Reading PDFs (RPMs etc)

I’ve been thinking about getting a kindle voyager, mainly to read the RPMS and other RISC OS stuff on.
Using the RISC OS one is vaguely OK, I do have the “proper” old RPMS – but they aren’t exactly light.
Also using the RISC OS viewer isn’t great when you’re writing doggy code that cause Filecore in use etc ;-)

Anyone else have suggestions?

The PRMs are in PDF on the Pi. The BASIC manual is linked from here

I was more thinking the issue is when I use PDF’s and my machine crashes etc. it’s a pain.
The kindle is quite pricey though.
Now you mention using the Pi, I’m now thinking of having dual monitors which although is more expensive (for a “proper” ratio) it’s probably a good investment.

Actually my monitor supports split screen dual inputs, I hadn’t considered that!

Another possibility is if you have a separately used laptop; put the PRMs etc on that.

However, using a Kindle isn’t a bad idea – but why the Voyager? The older models are still available, such as this one at £59.

And you can also get cheap 7" Android tablets for that sort of money as well. They may not be up to much – and you can expect a short battery life based on the one I had¹ – but they can be used for displaying PDFs etc., and are a bit more generally useful than the Kindle.

¹ I forget the make/model, but it was £60 including VAT from Farnell. The one I had before it was much better on battery life, but it was more expensive – that dated back to early in the form factor’s introduction, so it was an older version of Android, a slower processor, and so on². I should still have it somewhere, but I’m currently using a 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab 3.

² And here it is two and a half years ago, displaying a page from the PRMs:

I was worried about the display quality on the older models, but for that price it’s into wait till the price drops territory.
I was thinking of a kindle because they are light, can be read in bright light, have a good battery life and don’t have glossy screens.
Todays obsession with glossy screens is awful.
If apple say it’s a good idea, then it’s probably not.
That kindle for 59 quid is not bad at all though!

Well, ISTR someone (John Williams?) discussing on a forum, mailing list or newsgroup a few years ago about using one to display PDFs of recipes – so I should think the display is good enough (even though the newer ones are better – I think the Voyager is supposed to be 300ppi, whereas the older models are a little over half that).

I’ve been thinking of getting one, even though I have a perfectly usable tablet, for similar reasons; battery life and the e-ink display – and they’re notably lighter than the tablet!

I am torn, though, between getting a newer model, or just being a bit of a scrooge and buying an older model, on the basis that it’ll do the job.

Aside: Just noticed something I’d forgotten, that there are two prices: “with offers” it’s £59, “without offers” it’s £69; the offers in question are adverts displayed on the ‘lock’ screen – i.e. when you leave it alone for a certain amount of time, like a screen saver. I can live with those, I think – so I’ve made my decision while the tab is open in my browser: ordered.

It should arrive some time tomorrow – so if I have time I’ll have a little play and report back about how good it is for displaying things like the PRMs.

Well, ISTR someone (John Williams?) discussing on a forum, mailing list or newsgroup a few years ago about using one to display PDFs of recipes

It was he! And it’s still in use for that. I’m not sure about the PRMs, though – I’ll give it a go!

Hmm – readable, just, but you’d need good eyesight! Also, having to scroll through the pages to get to the one you want seems a bit tedious. Mine is the old Kindle with the actual keyboard on it.

You can go to a specific page number via a menu etcetera, but it takes an awful lot of key-presses! May be quicker on the touch model, but there’s also the problem of the offset between the PDF page numbers and the actual indexed page numbers which would make it even more tedious!

Works better at 150% and in landscape mode – much more readable! That gives half-a-page display, or two screens to a page.

So, if later models give easier page selection, and the files could be modified to use actual page numbers, it looks feasible. Just!

i use an iPad Mini, but I’m aware that this is probably overkill for just being able to read the PRMs. If it helps, the browser is nice, email works (more than I can say for every Android device I’ve ever owned) and VLC works well so watching animé is good, even on the smaller sized display. That said, it is an expensive bit of tech.

To be honest, if new PRMs were produced and sold for a price that was “under £50”, I would be very tempted to buy printed copies. Some of my ARM information is outdated because I find it is a lot better having a book on my lap than any number of electronic guides. I have enough computers and screens around that it isn’t a problem to develop on one machine, have a web browser on another, one PDF on the netbook, and another on the tablet.
None of that compares to the simplicity of a book.
Sorry, I’m just a luddite in that respect. ;-)

if new PRMs were produced and sold for a price that was “under £50”

A five volume set (like the originals) would be at least £150 in printed form for the sort of volumes likely to be sold. Or did you mean ‘under £500’? And that is without thinking of the resources required to actually produce them (or any profit), just the likely printing costs…

Use thinner paper? Print it like a phone book? (only smaller)

i use an iPad Mini, but I’m aware that this is probably overkill for just being able to read the PRMs.

I don’t think it’s any more or less so than any other tablet (or even a phablet) running another platform.

If it helps, the browser is nice, email works (more than I can say for every Android device I’ve ever owned)

Curious. I don’t generally use email on the tablet or phone – both Android – all that much (checking my emails when away from my computer, and only very rarely sending if I need to reply reasonably quickly and won’t be at the desk for a while) but it’s always worked without problem. In what way did it not work for you?

I have the latest ROOL PRMs on an iPad 2, its resolution of 1024×768 is just sufficient, lower might not be too good but larger like the Voyager should be OK. The only snag on the iPad is that the hyper-links don’t.

In what way did it not work for you?

Well off topic, but the guys in the server team seem to have some difficulties with some Android devices syncing to MS Mail. It may just be variations from make to make.

That’s one of the reasons¹ that the official issue phone for people who absolutely have to have e-mail access 24/7² is an iPhone

¹ Someone also bought the hype about iPhone being more secure than Android

² Apparently I’m one such person. My street cred (in my own mind) is at an all time low now I have something other than a plain old mobile phone

MS Mail, I notice you didn’t say email.
Exchange providing 24×7 mail, I’d like to see that! Or is that not 24hrs seven days a week.
24 weeks a year, 7 years a decade?
Exchange has noticed you have moved the mouse, please restart ;-)
You could always have a windows phone…lol…
I have an old school nokia, which I recharge every month ;-) They will have to prise that from my cold dead hands!

A five volume set (like the originals) would be at least £150 in printed form for the sort of volumes likely to be sold. Or did you mean ‘under £500’? And that is without thinking of the resources required to actually produce them (or any profit), just the likely printing costs…

I just had a look at printing costs via BoD. A 700 page book in a format similar to the PRMs costs around 13 EUR (the five main volumes of the PRMs were between 450 and 950 pages, 700 pages is the maximum for paperbacks and hardcovers at BoD) if you print 200 in one run. The 150 pages indexes would be less than 4 EUR. No glossy colourful cover of course for this price.

So Rick’s target price would work if the books would be sold for cost. Even printing his own personal copy would probably work out below 120 EUR.

If cost price is 5x£12 for a production run of 200 (and this seems about right) then that’s £12000 of investment. One offs would be around double this – say £120 for the set printed on demand. But that’s cost price. And no thought about the approx 1-2 man years of effort to produce them. Nor profit. I seem to recall that they were expensive when they were produced 20 years ago – about £100 for the set of four. Demand then was enough to support a print run. Now I’m not so sure.

[PRM PDFs on a Kindle]

Hmm – readable, just, but you’d need good eyesight! Also, having to scroll through the pages to get to the one you want seems a bit tedious. Mine is the old Kindle with the actual keyboard on it.

Sounds like it might not be such a good plan, then. Perhaps the more expensive models, with the higher PPI, might be a better choice for displaying the PRMs – but whether its a good approach depends how much better/more practical navigation is on them.

If I have time, I’ll still try to have a looksee on mine when it arrives – but based on what you’ve said, it sounds like my original suggestion of a cheap tablet is probably a better solution for this task.

Ereaders are very poor for pdfs. I only read pdfs on mine if I’m desperate. Invariably you need to zoom and scroll which is slow and flickery.

Retina display ipads are excellent for a4 technical docs – but they should be for the price.

I prefer using a laptop when its bulk is not a hindrance.

The Kindle’s screen measures 90 × 120mm, so a standard paperback page will display at approx. 80% of actual size, and larger pages correspondingly less (e.g. A4 at about 43%), hence the need to zoom/scroll. One solution is to create pdfs formatted to the Kindle’s screen size by setting up Ovation Pro (or your desktop publishing app of choice) to a page size of 90 × 120mm. You can work at 100% in the knowledge that if text is readable in the OvPro doc it will be on the Kindle (you need to create a bespoke ‘kindle’ page size in the PoScript3 or PDF printer driver of course). Otherwise I find the quality of the Kindle’s display is excellent.

It’s arrived, and I’ve tried it – just one volume (3) to give it a whirl.

Navigation

By far the easiest approach is to go straight to a page number – though you need to allow an offset, or just get it approximately right and leaf forwards or backwards (or, having worked out the offset from that, go to the revised page). For that to work, though, you need to already know the ‘real’ page number you want.

For example, Wimp_CreateIcon is on page 3-93, so I went to page 93. That turned out to be 3-83 – what I wanted was ten pages on (so an offset of 10 – page 103).

Another way is to search for the relevant term – but it might be mentioned on numerous pages before you get to the page you want. For example, I hit ‘Next’ 16 times to get to Wimp_CreateIcon.

The two could be combined – search for the term and click next until you see a page reference next to it, then go straight to it as above.

(Combining the two that way may not always work – if what you’re searching for doesn’t happen to be something that is indexed and therefore has a page number).

You can also use the navigation menu that the Kindle will throw up based on section headings within the PDF – which isn’t the same as the contents list in the PRMs themselves; for example, the Window Manager is a contents section in the PRMs, but in the list on the Kindle, subsections of that are listed – so getting to the SWI Calls section of that is easy but, sadly, it isn’t broken down further.

So, navigating doesn’t at first glance seem too bad.

(But bear in mind that refreshing the display is a battery drain for the device – so the quickest way of getting to the information you want is most efficient in that sense as well as any other!)

Display

This is the problem – though eyesight, like mileage, may vary.

Personally, I’m finding the PRM text on the Kindle is too small to read with my reading glasses – I find it easier to hold the Kindle closer to my face and either remove the glasses or peer over the top of them. (I can read it with the glasses, but it’s a struggle and takes too long). I can’t see a ‘zoom’ option – when tapping the font size icon, in PDF mode the best it does is offer alternative margin sizes (with the smallest margin size giving the largest text – though there’s not much in it).

Switching to landscape, as others have noted, improves things a lot – but it does then mean half a page displayed at a time.

In summary, it’s not ideal for the PRMs (I’d still recommend a tablet as a better option) but it’s just about usable.