koroviov | # 1 | 2010-01-04, 19:39 | Report

by that i mean one that:

-loads files > 50 MB painlessly
-supports double tap for zooming
-supports single continuous page display
-supports viewing the index (+ thumbnails, but not a necessity)
-opens documents on the last viewed page

davost | # 2 | 2010-01-04, 21:22 | Report

I would very much like to have this as well. I think evince worked well enough on the n810 to be very usable. And it supports a ton of formats like djvu. I dont know if anyone is working on porting that.

Debernardis started a thread about this a few weeks back:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38606

That thread went largely unnoticed for some reason. I think the community is i dire need of a good pdf-reader. I mean ebook-reading is one of the strongest use cases imho.

Anyone working on evince for Maemo5? I want this so much that I am willing to put some effort in myself if it is needed.

Pejman | # 3 | 2010-01-04, 21:23 | Report

"Search" function would be also helpful!!!

sxc | # 4 | 2010-01-05, 07:36 | Report

Couldn't agree more with all that's being said here. Coming from the iPhone platfform which has a magnificent (and free) eBook reader called Stanza and encountering the N900 PDF reader makes for a painful experience.

Might be worthwhile voting for the related "bugs" below which already have a fair few votes - more can only be better...

761 Please add support for 'fit visible' option to PDF reader
2150 PDF Reader doesn't support internal document hyperlinks
5921 Provide portrait mode for the PDF reader application
5923 Add PDF index support

tirtawn | # 5 | 2010-01-05, 07:41 | Report

For now, I am using fbreader available in the maemo extra testing.
Its definitely work and its "nice".

The finger tap screen also work (with some configuration change from the properties).

But I agree, the current PDF is not really good.

sxc | # 6 | 2010-01-05, 10:14 | Report

Probably worth mentioning that according to its documentation, fbreader doesn't support PDF files (or am I missing something?)

Of course, you could always try yo convert your PDFs to epub (rightfully one of fbreader's primary format) but this is all starting to become quite cumbersome. More reasons to try to get Nokia to fix its current reader's shortcomings IHMO...

Flandry | # 7 | 2010-01-10, 02:36 | Report

I need a PDF canvas for a project i'm working on, and osso-pdf-viewer (the built-in one) wasn't a good starting point, so i've been hacking around with ePDFView, a lightweight viewer based on GTK but without the GNU bits that e.g. Evince has. In other words, small and simple enough to be a good starting point.

Anyway, it's currently got some UI and other shortcomings, but it's available for those that have to have features osso-pdf-view doesn't support (like rotate, fit-to-width, search, etc.). I have remapped some of the hotkeys (shift left/right to rotate, Ctrl up/down to change page, Ctrl-Enter for fullscreen) and welcome input on how to best set up the controls. I'm thinking the volume rocker should be for scrolling/page turning, but am also considering using it for zoom.

So basically, i'm throwing the raw, hacked-up thing into extras-devel in case it might be useful to someone whilst i twist it to my own nefarious purposes, and with the possibility of getting useful comments on the best way to set up the controls.

Remember that software in Extras-devel is untested and can cause any number of problems that you may not be able to fix without reflashing your device. If you do decide to enable the -devel repo, make sure you disable it again as soon as you are done installing.

Known issues

• Not hildonized
• popping in/out of fullscreen stops automatically fitting-to-width (this one is a priority to me to fix, at least in the way i need it to work)
• only accelerator keys work (something being lost between windows of the app that i spent much time barking up the wrong tree on today :/)
• lots of unmapped keys
• seems to be slower than osso-pdf-viewer

Non-issues

• It is optified, but it may pull in a medium-sized library (libpopper*).

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Last edited by Flandry; 2010-01-10 at 02:44.

koroviov | # 8 | 2010-01-10, 12:01 | Report

@flandry:

great to hear something is happening. can't test now as my phone is in for repair, but will test it as soon as i can.

in the mean time: does your project support the features i mentioned in my first post?

Flandry | # 9 | 2010-01-10, 12:56 | Report

Actually it probably doesn't. I don't have any PDFs over 10 MB to test the size limit and the rest aren't features i need. Continuous paging and support for huge files is a much more sophisticated combination than what this supports, doing it "effortlessly" on the N900 would probably be challenging.

I think it will show an index, but i haven't tested it.

No, my requirements are much more basic: rotation; fit to width, and lightweight. Turns out search and a few other goodies come with it. Have you considered using some free tools to automatically chop up, merge &tc your files to make them suitable for mobile device use? I suspect you'll have a long wait for a program that meets all those criteria...

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Last edited by Flandry; 2010-01-10 at 12:59.

dread123 | # 10 | 2010-01-10, 13:00 | Report

does it support chapters/bookmarks?

thats the main feature missing for me

will give yours a try thanks