Re: request for feature: sliding window multi-page mode

[Diab Jerius <dj head cfa harvard edu>]

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 23:37 +0400, Nickolay V. Shmyrev wrote:
> В Птн, 03/06/2005 в 10:18 -0400, Diab Jerius пишет:
> > Folks,
> > 
> > evince looks very promising. There's one feature that would, in my
> > opinion, put it head and shoulders above other readers, which is to have
> > a multi-page mode which doesn't "flip" the pages.
> > 
> > For want of a better explanation, here are some crude illustrations.
> > 
> > Here's the current dual page mode, which acts like you're flipping
> > pages in a book:
> > 
> > 	1 2
> > 	3 4
> > 	5 6
> > 
> > 
> > The problem with this, is that if something on page 4 references page 5,
> > I have to flip to the [5 6] view, and lose my spot on page 4.  I
> > typically read technical papers which refer to figures and tables on
> > neighboring pages, and this gets very annoying.
> > 
> > An alternative way of displaying dual (or more) pages is to implement a
> > horizontal window of a given number of pages, and scroll the pages
> > through that window.
> > 
> > 	[1 2] 3 4 5
> > 	1 [2 3] 4 5
> > 	1 2 [3 4] 5
> > 
> > This allows one to move forwards or backwards without losing context.
> > 
> > Being able to specify the number of pages in the window would be useful
> > as well, for those of us with the deep pockets who have very wide
> > displays.
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > Diab
> > 
> 
> Hi, your suggestion is a bit strange I think, at least I haven't seen
> such layout in other document reader. Do you have any examples of such
> application or any other objections that such layout will be more useful
> than current. If you have something, it would be very nice to fill
> request in bugzilla.gnome.org on evince.
> 
> Thanks for trying evince.

I haven't seen such a layout either, and I think that _that's_ strange.
Most document readers mimic turning pages in a book or magazine.  But
that's not always the most comfortable means of reading, especially if
you have to consult material on neighboring pages.  Let's say you are
reading a "left hand" page, and there is a passage which refers to a
complicated chart on the previous page, which is a "right hand" page.
You have to refer to the chart multiple times as you read the passage,
and that requires you to flip the page back and forth, back and forth.
That really breaks up ones concentration.  If the document is a novel or
an essay, you usually don't have this problem, but technical documents
often require short jumps of a page in either direction.

There's an actual real-world device which simulates this: a microfilm
reader. Imagine reading the document using a reader which can view more
than one page at a time. If the text references something a page away,
you can always scroll the film so that the both the referring and
referred to pages are in view.

In the physical world I sometimes duplicate this by printing a document
single sided, which means I never have to flip pages.  If I need to
refer to a previous page, it is always available directly to the left of
the page I am reading.  When I look at a new page, I remove the leftmost
page, slide over the rightmost page, and introduce the new page.  If I
clean my desk off, I can have three pages side by side, which allows
references to +/- one page.

I realize that this isn't the traditional way of doing things, but it
can be a much less intrusive means of navigating the document.  After
all, two-sided pages are required only of real paper -- there's no need
to carry over the disadvantages of that medium into the virtual world;
the less a computer gets in the way of doing ones work, the better.

I'll file a request with the bugtracker. 

Thanks,
Diab