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by broscillator 880 days ago
I find reading PDFs on my phone and even on my kindle really uncomfortable.

On my phone I have to either zoom in or turn on landscape mode (which usually means turn it on globally, I can't do it just for the reader app).

On kindle, a full page has too small font due to so much margin, and fitting the width shows me 80% of the page, and then I have to scroll down for the last 20% and my eyes have to find where exactly I was reading.

2 comments

I'm keeping my not-sure-how-old iPad 5 around specifically because it's the device form factor to read pdfs.
That kind of highlights how non-versatile PDF is despite some comments.

However it does sound handy, I kinda want a dedicated tablet for sheet music.

You're absolutely right PDFs are super rigid, but that's kinda their point - so with the proper device, like a sheet of paper or a 10+ inch tablet screen it makes sense.

Would I prefer more content to be reflowable etc.? Yes - but with a tablet it isn't strictly necessary, just nice to have.

It's plenty versatile. Not everything needs to be phone-friendly. Phone screens weren't designed for reading PDF-size documents. Even so, options exist to reflow the text, view in landscape or pan and zoom.
There is one device which fits PDFs well, an ipad. It can be fairly awkward on laptops and deskptops as well.

> view in landscape or pan and zoom.

This is awkward, that's the issue I mentioned above, how annoying is to have to do that if you're reading for a 30-60 minute session.

Or the Kindle DX, RIP.
For Android, I use FaME IT's "Rotate" to set both per-app and global rotations:

forced-auto (overrides most lawful-evil apps that try to force an orientation for not good reason)

auto-portrait (allows only the two portrait orientations, auto-landscape (similar, good for some games & video apps)

lock-current (for chaotic-evil apps that lose state or rebuild the whole UI in response to rotation events).