[PLUG-TALK] OS Portable PDF Reader

[Paul Mullen]

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:59:33AM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> This system would be almost strictly for consuming content, not
> creating content. What's your thoughts on an android tablet vs.  a
> netbook running linux?

If it's strictly for consumption, the Android device will work just
fine, will weigh less, and take up less space.  If you expect you'll
need to do even a modest amount of input, go with the netbook.
On-screen keyboards are dreadful for anything but the occasional text
message.  You can get an external keyboard for an Android tablet, but
at that point you might as well have a real Linux system.

> I use mupdf on newer PDF files that the installed xpdf won't accept
> and need to re-read the man page to learn how to do with it what I
> know how to do with xpdf.

Both the Android and desktop Linux versions are great, but their UIs
are (unsurprisingly) substantially different.

> Read that the ePub format is better suited than is PDF for reading
> on small screens. I'm sure there are converters that run on linux so
> I can have the PDF on the larger hosts and the EPub on the smaller
> one.

eBooks are definitely preferable to PDFs for on-screen reading, mostly
because they have the ability to re-flow to fit the device's display.
Having to pan around a PDF page is a hassle.

Not sure about the existence of converters.  If there are any, I'd be
surprised if they perform well.  ePub is basically a collection of
HTML documents compressed into a single archive file; PDF is something
else entirely.


-- 
Paul