Irex Iliad: workflow for research

[Napoleon]

Hello community!

I'm seriously considering buying an Irex Iliad 2nd edition for my work. I'm a researcher on fluid dynamics and, as a part of my job, I read and analyse a large number of journal articles (mostly in pdf format) in a daily basis.

Considering what i've read in this forum in the last couple of months while searching for the appropriate device, the Iliad seems to be the right choice in terms of portability and battery life.

What I would like to have before actually buying the Iliad is an approximative workflow of how would I be using it. Here's a scheme i've managed to make so far from things i've learnt from the forum:
1) Search for papers using my desktop pc or laptop
2) save papers in my pc to a specific folder, lets say 'recent papers'
3) have pdfcrop automagically crop pdf borders to reduce the amount of zooming operations to be performed on the illiad
3) synchronize that folder to the iliad via wifi for later reading
4) read and annotate pdfs using the illiad
5) going back to the pc and merging papers + notes

I think most of these steps are easy to accomplish, and I'm an experienced linux user so i consider there will be no problem is some scripting is involved.
Nevertheless, I would like to know if anyone has tested this kind of workflow, and if it actually possible. I would also like to hear what is your workflow like, which steps it consists on and what do you do to accomplish it.

Another thing that bothers me is the amount of files involved and the limited (dare i say, impractical) 6 files per page view that offers the contentLister (as far as i know). Is there a solution to this? I manage a database of at least 300 papers (plus standard reference books), so it will be pointless to navigate them this way.

I'll wait anxiously for your answers to these questions, and don't forget:

"La victoire appartient à ceux qui persévérent"
[ Victory belongs to those who persevere. ]


Napoleon

[ericshliao]

I don't like to to transfer files to iLiad from PC via wifi, because it's rather slow, especially for large file. I hate to wait, so I always use card reader to copy files.

As to that 6 file per page feature, there is no way to change it for now.

[Napoleon]

Ok, I see ericshliao. Thanks for that info.
BTW, if we're limited to 6 files-per-page-view, how do you do to navigate through files?
Is there a search files by name feature?

Thanks again,

[Shaggy]

Yeah, the 6 files per page is a limitation that a lot of users complain about. iRex has released the code for the content lister recently, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are already open source developers working on new versions to fix that (in fact, I know there are).

In the mean time, keep in mind that you can also create a directory structure. You don't have to have all 300 books on the same level and have to navigate through 50 screens to find them. Usually what I'll do when I move ebooks to my iLiad is create a directory for the series, and then move all the books for that series together into their own directory. That way when I start out the content lister is showing me each series as an item, and then I can click on it and get to the individual books. That way I'm not navigating through everything at once. I believe you can do multiple levels of directories that way. In your case, maybe break it down to something like a directory for each Journal, and then inside that directories based on issue or date, etc.

Regarding WiFi being slow, there is a known problem with transfering files via WiFi directly to the CF card on an iLiad. If you're using an MMC/SD card or the internal memory, then it shouldn't be as big of a problem.

[Napoleon]

Thanks for your reply Shaggy.
I've also seen they (the developers) are making efforts to overcome this problem. I've also considered creating a directory structure, but this is kind of limiting, because a particular publication can always be considered to be part of (at least) two classes. For example, a paper on (let's say) "a mathematical solution to the KdV equation via special functions" can be thought of belonging to the 'mathematical methods' category, but also to 'fluid dynamics'. In fact, that's why they invented tags!

Please, see my recent thread on an idea of solving this via an html index file:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33486

Thanks again for your help & bear in mind:

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."
Napoleon Bonaparte

[frimbob]

I would recommend using a card reader, just waiting for the illiad to turn on and establish a connection is a pain.

Breaking them down into directories is how I list all my Texts, you can assign custom comments and images see here for a how to https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d+manifest.xml

and if they happen to belong in two directories, maybe just include them in both, if you buy an 8gb flash card your not going to run out of space any time soon.

[Napoleon]

Thanks for your advice, frimbob.

Originally Posted by frimbob

I would recommend using a card reader, just waiting for the illiad to turn on and establish a connection is a pain.

What do you mean when you say that establishing a connection is a pain?
In which way it is a pain? Is it difficult? Is it time-consuming? Is it not a reliable process? I would be very grateful if you could shed some more light on this.

Thanks in advance,

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by Napoleon

What do you mean when you say that establishing a connection is a pain?
In which way it is a pain? Is it difficult? Is it time-consuming? Is it not a reliable process? I would be very grateful if you could shed some more light on this.

Thanks in advance,

There is a bug with the iLiad when transfering files over WiFi to a CF card, it is very, very slow.

For better searching, you could try this and this (I haven't yet).