Any Linux equivalent?

notPythias

This, in combination with the "Summarize" service would be awesome... now if only it would take multi page articles on web-sites and combine it all into one, I'd be a really happy camper.

conigs

@JamesF: Exactly, it's designed so your eyes don't have to make huge leaps every time you reach the end of a line or column.

Adam Pash

I really, really, hate reading columns on screen. You scroll down, you scroll up, you scroll down...I'm assuming that this Tofu thing will keep the whole thing on screen, with no scrolling required, just move your eyes from the bottom of column one to the top of column two, but it's still a dumb idea.

JamesF

The tofuize bookmarklet does the same for webpages. Doesn't always work well but when it does, it makes reading online so much better.

link to webpage for bookmarklet: [bergengocia.net]

abhik

I have no problem with scrolling things when I'm reading online -- it's the small font size that makes my eyes start bugging out after a while.

Lucky for me, I hear that by the year 2000, computers will be able to dynamically increase the size of a font!! ;P

BingleyJoe

Installed and uninstalled after a few minutes. As long as Word doc are mainly for editing rather than reading, it proves unnecessary to use the app.

On the other hand most read docs are in PDF, which can not be read through the app. As for other HTML, well you know the answer. In my opinion this application is doomed to extinct.

RahatA

There's a great Greasemonkey script called "Multi-Column articles" that performs a similar function for certain news sites. I use it for nytimes.com. The script does its thing when you click through to the printable version of the article.

Just updated for Firefox 3.

[userscripts.org]

aeneas

this has been needed for a long time. I read a lot on the computer and its mostly poor designs and layouts :(

petrarch1609

@aeneas: Thx for the greasemonkey script. There's way too many amazing undiscovered scripts @ userstyles.org and userscripts.org for me :D

sidc

Has anyone found a similar app for Windows? I'd love to have something like this for reading my text e-books.

RahatA: Not true. Plenty of my ebooks are in a PDF format that I was able to convert to a TXT file. Cory Doctorow released Little Brother in TXT as well. A great read.

Tricky

Gina, et al: aeneas's comment deserves its own post... I'm checking out that Greasemonkey script right now.

Seems like a non-scrolling multicolumn script could be great for all sorts of sites.

I'd love a script or better GReader option that does this for long Google Reader entries.

200+ years of newspaper design evolution did teach us one thing -- we read faster when our eye has to travel shorter distances to get to the next line.

Scrolling is OK for short entries, but for long articles, I'd always prefer a paginated (prefetched, of course) multicolumn layout.

dotyoureyes

@Tricky:

well, of course one can transfer PDF to a TXT and then use Tofu. It will take installation of few apps and a bit of one's time. And all was that he/she didn't want to scroll down...

In fact, with mac's touchpad I don't have trouble scrolling.

By the was Tricky, do you read your e-books from PC?

RahatA

Am I the only person that scrolls through all the articles until I get to the last one I read then reads upwards?

christophski

No Linux equivalent??

lovelikegravity

Is there any freeware like this for windows?? Reading ebooks on desktop is really difficult

Nikhgeo