Yet another PDF viewer (muPDF based)

[melihron]

Hmmm... indeed, there seems to be only 4 buttons on touch, correct? Main menu, next/back, and then another one which does what? Have you tried pressing it while in mupdfview?

I guess, the optimal way for small screens would be to show functions as a popup menu with large buttons.

AS to "how to see the bottom half" question - another "hmmm". How do you scroll with built-in apps? Gestures? Gestures are way out of the level of involvement I agree to take :-) I was thinking of simulating double clicks with buttons - this way I can add scrolling functionality to next/back buttons. However, this will come at a price of another 0.5 sec delay.

As to the search functionality - I was surprised with how slow it is, too... muPDF allows to extract text elements easily, so this should not be a problem. I was thinking to implement it similar to desktop-based Adobe reader - as a right-hand panel with search results, but it is obviously not an option for small screen, so it should be a separate window I guess

[crt]

If it could either:
(a) Zoom in/out (not the 'R' for 'rotate' to achieve some zooming) with +/- (or some other button) to achieve stepwise zoom at many successive steps.
(b) Manually set the cropping margins (to the left and right of the page), it would be excellent. Many PDFs do have what you call background images (e.g., due to being the result of a Desktop Publishing Program or due to being scanned images of old books) and the result is obviously not as good as it could be, forcing one to use the other PDF readers. If this is to be implemented, I would also advise to have one manual cropping for the 'odd' and one for the 'even' pages of the book/document for obvious purposes.

If either of the above can be implemented, we are talking about a major rewarding experience!

[paola]

Originally Posted by melihron

A simple muPDF-based viewer for PDF/XPS/CBZ documents. Features:

- excellent performance due to muPDF library

- optional rendering of text/images/text+images. Useful for reading those bulky PDF magazines with redundant full-page background images

- accurate margins cropping

- extracts table of contents from PDF

- read pages are cached and next page is preloaded in background when moving forward/backward

- instant bookmarks

- functional UI elements are visible all the time to reduce need for screen refresh

- better text quality due to simple rendering tweak

Source codes and Pocketbook 912 Pro build can be downloaded from http://files.mail.ru/0482A56F961B4FACA7D56FAAEDF022E4

Building directions:

1. Download MuPDF 1.2

2. Add pocketbook section to Makerules file:

ifeq "$(OS)" "pocketbook"
CC = arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
LD = arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
AR = arm-none-linux-gnueabi-ar
CFLAGS += -s -fsigned-char -Wno-format-y2k -Wno-unused-parameter
CROSSCOMPILE=yes
NOX11=yes
endif

3. Debug build for emulator: make - creates mupdf/build/debug folder

4. Release build: make OS=pocketbook build=release - creates mupdf/build/release

5. build-scripts makepc.sh and makearm.sh assume that pdfview folder contains symlinks fwlib, mupdf, mupdfd (->mupdf/build/debug), mupdfr (->mupdf/build/release), sdk (->FRSCSDK)

6. Some usage directions:
- goto first/last page: "|<" and ">|" buttons
- goto page N: dial a number, then press "V" (OK that is)
- reset dialed page number - "X"
- show TOC: "C" or usual TOC button
- "M" - switch margins cropping on/off (there are cases algorithm is mislead by full-page bkg images)
- "R" (or "Zoom in" hw btn) - rotate 90 degrees clockwise and back. When rotated, navigate using "left"/"right" buttons
- "I"/"T"/"I+T" - switch between "images"/"text"/"images+text" modes. "OK" hardware button switches between "T"/"I+T" modes
- "Zoomout" hw btn - refresh screen

Book navigation is done using regular Next/Back buttons. If you press and hold the button, you can scroll several pages without multiple repainting. The number of pages scrolled is updated in the third cell on the top.

Left-hand side is devoted to instant bookmarks. The idea is that you can instantly mark a page and get back to it using stylus or "up"/"down" buttons. Used bookmarks are marked with page number, current bookmark is highlighted.
New bookmark is created by tapping on the clear bookmark. If you tap a current bookmark, it's cleared. You can clear arbitrary bookmark (not only current) by tapping "-" button and the unwanted bookmark. You can overwrite used bookmark by tapping "+" and then bookmark you want to overwrite.

muPDF appears to be am excellent tool to deal with PDF. Extremely fast, very well designed and pleasure to work with. You can define handlers for any element and customize/extract/render it. This allows for handling interactive elements, text search, etc, etc...

Many thanks and Karma to you: can't wait to try it, though I am travelling and will have to wait a week!

[melihron]

Do you mean "a" as a replacement for "b" or you actually want to zoom in specific parts and then scroll? Because this is one of the reasons I started this project in the first place-to avoid need to zoom to remove margins and enlarge fonts. So far I was able to comfortably read PDF with full-page scans, rotating them if I needed larger details. I agree, manual margins in this case may be somewhat useful, however, scanned images are usually of irregular size and orientation, so I am afraid you will need to constantly adjust margins. However, I will see what can be done

[paolog]

Originally Posted by melihron

Hmmm... indeed, there seems to be only 4 buttons on touch, correct? Main menu, next/back, and then another one which does what? Have you tried pressing it while in mupdfview?

is the main menu button
in mupdf brings back to main manu

i've mapped it to rotate when I'm in adobeviewer or djvuviewer

I guess, the optimal way for small screens would be to show functions as a popup menu with large buttons.

yes I agree, even if slows the reading

AS to "how to see the bottom half" question - another "hmmm". How do you scroll with built-in apps? Gestures? Gestures are way out of the level of involvement I agree to take :-)

either with next/back button or gestures moves from half upper to half bottom, or third or quarter of page

same behavoiur in djvu viewer

I was thinking of simulating double clicks with buttons - this way I can add scrolling functionality to next/back buttons. However, this will come at a price of another 0.5 sec delay.

I see the point. Consider that with two columns the portrait view is near to be useless in 6'' where the landscape view is still good enough, but if i can't see the rest of the page then bacame useless rotate it

As to the search functionality - I was surprised with how slow it is, too... muPDF allows to extract text elements easily, so this should not be a problem. I was thinking to implement it similar to desktop-based Adobe reader - as a right-hand panel with search results, but it is obviously not an option for small screen, so it should be a separate window I guess

any search is useful, provided that works in human ages...

And what about font in text pdf? did you plan to allow to choose it?

Une more thing. You should add a function to re-open the book at the page where you were. Otherways it starts from page 1 each time

[crt]

Hi again @melihron.
What I had in mind was the equivalent from Duokan for Kindle, or (if you prefer the Android environment) the 'PDF Viewer' (https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...GZ2aWV3ZXIzIl0.)
What I mean I prefer (b), i.e., to be able to select the margins manually and then have automatic cropping (having selectable zoom/unzoom would be even better, but may be more difficult to achieve),
or just multiple levels of zooming, by pressing a button (something that the current PDF viewers in PocketbookPro 9xx already have, although at fixed levels). Then, one would use the 4-way button at the bottom to pan around the page (this already happens and is the way to read 2-column zoomed documents).
If possible to print everything at bolder (selectable) level even better (as Duokan does), since 'faint' text would appear with more contrast, enhancing reading.

Still, you should receive credit for your efforts, despite of the final outcome.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by melihron

6. Some usage directions:

- "R" (or "Zoom in" hw btn) - rotate 90 degrees clockwise and back. When rotated, navigate using "left"/"right" buttons

This works with the 902 (without touchscreen) to landscape too by clicking the upper button of the second button set at the top of the right side.

Originally Posted by paolog

Une more thing. You should add a function to re-open the book at the page where you were. Otherways it starts from page 1 each time

Yes, this would be my greatest wish by now.

[MathieuP]

Works beautifully on the 903. Thank you so much !

[Dolansky]

nice to offer muPDF, works very good with 903

[crt]

One tiny technical point, but important I think:
I used the 2 other PDF viewers and this one for a scientific paper which had a few sentences already highlighted in yellow.
The first 2 displayed the highlighted sentences covered in white, whereas muPDF displayed the yellow sentences with grey background. 1-0 for muPDF!

[melihron]

Made changes to UI to enable both keys only/touch only access plus gestures support plus saving last page and bookmarks in the file.

Download link:

http://files.mail.ru/FC429F5FAF6140C89A39B46E67FE0CDA

Changes:

1. Top menu strip will not show up on small or touch-less devices. To access menu, press OK btn or touch center screen area.

2. Gestures supported as equivalents to right/left/up/down buttons: recognized as fast (<2s) and not too short (>50dots) strokes vert or horz aligned.

3. Top-left X in menu closes a menu, top-right X closes app. Button marked as "<" deletes last dialed digit in page number

4. Last open page and bookmarks are saved in the *.toc file in the same location as original pdf file. TOC file is a plain text file with self-explanatory structure. You can prepare TOC file yourself for pdf files where there is no TOC or if you want to override built-in TOC. Please remember that for TOC and bookmarks sections there is a number of lines next to the keyword, i.e. "TOC 14" means there are 14 lines in the TOC. Also remember that tabs (not spaces) are used as delimiters in the TOC-file.

Page offset value can be useful to adjust for cover pages, etc. For example, if actual page numbers start from page 4, you can set page offset to 4 - this will ensure 1-1 correspondence between page numbers you dial and page number displayed on pages. However, this does not work with magazines as advertisement pages seem to disturb page ordering.

5. Bookmarks bar can be toggled on/off using "B" button in the menu

6. Provided access to instant bookmarks with keys only. Now if you press up/down when none of the bookmark is active, you activate bookmarks bar and can navigate it using up/down/ok to select a bookmark

[paolog]

hi melihron

perfect! it works very better now even on the touch 6".

A couple of issue

- while in landscape the pop up remains as shown in portrait mode

- in the popup, I can't select the buttons for 0-9 numbers

thal you very much for your work

[melihron]

Is it this one?

last. when rotated I see the upper half page; next page button bring me to the next upper half page. How can I see the bottom half page while in landscape mode?

You can scroll to the bottom half and back with gestures - they replace left/right/up/down buttons on button-less devices. Gestures are not limited to page boundaries - swipe anywhere you like more or less horizontally/vertically (+-10 degrees are tolerated)

[Billi]

Many thanks! Works fine and remembers last page opened now.

[melihron]

Originally Posted by paolog

A couple of issue

- while in landscape the pop up remains as shown in portrait mode

- in the popup, I can't select the buttons for 0-9 numbers

-Yeah, I know. Will be fixed some time later, maybe, as this is not a showstopper

-You actually can, but you have to know where to look - look at the page number in the top status strip - it is updated as you click buttons. Did not want to add visual indication to clicks as it slows the process