Hacker News Reader

Comment by elric | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat off topic, but I've never had much luck with digital textbooks. For some reason dead tree makes it much easier for me to actually pick up a book and start working through it. Does anyone else have this problem? :-/

View on HN

I had that too until I installed Zotero, its zotfile extension, and a PDF reader that lets you highlight selections and add notes.

Zotero then has "right click -> extract notes", and you get the stuff you highlighted in a new document, with links back into the PDF.

That has completely turned around the experience of reading PDF textbooks for me, it's such a neat feature.

Which PDF reader do you use for that?

I occasionally scribble on PDFs using my reMarkable. But it's a bit too slow (eink) for my needs.

Unrelated, but do you have the first or second gen. reMarkable? I've been lusting over the 2nd gen since it was announced, but $500 for something I'll use fairly infrequently seems hard to justify

First gen. And to be fair, I use it so infrequently that I've repeatedly considered selling it. It's pretty decent, it's sturdy, the writing experience is very pleasant. But the software is clunky. It doesn't support USB file transfer, instead it implements a webserver over USB so you can drag files to it using a browser ... it's a pain.

I use the free version of "PDF-XChange Editor", under Windows. No idea if that is the best choice, but it works fine for me.

I use Okular for that. It's open-source and present on three major platforms. I really got surprised to find out how feature-rich it is. It has a lot of basic/important features - like highlighting, underlining, strike through, inline notes, pop-up notes, freehand line drawing, inserting shapes (like arrow, rectangle, polygon) etc.

Tip: you actually don't need to install kde toolkit to be able to run Okular on Windows and macOS. Search for nightly builds - I'm on a nightly build and it's pretty solid.

Worth mentioning that Okular (alongside other KDE software, Kate and KStars) is on Microsoft Store.

Yes. There's something about ergonomy of a digital textbook. It doesn't matter whether it's on an iPad, computer, or my Kindle. They all make it difficult.

I realized though that it might be due to the fact that we do so many things on the computer. I know how many websites are just a click away. It takes a certain mindset, but typically, after 10-15 minutes, I can focus enough on the materials that even the computer is fine.

It just takes practice and focus, the latter being increasingly scarce in today's world of notifications.

Same here ... for technical textbooks that I really need to focus on, dead tree is better. Esp if the content is math-y, scribbling notes, underlining etc seem to amplify learning.I bought a printer just for printing out such content so I can read and scribble away.

I wonder if this is something people of all age-groups universally feel, or do kids today have no problem grokking hardcore technical details from ebooks.

> I bought a printer just for printing out such content so I can read and scribble away.

You might want to buy a cheap hot glue binding machine as well, or use the one at your local library or university.

That is a good suggestion, thanks, but usually I am very particular about printing specific pages: the part of me that doesn't like reading such texts on a device is typically at loggerheads with the part of me that doesn't like print paper ending up in recycle bins :-) ... its a very real struggle ...

Anyone here with experience with Remarkable? Maybe thats the answer?

remarkable v1 user here. The pdf/epub reading experience is not perfect, turning page is a bit distracting as the screen refreshes with all sort of artifact for nearly 1 second,but the can't beat the ink factor. And can annotate. I prefer it to the kindle to read because it's larger.

Thank you for the helpful review!

Yeah I don't mind reading "normal" books on my ereader, but for technical books and textbooks, I much prefer dead tree. Probably because it's a huge pain to browse and flip pages in ebooks.

You just need to find the right digital device for you. I much prefer reading on my iPad Pro 12.9 inch to dead tree form. The only disadvantage is that I cannot have 2 books open at the same time easily :-)

For me it’s mostly the commitment I feel when physically buying something that gets me started.

Most of the time I still end up reading the digital copy on my Laptop, as I personally find this more comfortable for textbooks.

I got a $100 black and white laser printer, with the ability to print double-sided, in 2011. One of the best purchases I ever made.

I did the same thing. So awesome. Also wrote a script to print 4 pages on each side. Saves a ton of paper, and makes it easier to absorb.

I used to have it, but it gets easier with time.

Yes, definitely (apart from the weight of a big one).

We still await a killer e-ink device to read them on - even the appropriately big-screen ones are still far too slow ux-wise - but even that would not quite be as good as having it to flip back and forth in your hands.

I think that's one of the important differences between textbooks and fiction or articles. The latter are normally a sequential read so a bog standard Kindle or equivalent is ideal for them; textbooks you need to be more interactive.

Tablets (ipads, etc) obviously have some of that, but have an inferior pure reading experience to e-ink/paper.

Still paper for me for textbooks as well.

I'm totally with you on this. I think it has to do with how I remember and retain information as I learn. I subconsciously use contextual, visual cues to remember where some piece of info was to refer back to ("that one figure in the middle of a page in the section with a giant blue block of text"). For some reason, I completely lose this when learning via digital textbooks. I think it may have to do with the need to zoom in to really read anything properly.

Perhaps it's an idea to tilt your monitor and put it into portrait mode.

My guess is that it is more than just visual clues on the page and facing page currently visible. I suspect it is also the 3D layout of the pages in space, and how that changes as you go though the book.

With a book, it feels different when reading material at different places in the book. Even if I'm not going through the book linearly but instead looking up things in the index and jumping to them, I get a sense of where things are in space. Later, if I'm trying to find something again I can usually go to close to the right place without bothering with the index.

I suspect that the reason for this is is related to why/how the method of loci [1] (AKA memory palace) works. We are really good at remembering spatial relationships, and the book lets us tap into that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Good point, but wouldn't an always-visible scrollbar have the same effect?

It might. I'd expect that the effect would be stronger with a physical book because more senses are involved. With the physical book you not only have the visual difference in how the book looks depending on how far into it you, you also can feel a different weight distribution.

Digital books sure don't smell as good as a brand new physical book. Don't underestimate the animal part of your brain. For anything.

But nor do the web pages people tend to read more these days than they read books.

> Does anyone else have this problem? :-/

This is not a problem! I also prefer dead trees, I just like the experience of holding and reading them. For technical books, a digital copy is useful also to find all occurrences of a word (especially on older books with incomplete indices).

It's a problem because dead tree textbooks cost hundreds of dollars.

I would say that they are well spent. Never regretted buying too many books.

For many students it's not a choice, especially outside rich countries like the US.

Sure. As much as I love physical books, library genesis is a godsend for me and for millions of students all over the world!

I have a cheap Surface that I bought at a promotion, with a pen. I can scribble/underline and it has a 3:2 screen ratio. With some discipline it is a dedicated device for a very specific kind of work (reading Math books and using LaTeX in WSL).

Yes, me too. Give me something I can hold in my hand and read with a cup of tea in a completely distraction-free environment any day.

(The UX of e-book readers may get there one day, but it's not there yet.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com