[PLUG-TALK] OS Portable PDF Reader

[Paul Mullen]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 09:55:41AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I have several technical reference books here as PDF files. While I
> can read them on the workstation or the laptop I'd like to get a
> small, portable, open-source gadget that is smaller than the laptop
> and can be used to store books and articles in PDF format. I don't
> want anything with a proprietary e-book format or restrictions that
> prohibit anyone else from reading what I have. What recommendations
> have you?

A cheap Android tablet.  The system is nominally open source, but you
can install third-party ROM images, such as CyanogenMod, that are
almost entirely open source.  There's no requirement to include all of
the proprietary, closed-source bits that Google has been adding in the
past several years, nor do you need to have any Google accounts tied
to the device.

    http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Devices#type=%22tablet%22;

Android has nowhere near the open source culture that the Linux world
enjoys, but it's not hopeless.  The F-Droid project is an attempt to
provide a repository of Free and open-source apps for Android devices.

    https://f-droid.org/

Both MuPDF and APV are good PDF viewers:

    https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=mupdf&fdid=com.artifex.mupdfdemo
    https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=apv&fdid=cx.hell.android.pdfview

And FBReader for Android is a decent e-book reader:

    https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fbreader&fdid=org.geometerplus.zlibrary.ui.android

There are plenty of e-book vendors that offer DRM-free e-books, often
in an open format such as EPub.

I don't have any specific device recommendations, but I'm sure there's
at least someone else on the Internet willing to share their opinion.


-- 
Paul