PDF viewer zoom/view - single page mode?

cjb

Loving the v6 betas with the built in reader & note-taking. Is it possible to

1) add a "Fit to page" button, and/or allow to make that zoom level the default?
2) add a 'no scrolling' (i.e. flip through one page at a time) view setting, and/or allow to make that default?
Together, these view modes (in other PDF readers) allow me to quickly and easily use a portrait monitor and a surface tablet to read and annotate PDFs, more like reading printed pages (which seems to help me at least). I realise you can approximate it by manually zooming out and paging through with keys/buttons, but a dedicated page-by-page view mode would be ideal.

wrlssqi

The second point, I want that function too. Sometimes the single page mode is really helpful.

swaldman

Seconding (thirding, I guess) this request! Fit to window (rather than just fit to width) and single-page view would be great.

dstillman

"Automatically Resize" is basically a version of "Fit to Page". Can you explain what that does that you don't like?

For changing pages without scrolling, as noted, you can use left/right arrow keys or the Previous Page/Next Page buttons in the toolbar. Not clear to me how that's different from a "page-by-page view mode".

warwickmm

For me, "Automatical Resize" doesn't always fit to page. On smaller screens, part of the page is still obscured and scrolling is required.

See related discussions here:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/93153/issues-with-built-in-pdf-reader#latest
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/2255

cjb

But "Automatically Resize" does not fit to page at all? At least not on my setup.

cjb

Thanks for the reply dstillman. I'll elaborate, though I'm probably just repeating myself to some extent. The things that "single page mode" does on other readers (Acrobat, DrawboardPDF, etc) which I currently miss are:
1) fitting the full, as-would-be-printed page (or cropped content, or 2 pages if in a spread) positioned exactly within the window, even when window is resized etc. I'm not sure how the current 'automatically resize' command works, but it's not doing this.
2) scroll wheel and other scrolling inputs flip between those pages as if paging through a book, not scrolling lines web view-style.
3) in addition, when in page mode, DrawboardPDF and others will keep the zoom level (fit page) as a per-page default. So if you zoom in to look at detail on one page and then flip to then next, the zoom level reverts to fit page.
4) also, no other page edges as visual distractions - ie the page and nothing but the page (but this is purely aesthetic)

I do understand that the current view options and keystrokes can approximate this with a few more clicks (and manual zooming, where auto fit does its own thing), so the lack of a single page mode is not a dealbreaker or anything, especially if there are limitations with respect to PDF.js or whatever else is under the hood. But a genuine 'fit page to window' zoom should be possible, right, given there's already 'fit width'? Would be much easier to get used to if we had that at least.

Actually, it just occurred to me that the ideal/minimal change to achieve a page-based workflow would be to use the 'horizontal scrolling' view as a surrogate. But at the moment I'm not seeing a dedicated key for paging, at least when the full page height is not within the window: the up/down arrow keys and page up/down take you up/down the page instead of flip between them, and the left/right arrows shuffle-scroll the view left or right. Scroll wheel does nothing when the view is zoomed out enough to see full pages.
So perhaps (my) request here is just to add a 'fit to page' zoom, plus perhaps set scroll wheels to page-advance if whole pages are in view, and perhaps add/reassign dedicated paging (not scrolling) keystrokes?

dstillman

We can consider adding Zoom to Page Height, which is available in pdf.js.

perhaps add/reassign dedicated paging (not scrolling) keystrokes

Unless you're zoomed in past the page borders, left/right arrow keys in vertical-scroll mode do exactly that, as do up/down in horizontal-scroll mode. And the toolbar buttons work in all cases.

cjb

Understood, I was taking about in horizontal zoom mode when full pages are visible. But yes, adding 'zoom to height' would be helpful in vertical scrolling mode, so thanks for considering that at least.

dstillman

You may have missed my edit, but note that up/down work exactly the same in horizontal mode.

cjb

Yes I understand that up/down do paging in full+ width horizontal view, in symmetry with left/right in full+ height vertical. And that makes sense. But in both modes it's contingent on zoom level with no paging keystrokes available, e.g. if you've zoomed in a bit to frame out some side/bottom margin whitespace. Thinking this through, it might be nice to also have non-modal paging keystrokes that did paging regardless of the current zoom level or view mode [shift-PgDown perhaps?].

zsy_formal

Also Loving the v6, but I have a question. After I set an appropriate zoom level for PDFS, they can still move at the horizontal level(always move to the left side). This feature doesn't trouble me when I use mouse. However, it confused me while I control the touch pad to scroll the page. The horizontal shift of the PDFs really influence the reading. So I wonder if the PDFs could be fixed horizontally.

zchap16

cjb is absolutely correct in pointing out that options to fit page and provide a dual page view are required to further improve Zotero's PDF viewer as a tool for reading.

dstillman

@zchap16: There's already a dual-page option (Odd/Even Spreads) in the View menu.

zchap16

Thanks for pointing this out.

I would like to add that I really am struggling without the option to fit to page.

Regards

dstillman

We've added Zoom to Page Height in the latest Zotero beta.

ryanwwest

The current single-page mode (using j/k to switch between pages or the up/down page buttons) works pretty well for fitting the entire page. However, if you want to zoom in on a page past the empty margins, it often requires panning to the center of the page to vertically and horizontally center the text. This is because the zoom-in button / ctrl-plus zooms into the top-left corner of the screen, NOT the very center of the screen. Thus, panning is required to fully center the page after zooming.

This is a problem when using j/k to switch pages because panning is RESET after switching pages, therefore repositioning the zoom to the top-left of the PDF and possibly rendering the right and bottom of the text partially cut-off when zoomed in very far. This restricts the user from using j/k easily when zooming in past the limits of 'zoom to page width/height' as they have to manually fix the panning each time with arrow keys/mouse tool.

Is there a way to remember panning between switching pages or auto-center when zooming?

ryanwwest

(in case anyone's curious, my use case is Windows 11 Zotero + Boox Max Lumi 13.3 inch ereader tablet using the SpaceDesk second-wireless-monitor Android app and displaying the Zotero PDF reader maximized on the tablet monitor. It works really well actually, even annotation selection directly from the ereader screen is okay-ish, with this being the biggest caveat.)

octavian_datcu

Is there any way to access the command "View - Odd Spreads" via a keyboard shorcut or script or keyboard binding? I know it's possible for macos.