Auto croping, zoom options and margins

[Alfheimer]

Due to my occupation I usually have to read many documents, and I think I could actually read them in the eSlick using the landscape mode, but probably the zoom options are not fully optimized for this purpose. The problem are the margins, useless white space, so displaying them along with the "text" area means underusing some precious space of the screen.

With the tools you provide it's easy to crop the documents before uploading them to the reader, but they are quite a lot, and not everyone would be willing to mess around with their documents this way, so the ideal would be to have the reader automatically discard the white areas. My concern is that this might put too much strain on the microprocessor, but there is an easy workaround, as nowadays and thanks to the ubiquity of word, margins are kind of standard.

I've been checking not only my documents, but also other manuals like the one for foxit reader 3.0, and margins are always 3 cm per side and not less than 2 cm for the upper one. The bottom is usually 2.5 cm.

The easy solution would thus be a zoom of 125% centered in the middle of the page. In the video you provided I've seen many choices that go from 50% to 400%, but the next one from 100% is 150%, so I feel 125% missing here (actually a centered 125%).

This would definitely help a lot to make the most out of the device, but it would be even better if instead of being one more zoom option it was implemented as a check status behind "reflow", so that way it would be posible to use this setting also in landscape mode. This would be considered like zoom 100%, but in cropped mode, so the user could select other zoom levels to be applied in this "modified" page.

For landscape mode 125% also optimizes the width of the screen, but it would need 19.6 cm to display the whole page, meaning we would have to press the continue button 3 times per page if the viewer is in a "single page displaying" configuration. This wouldn't be the optimum zoom level. Considering there is an inferior status bar a zoom around 140% would do well, may be 141 or 142 (actually, is it possible to disable that bar to get more reading area? that would reduce this to 136%).

Then again, if we could read the document in "continued" mode instead of a single page each time this zoom could also be 125% for landscape, as it's the best for the width of the screen, making it just a bit smaller than the real thing.

In brief, a good alternative to the auto detection of white margins would be to have one more option behind reflow so once checked it would "zoom" the page 125%, centered in the page and discarding the first and last 2 cm of each page while navigating in "continued" mode. If hardware renders only "single" page each time possible, then for landscape this zoom would turn to something between 136 - 142% (depending on the status bar).

I hope this post is somehow helpful, and not a burden! For what I've seen so far I like your device a lot, and I already pre-ordered one unit, but PDF has always been the Achiles talon of eReaders. As you already have an agile software, further negating the inherent disadvantage of displaying A4 documents in a 6'' screen would strengthen your leadership among readers in this format.

[Erik_Bryant]

This is very helpful and the developers will look into this.

Actually the Reader has developed this "deleting useless white space". We are working on doing it on the width and length.

The software will get better and better and you'll be able to update it.

Thanks, and let us know if you have any more questions.

[Alfheimer]

While thinking about all this I got curious about the reading mode, is it possible to use "continous" mode, so once you reach the end of the page the reader shows the end of the current one and the beggining of the next , or is it only "single" mode?

Thank you a lot for your answers!

[christina]

We have a reflow page viewing mode, in this mode, the pages will be continuous.

[miketl]

I really like the overall size of the eSlick, but getting zoom right will be important to making it usable. I anticipate the best modes for actual reading will be landscape mode for single-column PDFs, and portrait mode for double-column PDFs (zoomed in to only show one column).

Would it be feasible to have an option that automatically senses and zooms in on one column of a two-column paper?

[christina]

Thanks, I will let out developement team know this. But why landscape mode for single-column PDFs, and portrait mode for double-column PDFs? Shall it be more reasonable to have lanscape for double-column, and portrait for singe column pdfs?

[happynut]

The width of the reader is 3.6in and the length is 4.8in. But the width of the TEXT part in a typical single-column pdf is at least 6in. This means we cannot show a pdf without zoom out the document. I would really like to get a wider eread than eSlick. I have pre-ordered eSlick only because there is not a wider ereader. I guess making the SCREEN slightly wider, eg 6in, will be more appealing to most people, especially for those who will read a lot with the ereader. Just wonder why all the ereaders are not designed this way. Since it is already 7.4in x 4.7in which is not a small gadget, increasing the dimension by another couple of inches doesn't hurt me at all.

Is there any technical reason why the ereader cannot be bigger?

[Erik_Bryant]

There is no technical issues why ebook readers cannot be bigger. But for eink screens, there must be many customers that prefer a larger size then the normal 6 inch. So far, there are not enough potential customers to warrant bigger screens. This is a very popular discussion.