Section 4.1: The PDF Viewer

The Toolbar | Hiding and Displaying the Document Interface | The Page Locator | Text Selection | Edge Navigation

Aji Annotate's Document Viewer supports the iPhone standard gestures: drag or swipe to scroll, and pinch to zoom in and out. It also supports both portrait and landscape orientation reading via device rotation.

When a document is first displayed, the full reading interface is displayed:

This includes a page number indicator in the upper-left, the document title in the upper-right, the Toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and the page locator in the lower-right.

Note that the display of the page number, the document title, and the page locator can be turned off under Settings in the Display category.

When you are done reading, tap the "Back" button in the Toolbar to return to the main "Browse" screen. Note that Aji Annotate remembers your reading location so that you will be returned to the same place the next time you select the document. This is especially useful if you need to change the Settings in the middle of reading a document. Similarly, if you receive a call or are otherwise interrupted while reading, Aji Annotate will remember which document you were reading and return you to the same location as when the application last quit.

The Toolbar

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The Aji Annotate toolbar has six buttons when you are reading your PDF document. In order from left-to-right:

• Back: This returns you to the document browsing view.
• Add Annotation: Tap on this to add annotations to your document or to select text to be copied.
• Document Navigation: Use this button to navigate your document easily with tools such as bookmarks and outlines.
• Mail: This allows you to e-mail your current PDF document.
• Lock: Tapping on this button will toggle the screen lock of your display.
• Search: Use this to search for a keyword within the document.

Hiding and Displaying the Document Interface

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By default, the reading interface will "Auto-Hide" after a few moments of inactivity. This allows the full screen to be used for displaying the document:

When the interface is hidden, simply tap once in the center of the screen to display it.

You can also tap once in the center of the screen when the interface is displayed to hide it. This behavior and the Auto-Hide behavior described above are both controlled in Settings in the Interface category.

The Page Locator

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In the lower-right corner of the PDF view is the Page Locator. This area uses a red outline to indicate the portion of the current page that your screen is currently viewing. This can be useful in orienting yourself when you are at a high zoom level.

You can tap the Page Locator view to quickly zoom out to the farthest possible zoom level, matching the page width or height to fit the screen. Tap again to return to your previous viewing position and zoom level.

Text Selection

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While reading your PDF, you may wish to copy a portion of the text to be pasted elsewhere, perhaps into a text annotation or another app. To select the text to be copied, tap on the Add button, followed by the Select button.

Then, drag your finger across the text that you desire to copy. The selected text will be highlighted. Once you tap on the Copy button, the selected text will be copied into the clipboard, ready to be pasted elsewhere.

Edge Navigation

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In addition to the standard iPhone viewing gestures, Aji Annotate includes "Edge Navigation", which is often a useful way to read documents.

Edge Navigation works by recognizing taps near the edge of the PDF View display. So, if you tap the bottom edge of the display, for example, the document view will scroll one screen size vertically downwards; similarly, tapping the upper, left, or right edges will scroll the display one screen size up, left, or right respectively.

You can also double-tap the edges: in the vertical directions, this will advance the display forward or backward one document page. In the horizontal directions, this will move the display to the extreme left or right of the document.

A couple of examples will help illustrate the utility of Edge Navigation. First, suppose you are reading a document in landscape mode and have adjusted the zoom level exactly to match the margins of the page. Then, you can simply tap the bottom edge of the display to advance through the document while preserving the zoom level and horizontal location.

Another possibility is that if you wish to read at a very high zoom level, you can use Edge Navigation to tap the right edge of the screen as you read along a line of text, then double-tap the left edge to scroll back all the way to the left for the next line.