Argh.

[ariena]

Can't stand the two-column layout commonly used in scientific papers. Is there a single person on Earth who finds it convenient to read (a habit doesn't count)?

Am I behind technological progress, and there is a tool to convert a PDF two-column article into something I can read? Please-tell-please-tell-please-tell. Thank you.

Comments

[icedrake]

I'm OK with it on paper, though still not a fan. Electronic form, on the other hand? I despise it.

No clue if there's any such tool -- OCRing would break down horribly as soon as you hit the first illustration :/

[ariena]

That's true. Some papers are also scanned. Would be easier to retype an article before reading it than try to automatically convert it into something pleasant.

[icedrake]

(in the "you're the coder, you tell me" category)
How hard would it be to write an app that parses PDF files, splits the page vertically down the middle based on whitespace, zooms in on the resulting two parts and reformats them as individual pages? Somewhat complicating the process, the top and bottom of each unprocessed page would have to be trimmed off and re-attached to one of the two resulting pages.

[ariena]

Hm. I actually don't know. My exams are over soon. Then I'll see if I can write an application that does that.

[allambee]

i prefer to read text in columns rather than whole-page lines both on paper and screen

[ariena]

I knew people like you exist! :-) I envy you because I get unreasonably frustrated every time I have to scan articles with two-column layout. Do you have a secret?

[allambee]

A secret? No, I didn't adapt to it, it is just naturally easier for me to read that way, and because of it i can bear with scrolling up and down the page.

[ainusha]

You can just copy and paste the whole thing into MS word, unless there is some complicated formatting and layering involved.

Theoretically, two-column layouts are easier to read - that is, if they have proper line length, don't use hyphenation and are not justified :o)

[ariena]

Hm. I think I tried MS word once and it didn't work (yes, I hate two-column layouts that much).

I'm not sure if they are easier to read but definitely not in electronic format (for me). Now that I think about it I would be fine if half of the article was spread out in first columns of all pages, and the other half was spread out in second columns of all pages. This requires just one (gigantic) "jump". I just enjoy the flow of reading. Jumping is distracting.

[mountolivet]

Interesting observation, I just got used to it I guess... They probably have some obscure reason for using it, such as page length limitations for printed proceedings.

Have you tried zooming in, so that at least the column is at a readable font size?
However I don't know of any escape when printing it :(

[ariena]

I'm mostly annoyed about having to scroll up and down all the time. I can't zoom out to avoid doing that (font is too small to read). :-/