz-based readers have trouble with transparency in Ghostscript outputs. From what I've seen of the iOS version of iBooks, it has way too much animation and ignores accessibility settings to stop the animation.

What animation?:

I can get sick from scrolling and page-flipping animation. I always get sick from zooming animation.

I have an easier time if an app jumps from page to page, or time permitting, fades out and then fades back in.

I mostly use page down on my computer, and page flip buttons on my Kindle Dx.

But what device?:

I have not decided on a device, I think I'll need to work back from software options to hardware options.

[ilovejedd]

GoodReader for iOS doesn’t have animations if you use tap to turn pages. Just a simple fade in while rendering pages which is quite possibly pretty instant with a fast enough CPU. It does have slide animations if you flick with your finger.

I can’t recall the behavior when using keyboard/mouse (I leave the bluetooth ones at work).

[MarjaE]

Thank you, that sounds good. Does it struggle with transparencies?

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

Thank you, that sounds good. Does it struggle with transparencies?

Sorry, I don't know how to tell.

For what it's worth, the most complicated PDF I've used is the hardware maintenance manual for my Lenovo ThinkPad and GoodReader handled that fine.

[ilovejedd]

P.S. If you have PDFs that you can send along with the problematic page numbers, I'd be more than happy to test with GoodReader on the iPad and post screenshots so you can see how the pages are rendered.

[MarjaE]

Sure: https://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=699776

The 1st file is an un-processed pdf. On my Kindle, it loses most images, and gets some extra gray rectangles, including 2 on the front page.

The 2nd is pre-processed through Ghostscript. On my Mac, it gets a few extra gray rectangles, including 1 on the front page. On my Kindle, I haven't tested it in a while and don't recall how it turned out.

[ilovejedd]

Attached the screenshot of page 1 side by side view using GoodReader on the iPad 7th gen. Original on left, converted on the right.

Doesn't read EPUB or MOBI but there are plenty of other apps for that. I think MapleRead might be able to handle all those formats and pretty sure it allows disabling animations. Just not a fan of the app (still prefer Marvin for EPUB and GoodReader for PDF).

[MarjaE]

Thanks!

[taos]

Here a couple of screenshots from KOreader on a 10'' e-ink tablet (Onyx Boox Note Plus). The converted pdf looks fine, the original one is inverted (thus would look okay in nightmode). KOreader is optimized for e-ink and does not really use any animations. However, depending on the refresh mode (and probably CPU etc), rendering of a page with a lot of illustrations might not be instantaneous (on the Note Plus, e.g., I can see the page change starting from the center with the default refresh mode, but not for the several dithering refresh modes).

[MarjaE]

Thank you, that's good!