
Ask HN: Do you read PDFs on small screens? - ldenoue
I’m always reading papers on my phone, but is it something people do a lot? I’m developing a pdf reflow tool available online at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docushow.com<p>Please let me know if it’s something you’d find useful.
======
quickthrower2
I’d find it useful yes. Although not sure I’d pay for a solution. But I
imagine businesses paying for it. A lot of industries have to use PDFs and
have people on the move. Eg property inspectors.

------
sethammons
I would, but Android Chrome doesn't have a PDF viewer for links found while
searching. You must download the PDF. I don't want to download something. I
want a desktop like experience here. All the guides I've found to open rather
than download PDFs on Android don't work.

My pain point is managing downloads maybe. I don't want misc crap on my phone.
If something could open the PDFs in some scratch disk and clean up
automagically (but prevent subsequent downloads within some period of time),
it would be helpful. Would I pay for it? Probably not. I just skip the PDF
content or copy the link and view it on a laptop/desktop. Maybe if the app to
do this was like $3 I might get it. And only maybe.

Edit: I have downloaded PDFs for later viewing on the phone when I know I want
and/or need the content.

~~~
ldenoue
But if the pdf looked readable on your Android then you might like to read
them right there as opposed to later on your laptop, right?

~~~
sethammons
Absolutely

------
spdebbarma
I read a lot of PDFs on my phone and I have enough tools to help me read so I
am not sure how many people would find another tool useful unless there is an
added advantage you can find to provide.

I would suggest you to not worry about if people want it, but just make it for
your own learning growth. All the best!

~~~
ldenoue
That’s why I am doing it: for myself first but I’m still trying to understand
who would really use this.

------
zhte415
I do, mainly on an exercise bike at the gym. I use Calibre to reformat and
boost the text size.

What's useful about boosting the text size is making it readable at arm's
distance, a flick to change page isn't a problem.

------
ArtWomb
Ahhhh! Experienced a very hard crash loading a PDF into docushow.com. Actually
had to reboot which almost never happens (Ubuntu 18.04, FF). This is a good
problem to solve. I read a lot of Arxiv papers on mobile. Experience is ok on
Android / Chrome. But HTML5 translation would be nice. Wikisource texts are a
good example. Just do all processing server side. Only send resulting plain
vanilla markup and images to mobile browser. Best of luck ;)

~~~
ldenoue
What link was causing the crash?

------
billconan
this will be very useful to me, but I found some corrupted (overlapped) text
on
[https://docushow.com/viewdoc?url=https%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fp...](https://docushow.com/viewdoc?url=https%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F1806.07366.pdf)

~~~
ldenoue
Oops that’s a problem with finding columns. I’ll see how to solve it. Thank
you!

