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by gnull 1693 days ago
Yeah, the currently active paragraph seems to be always at the same position on the screen (seems to be somewhere in first 1/3 of the screen height). If I've finished reading paragraph i and the next one is i+1, i+1 will appear where i was and i will go up.

I'd want i to stay in place and i+1 appear under it (and become active). This way there is less movement on the screen and I don't have to scan the screen up identifying where the new active paragraph starts, just keep reading the new paragraph where the old one ended.

I imagine it like the difference between scrolling a text with mouse when reading it, or with page-down button. I prefer the latter, this way your eyes move through screen as they would do with paper instead of picture moving and your eyes staying on the same place, and you can also utilize location memory (“I remember that author said X at the bottom right of the page while the top of the page was saying Y”). The other thing is, it provides another way to split the text into “pages” and give you a natural feeling of how much you've read (location memory again, “author is introducing X, I remember that they've set up the scene for it two pages back”).

The current mouse-wheel-scrolling-like approach seems to be more like audiobook that gives you book contents in a continuous stream, while the page-down approach is more like paper split into pages. I think both must have some benefits and looks like your tool (with some change) can accommodate both types of readers.

1 comments

thank you! for your time and such a detailed response, it sounds very reasonable