A PDF viewer for large margins in fullscreen

I am looking for a way to pleasantly read PDF files on my widescreen (22" 1680x1050) monitor. My problem with all pdf the PDF-viewer applications I have tried is that they do not handle wide and high margins well. If I go to fullscreen mode in my viewer and zoom in so that the extra margins are cropped, I can view the pages nicely, the annoyance however is that I have to reposition the pages every time I navigate to another page. I am sure there must be a way to make a PDF viewer that can solve this problem and perhaps there is one you know of?

I am aware of something called PDF Reflow in Acrobat Reader but that only works with certain specific (tagged) files. I want a PDF viewer with a smarter zoom/next page function or an automatic margin-crop function. Is there such a thing?

jmn

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 151

Answers

Seems on one mentioned SamatraPDF viewer. It has a view option "Fit Content", which actually "removes" margins in display area, and it's going across pages, so it works for me.

solotim

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 255

Zoom->Fit Content and View->Fullscreen achieve exactly what the OP (and I) wanted. Hitting the left and right arrow keys moves between pages, keeping the page expanded to the maximum size for which the content will fit on screen. Thanks. – hajamie – 2014-06-25T18:50:34.410

PDF viewers typically support a range of zoom levels and view modes, such as fitting document to screen size. But fitting document contents to screen size is not something I've seen before.

If the document you are attempting to view has consistent margin widths, then perhaps you can try cropping all the pages beforehand using a PDF editor.

Acrobat Pro should support this, as does Infix PDF Editor.

To batch crop an entire PDF document using Infix, select 'Document > Pages > Resize...' from the menu bar. The 'Resize Pages' dialog will then appear. You'll need to specify a new page size and also uncheck 'Resize page contents'.

Your PDF viewer should hopefully be capable of automatically adjusting pages dimensions to fit screen size. With all the margins gone you'll no longer need to resize each page.

AffineMesh

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 632

Although this would probably have the desired result, it's a very inconvenient way of achieving it, and isn't exactly what the question asks. – hajamie – 2014-06-25T18:47:50.560

Have you tried Okular?

Okular is a universal document viewer based on KPDF for KDE 4. This means Okular works on multiple platforms, including but not limited to Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, *BSD, etc.

It supports many formats, and has one great (almost killer) feature: Trim Margins. It's so useful that you will quickly define own shortcut for it (I use Ctrl+`). IMO it's much better than playing with zoom levels.

To get information about installing KDE software in Windows visit KDE Windows Initiative • Download • Introduction page, where KDE Installer, KDE-Installer Screenshots and detailed Installation Instructions links are provided.

przemoc

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 2 176

So close. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182989

– hajamie – 2014-06-25T18:32:27.497

Adobe Reader X has all the features you require. The reading mode supports wide screen monitors to a very good extent.

Chethan S.

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 1 007

-1

Foxit Reader keeps page position and zoom level in fullscreen when going across pages. I haven't tested in document links for this behavior, though.

Nathaniel

Posted 2010-04-28T01:26:20.777

Reputation: 3 966

1Thanks - I tried Foxit but the page position does reset to top-right of the page when I flip page with the right/left buttons of the keyboard. – jmn – 2010-05-15T15:23:32.287

The problem is, there are many pdf e-books that have different margins for odd/even pages, to take into account the gutter space (the place where an actual book would be bound). In this case, the same zoom level will work across pages, but you'd need to manually adjust (re-center) the view horizontally for each page change. – Cristi Diaconescu – 2011-04-05T08:07:46.903