Rockbox PDF Manual

[BruceHP]

I am visually impaired and use a screen reader to read documents to me.  For PDFs I need them to be in "Text mode" for the reader to work.  For some reason the Rockbox PDF won't display in text mode, any ideas?  Thanks!

[Llorean]

What exactly do you mean by "Text mode"? Be aware, not everyone is viewing PDFs with the same tool or even OS as you, so more information about how to reproduce this problem is needed before anyone can even begin to investigate your specific case.

[BruceHP]

I'm using Foxit Reader on an XP machine.  Text mode shows the document as Text and not a graphic image of text, making screen reading possible.

Thanks!

[Llorean]

Have you tried using it in another PDF reader (perhaps Adobe's)? Our PDF is generated by LaTeX so it's likely that either it's a bug in LaTeX or it's a bug in your reader that is exposed by something about our document.

[BruceHP]

Unfortunately,  I don't have Adobe.

[yapper]

http://get.adobe.com/reader/

[GodEater]

I'm using Foxit Reader on an XP machine.  Text mode shows the document as Text and not a graphic image of text, making screen reading possible.

Thanks!

Okay I've downloaded and installed Foxit so I can see what you mean by this - but I'm stumped as to how to put it into this so called "Text mode". Can you tell me where in the myriad of options Foxit has I can find it ?

[perrikwp]

Hello all,

I can confirm that the "text viewer" mode of Foxit does not work with the Rockbox pdf manual.

Okay I've downloaded and installed Foxit so I can see what you mean by this - but I'm stumped as to how to put it into this so called "Text mode". Can you tell me where in the myriad of options Foxit has I can find it ?

You can put Foxit into text viewer mode by selecting the option from the menu Tools -> Text Viewer, using the Alt-9 keyboard shortcut, or even the button on the toolbar which is between the "Hand" button and the "Mouse Pointer" button.

Hope this helps!

[GodEater]

Right ok, so can someone show me a PDF file that it *does* work with then ?

[cool_walking_]

Just took these off Google.  They all work in "Text Viewer" mode.  All about 100KB.

http://www.cluesheets.com/SO8DrawCS.pdf
http://www.rbs2.com/edumal2.pdf
http://www.agwa.org/spring06.pdf

[BruceHP]

Thanks everyone for your concern with my problem.  I sent a copy of the Rockbox PDF to the FoxIt people, hopefully they can also help.

[bluebrother]

Why do you need the PDF at all? We provide a HTML version of the manual (which is, except for some few visual details) completely identical to the PDF version. Of course it doesn't preserve the layout of the PDF, but that isn't needed for reading anyway.

I have no idea what this "text mode" you're talking about is. There is this so-called "tagged PDF" which adds additional information to be extracted by tools like screen readers. Unfortunately LaTeX can't produce tagged PDF files (maybe the situation changed, the last time I dealt with that was 2 years ago). One of the reasons for this is simply that LaTeX does typesetting, and typesetting isn't text.

Maybe you should explain why you want to use the PDF version of the manual. The HTML output was created exactly to overcome the limitations of the PDF format and to be more easily viewable without using additional tools (i.e. viewable in any browser). It took quite a bit of time (and got me quite some headache) to get the HTML output working properly.