
Ask HN: Is reading PDFs on mobile a pain? - ldenoue
I’m trying to understand how big a problem it is to read PDFs on mobile. 
Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf.
But what do you think?
======
pwg
> I’m trying to understand how big a problem it is to read PDFs on mobile.

The "simulated sheet of paper" aspect of PDF's make them a pain on anything
with a screen size smaller than needed to show the whole "pdf page" at a
readable size to the user at once. On anything smaller one has to zoom and pan
around.

However, you can see for yourself. Assuming you have a smartphone/tablet, just
install a PDF reader if it does not already have one [1], then start viewing
various PDF's.

> Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version
> instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf.

I agree.

[1] here is one you can install if your device does not already have a pdf
reader:
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.artifex.mupdf.viewer.app...](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.artifex.mupdf.viewer.app/)

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LarryMade2
Depends on how long the Document is...

If its smallish like a sign where there is more art than text I'd image it
(jpg, 150dpi) Small, prints OK and is quickly viewable. Maybe include the text
copy along for indexing/ADA purposes.

A couple pages (brochure content), then I'd try to do a mobile web version and
also offer the PDF if the style is something that adds to the content.

Long format (booklet, paper, guide, long story, magazine), where the audience
is going to be reading it for a while PDF makes sense: you can style it, able
to read off-line easier, and its no big to the user that they are breaking
from the web to read. Been enjoying old magazines and comic books in the
internet archive, can either use their on-line reader or download PDF. Either
are OK, if I expect to travel, will DL some PDfs.

~~~
ldenoue
PDFs of research papers are what I often read on mobile, and I find it hard.
Check out the app I published if you have an iOS device: it’ll reformat your
pdf so the content reflows to fit your screen.
[https://www.appblit.com/pdfreflow](https://www.appblit.com/pdfreflow)

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JohnFen
Personally, reading PDFs on mobile is not really much more painful than
reading PDFs on a desktop machine. PDFs are just painful, period.

~~~
ldenoue
thank you. I never considered it would be useful on desktops too. I guess we
now have expectations about how web pages behave in a browser, and what we can
do with them; but when the browser loads a PDF, all that is gone, or not
working the same way.

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muzani
I avoid PDFs whenever possible, mobile or desktop. They're designed for
_printing_. There are better formats for reading, for comics, and so on. The
worst are anything done in dual column pages... it sometimes takes me days to
fully read a paper because of the strain, and I've never finished reading any
game books on PDF.

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mendeza
Reading PDFs as html would Be nice, but as a ML engineer having high quality
conversion would be very useful for large scale analysis and information
extraction of pdf documents!

~~~
udayrddy
same here. I mostly deal with text analytics, while the text PDFs do not
create much issues, unless a crazy font is used, and the 2 column pages are a
nightmare.

In case you are looking for an API to extract structure rich content like
tables from PDFs or images, look into this
[https://extracttable.com](https://extracttable.com) (p.s. I contributed to
it)

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Jugurtha
> _Personally I’d prefer viewing a responsive and accessible HTML version
> instead of having to pan and zoom the original pdf._

It's called epub. I read ebooks and documentation in this format, which is
basically packaged html.

~~~
ldenoue
Yes but converting a pdf to ePub is not easy (to make the ePub reflow the text
at least). What I’m working on could output as ePub.

~~~
Jugurtha
I wasn't talking about a converted PDF to ePub. More like content originally
designed as ePub (like Sphinx documentation you can download as PDF or ePub).

I was about to check out [https://readerview.app](https://readerview.app) as
per your bio, but it doesn't seem to load. Can you reply to this when it's up
again? Thanks.

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runjake
PDFs are great. I can download it to my device, scroll, pinch, and zoom, and I
don't have to wait for new pages to load and hope my network connection is
good.

My use case for PDFs on phone are usually technical manuals.

------
kleer001
I have a huge XL phone so it's not a problem. Also I don't have to do it
often. A small phone and frequent use would be a huge pain though.

~~~
ldenoue
And on desktop you’re fine dealing with PDFs in the browser? Just posted a
video demo of what a pdf could look like once reflowed as HTML (look at the
HTML version after second 10)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSRFcLovatI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSRFcLovatI)

