FEATURE REQUEST: Page Down Exactly One Page

[washburn]

I recently asked this question on a support board:

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Can I get Adobe Reader to page up/down by exactly one page?

I often use Adobe Reader to read image files from books that I have downloaded from EEBO (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home). In these files, the scanned book images take up the middle part of each adobe page; i.e. the top and bottom third of each Adobe page is blank, and the image scanned from the old book appears in the middle.

When reading these documents, I usually adjust the zoom so that the middle part of the Adobe page, with the image on it, fills my screen.

However then when I push "page up" or "page down" I am not taken to the middle of the next page, but I am taken up or down half a page, so that each time I hit "page up" or down, I afterward need to move the sidebar so that the full image I want to view is visible on the screen.

If I could page up/down *exactly* one page (from the middle of page 1 to the middle of page 2), I could navigate documents much more easily. It would make quite a difference when reading long documents as pdf's. Is there a command or a macro or any way to accomplish this?
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Since Adobe Reader, as it turns out, really can't do page up and down by exactly a page (a function that would make life easier for many thousands of people who read pdf's), I downloaded and installed Foxit this afternoon. It seems like a very functional alternative to Adobe for me. But what I really want is to be able to scoll down exactly one page. Would it be possible to add this functionality to Foxit, perhaps with an add-on or plugin, if not in the main release?

Thanks for any consideration or response.

[Andreasm82]

Sorry, I don't understand your real problem.

If you want to switch to the next page, just use the SPACE key on your keyboard.

[washburn]

Hmm. I tried to describe the problem as clearly as possible (which is a little difficult to so, since I'm discussing scanned book pages and adobe pages at the same time). It seems like the people at Mefi were able to understand pretty well was I was asking (here's a link to that discussion (http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/40872)).

I don't just want to go the the next page. I want to go from the middle of page 1 to the middle of page 2, etc, not from the middle of page 1 to the top of page 2 (which is what happens if I push spacebar).

Here are some images to illustrate:

Here is a page from EEBO at full page view (http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dahlquis/www/fullpageview.jpg). As you can see, the image that readers need to see in in the middle of the page.

Here is a page from EEBO zoomed into page width (http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dahlquis/www/normalview.jpg). This is the setting one would use normally when reading one of these texts.

Here is what happens when you hit spacebar after viewing a text in page-width view (http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dahlquis/www/afterspacebar.jpg). You do not "page down" to the middle of the next page, where you need to go, but rather to somewhere where you must make manual adjustments so that you can see the image properly.

I hope this explanation and these pictures show what I mean when I request a feature that would allow one to page up/down one page exactly. I want to be able to go directly from the middle of one page to the middle of the next, which I cannot presently do in Adober Reader.

This would make it much easier to read not only the millions of pdf images from EEBO, but with other pdf files (often user manuals, etc.) in which the image appears in the middle of the page.

Thanks very much for any feedback or help re this idea.

[washburn]

The screenshots I posted are from Adobe, but Foxit does almost the same things, where pushing space takes you to the top but not the middle of the next page.

[Andreasm82]

Ok with your screenshots, I understand what you want to do. But I think that's not possible at the moment.

Perhaps you can try this for better reading:

VIEW -> Page layout -> continious facing
enter "Full-screen mode"
and then use the SPACE bar.

So you will get the most of that text on your screen.

[fadsxcv]

washburn: gsview does exactly what you want but that software is highly annoying otherwise.

[washburn]

Thanks, fadsxcv! I hadn't known about that reader, and it seems to be the only one that is able to page up and down by exactly a page.

On the other hand, the characters in the pdf image files I get from eebo (which are just scans of old books) look sort of jagged in gsview.

Do you know whether there is any way to get gsview to display charcters as smoothly as Adobe or Foxit?

[jdjdjd]

Washburn, have you tried the left arrow and right arrow keys? I believe these work in both Foxit and Acrobat Reader.

-- jeff

[washburn]

Thanks, Jeff, but the right and left arrows always take you to the *top* of the next page, which I was trying to explain isn't quite what I need. If you look at my screenshots above, you can see what I mean, I think.

[jdjdjd]

oops, sorry, i didn't read your original message carefully enough.

[washburn]

Hi again! It's been a while, but I still can't find a .pdf reader that lets me page up/down by exactly one page. (except for Ghostreader, which renders text in a very choppy way, unfortunately).

Is there any chance that a future release of Foxit will include an option to set page up/down to jump by exactly a page? I'm guessing that it wouldn't be hard to do, and that this feature could be very appealing for a large niche of users.

Otherwise, might it be possible for someone to write a macro or extension that would make this possible?

Thanks.