Good morning Esther,
Thanks for the detailed response.
I will give Skim a try. Adobe's reading functionality is by no means
adequate for what I need.
Thanks again,
Everett
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On 2010-02-11, at 11:32 AM, Esther wrote:
Hi,
To follow up on James' reply, there's Skim that is free and open
source, with some nice annotation options, that is available from
SourceForge:
http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/
There's also Adobe Reader, also freeware, which has a recent new
version release according to the Apple Downloads page:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/adobereader.html
Primarily of interest for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) users, there's
Travis Siegel's Softcon PDF Viewer, which modified the earlier
version of Preview to allow continuous reading under Tiger when
using VO-A instead of having to press a key at the end of each page:
http://www.softcon.com/mac/
Skim came up in a recent list discussion where Dónal originally
asked about being able to show PDF presentations that he had
prepared with LaTeX (and a style package called Beamer) using
Preview in Full Screen mode on a laptop. (This was a decision point
in whether to buy a new MacBook Pro or to use an old Windows
laptop.) The discussion had moved on to another thread on Keynote's
accessibility for preparing presentations when I commented that if
he simply used Skim instead of Preview, he could use Skim's
presentation view mode (Command-Option-P) to directly display his
large set of existing PDF presentations, along with any
presentations he produced in either PowerPoint or Keynote that were
written out as PDFs (as some meetings request, so there are no
problems when the presentation files are displayed across platforms
due to differences in available fonts between Windows and Macs).
Further, there are presentation options to automatically play
through the presentations in timed mode, or with selected transition
effects etc. For all other purposes, Skim would basically work just
like Preview, only with additional options.
Note that the reason for this suggestion was primarily for
presentation display, not PDF reading, although that's not how most
list users would use Skim. I did follow up with a post on how Skim
works, compared to Preview, which you can read in the archived post:
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg15820.html
Again, note that this post quotes a much earlier post made on
another list, that wasn't primarily designed to answer the question
about how to use Skim and its annotation features, but which
addressed the issue of whether it was possible to get better results
when using the "Find" operation in viewing PDFs (under Leopard).
As for Adobe Reader, it uses text-to-speech instead of VoiceOver to
read PDF files. I find its configuration unintuitive, so I usually
have to read my notes on how this works in order to use it. For
example, the speaking rate isn't set by your text-to-speech rate
setting -- it's entirely ignored, and has to be set separately
within Adobe Reader, along with the voice selection. In order to
save you from reading through all the myriad menus (unless the
Windows version is just like this, and you're already familiar with
the structure), I'm pointing you to my archived list post that
describes how to use Adobe Reader:
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg08026.html
I really don't use this very often -- Preview and Skim are much
nicer to use -- and I haven't tried the latest version, so there may
be some differences or new options.
OT for this thread: you asked elsewhere about full-featured, free
word processing options under Snow Leopard. I assume you don't use
LaTeX, since that was also available to you under Leopard, through
TeXShop. For most people, the steep initial learning curve won't
make this a worthwhile alternative, but if you already use this as
part of a linux or unix distribution, or have other colleagues in
computer science who regularly use LaTeX, this could be an option.
Second OT point: I posted a few days before you rejoined the list
about O'Reilly's eBook bundles and the eBook "Deal of the Day" RSS
feed they just started, where nearly every day a DRM-free eBook
bundle is offered for $9.99. I recall that you've purchased online
O'Reilly books before. The bundles are multiple DRM-free formats,
so you can read PDF in Preview and ePub on a mobile device or
through a web interface such as O'Reilly's Bookworm. This may be of
interest since the iPad and iBookStore is supposed to use the ePub
format. For more details, see O'Reilly's eBook site:
http://oreilly.com/ebooks/
For the eBook Deal of the Day feed, check out:
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/ebookdealoftheday
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
James & Nash wrote:
Hi,
Other than Preview is there a PDF viewer / reader application that
is accessible with VoiceOver?
Yes there is, it is called Skim and you can get it from SourceForge
or:
http://www.opensourcemac.org
On 11 Feb 2010, E.J. Zufelt wrote:
Good morning,
Other than Preview is there a PDF viewer / reader application that
is accessible with VoiceOver?
Thanks,
Everett
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