Some questions about mobile devices for viewing PDFs

[Bio-Hazard]

How good are mobile devices for viewing PDF files? Lately, I've been getting into the program usage of creating pdf files. None of these documents are OCR'd because the OCR'ing is simply awful and tedious. I've been looking into getting a mobile device to read PDFs, but I don't know if these things are really worth it.

 

I know the screen on a handheld device is not the size of a whole piece of paper. How do these mobile devices compensate for the viewing screen?

 

Is it worth getting a PDF mobile device? I could simply have a laptop that is cheap and lightweight.

[Buffy]

Its really a pixel/resolution issue: there's simply a practical limit on what you can show on a Blackberry/Palm/Treo-sized screen without going blind or scrolling your fingers to oblivion. You can get pdfs to display on some of these suckers, but I'd say just get a small laptop and save your eyes and money...

 

Dot-pitch,

Buffy

[alexander]

prety damn good if you take a Zaurus PDA...

[CraigD]

As nearly as I’ve been able to tell, the only PalmOS PDF viewer is Adobe’s own Adobe Reader for Palm OS.

 

It attempts to display text in a long, thin single column that can be scrolled through easily on the small screen, with thumbnails that can be tapped to view them full-screen or zoomed to full size with horizontal and vertical scroll bars.

 

I read a lot on a Palm handheld. I briefly tried reading graphically slick electronic periodicals such as Scientific American with Adobe’s reader. The reader failed so often to simply put the text in the right order that I quickly gave up on it. :hihi:

 

It seemed to do OK with some simpler PDFs, such as internal business publications.

 

I fear that, as PDF is fundamentally meant to be a typesetting format, it’s not well suited to being rendered on devices much smaller than an 8.5x11” sheet of paper. It’s unfortunate, I think, that it’s such a well accepted standard for electronic publishing.

[jkellmd]

I have a palm, and the Adobe reader is adequate, if I'm in a good mood. However, note that the palmOS is being discontinued, so the windowsOS will take over all palm devices, which is probably not a big deal, unless you have a ton of bootlegged palm software, like many I know.

 

I would probably go with a compact, high end notebook. Internal wifi, decent hard drive, full XP support, etc. Drop zoom player for videos, and your favorite audio software onto that bad boy, and you've got a serious content consumption system going. The models I've seen are pretty sweet.

 

A PSP is also a good option, but I'm not absolutely positive that they support PDF's - check it out.

[CraigD]

However, note that the palmOS is being discontinued, so the windowsOS will take over all palm devices…

First I heard of this. A quick googling of “Palm” (“ “? “OS”)? “discontinued” was unhelpful. Do you have a source for this information?

… which is probably not a big deal, unless you have a ton of bootlegged palm software, like many I know.

The complete unavailability of a PalmOS handheld of any kind would be a pretty big annoyance for me, as

• a lot of my practical, have-with-me-all-the-time computing resource is in the form of a library of HotPaws BASIC programs in memopad documents.
  
• I have a really hard time living with a handheld that can’t provide at least 7 days of normal or 24 hours of continuous use, and have field-changeable batteries. This has actually kept me away from nearly every Palm handheld made in the last few years – my last replacement was a remanufactured 160x160 B&W Handspring Visor!
  

The true “shirtpocket” computer seems to be nearing extinction – or at least surrendering its nitch to a small collection of proprietary “organizers” such as the Sharps and Rolodexes, and a huge collection of cellphones.

 

The PalmOS seems pretty firmly entrenched in the Treo cellphone, but, with its sub-sized (though nice & colorful) screen and clunky thumbboard, it’s not much good as a text-based computer. The Microsoft Origami is likely to surge into the market (then, perhaps, slink off and die), but it fits into a pocket about as well as a small laptop, and, I suspect, has about the same battery life.

 

For the small handheld computer enthusiast, the past few years have not been encouraging. :confused:

[alexander]

lol just use a Zaurus, and gpdf, you may have to wait for a while for it to compile, but you should get a nice display of a PDF... hold on, that install may already have a PDF viewer... anyways i'd go with linux on a handheld, since it beats the living crap out of windows SE (maybe CE, cant remember and dont care)... use that junk at work all the time, cant stand it, its a pretty junky OS if you ask me...

[jkellmd]

Do you have a source for this information? ;)

 

If I remember correctly, I heard something about it on the diggnation podcast a month ago or so, although I'm not sure which digg.com story it was in reference to. Hazy memory, sorry.

[CraigD]

If I remember correctly, I heard something about it on the diggnation podcast a month ago or so, although I'm not sure which digg.com story it was in reference to. Hazy memory, sorry.

Digg.com has a link to a nice flash presentation of ”Palm’s first decade”, which includes the controversial, Windows Mobile-based Treo700w.

 

Most diggs buzz seems to be about rumors that now Japanese-owned (Access Co. Ltd.) PalmSource intends to rewrite the Palm API (which is really the heart of the Palm OS, in my experience) in Linux. This seems a sensible move, as it would allow Linux to bind the handheld hardware, and the Palm API to run apps, though its not good news in terms of keeping the total CPU cycles (and hence energy consumption) low, something early Palm OS (3 and under) did very well. Done right, however, it could allow both a high-function, high-power Linux and a low-function, low-power direct-to-hardware version of the Palm OS to exist and share apps.

 

It’s something I’d like to watch closely, as I’ve my own, off-beat ambitions about a handheld API based on a variation of the long-abandoned MWAPI scheme. I promoted MWAPI in committee in it’s pre-1995 conception days, so am admittedly biased, but think it could “get me where I want to go” in handheld computing.

 

“Where I want to go” is a computing platform where all of the apps and much of the API is interpreted code visible and editable to the user. This is in keeping with my personal belief that “compilers are evil tools of oppression”, which should have its own thread, not this one.