Project for a PDF reader for NDS

[Lametta]

Still is pretty much useless but it's a beginning. Read very very small pdf.

The author says:
It is very prototypical right now; when the ROM loads it will give you a file browser. Double-tap a folder to go into it, double tap a pdf file to choose it. Double tap non-pdf files at your own peril (You'll just get an error message.) Once inside, you can use your stylus to 'move' the page. (taken from release page)

Here the full release page with download link:

release page

I hope it will be developed and supported for a better version

 

[Pizzaroo]

Very nice, if only it could read more than say, half a page, it would be somewhat useful.

 

[Narin]

The DS only has 4 Megabytes of RAM, don't expect miracles folks.

 

[playallday]

The DS only has 4 Megabytes of RAM, don't expect miracles folks.

Hopefully he'll add support for RAM packs.

 

[granville]

Maybe he can program something in to stream segments of the PDF into memory like SnemulDS does. Slow, but it could read them. Cool idea and I hope something comes of it!

 

[UltraMagnus]

The DS only has 4 Megabytes of RAM, don't expect miracles folks.

my computer only has 2gb of ram, but it can read 2.5gb PDF files. I don't think a PDF reader needs to load the entire file into RAM, just the page its on

 

[Minox]

The DS only has 4 Megabytes of RAM, don't expect miracles folks.

my computer only has 2gb of ram, but it can read 2.5gb PDF files. I don't think a PDF reader needs to load the entire file into RAM, just the page its on

Yeah, but there's a difference. A DS can't use virtual RAM at all while your computer is perfectly capable of that.

 

[albinofrenchy]

Hey guys,

I'm the guy making this project right now; and I saw this thread and couldn't help but throw out that there is a new version of the viewer up with many improvements: http://ands-pdf.blogspot.com/

You can now scroll around the image, change pages, zoom in and out, yada yada.

And yes, the 4 mb ram thing does suck. It pretty much means that the thing can't render large images out of PDF files, but luckily we can render any text. I haven't stress tested how big of PDF's it can load, but the largest one I regularly load is 415kb; and 26 pages. My hope is that it will be a functional reader for 80 percent of the documents out there eventually.

Please do reply with your thoughts on it, and how it could be better.

 

[granville]

Nice job and good luck!

May I ask: is a paging system possible? Streaming segments into the DS memory and dumping them regularly to load other parts. As I'm aware, this is the method that many emulators on DS use to play large games.

 

[albinofrenchy]

If I understand your question right, this is in fact how it works now to a large degree. Whenever it has to redraw, it rerenders only the 'torn' part of the page and in this way we greatly minimize the memory footprint. If it wasn't for being able to do this, it would be near impossible to render a single page.

I'm looking into doing this for images; but it is less clear if it is feasible to do it with them. I need to look closer at the PDF spec, but if those images are compressed in some way so I'd have to recompose the whole thing to grab just a little part, it won't work. What I'll probably end up doing with images is simply putting a size limit on images; and if they exceed that I won't render them. It will be wonky, but at least you can see the rest of your document that way.