Task Proposal: eBook Reader

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Thursday 19 January 2012 18:00:17 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> User Story
> =======
> Jimmi has a number of eBooks in PDF and ePub format on his Plasma Active
> device. He opens the eBook reader which presents a list of books on the
> system. Selecting on the books, he can then start reading, starting from
> where he last left off. An elegant touch UI for navigating between pages,
> jumping chapters, jumping back to the collection, etc. is offered.

Do we want to support the "academic reading" usecase? If so, we'll need
basic text highlighting and annotation functionality.
If not, it's rather nice-to-have.

> Why this is important
> =============
> Reading on a tablet is a key activity. Aside from web content, eBooks are
> very popular. It is the primary use of many tablets on the market right
> now, in fact. Okular is a good reader, but the UI is really clumsy for a
> touch device.
A PDF reader with annotation functionality is essential for anyone actually
working with PDFs instead of just reading them (e.g. for academic purposes).
Okular offers these, but e.g. they cannot be removed without a right mouse 
button.


> Proposed implementation
> ================
> A QML UI for Okular which takes the core display and reader of Okular and
> adds a Nepomuk backed collection browser along with a touch-appropriate UI
> for reading: swipe to change pages and a menu button to bring up additional
> options such as "return to collection" or "go to table of contents".

I'd also suggest either always displaying it in portrait mode or at least
allowing to switch orientation. Reading in landscape mode totally breaks
the "book" feeling as you need to scroll within pages.
 
> Task Details
> =======
> Owned by: Aaron Seigo
> Effort Estimation: 5
> Task dependencies: None.