Acrobat Reader or Repligo?

[WyattEarp]

Just need a viewer for manuals. Don't really want to shell out $30.00 unless Repligo offers some major advantages. What do you think?

[Jason Dunn]

Since Acrobat is free, I'd suggest that you give it a try and also try a demo version of Repligo. It's been my experience that Repligo is much faster than Acrobat, but speed may not be much of an issue for you.

[Janak Parekh]

Depends on how much you use it. For light use, Acrobat is okay. For anything more (IMHO) it'll drive you nuts. ;)

--janak

[WyattEarp]

I've had them both for a while and use them mainly as a reference tool. For example, every component in my home theater system I have on an SD card in PDF and RGO formats (to compare). I makes adding new equipment (which is a task in itself) easier since there are way to many inputs to remember all when looking for my next purchase. I've done this for every manual I have or had to use. So I do use it quite often since it allows me to read while away from the PC. Just wondering if I missed something wtih Repligo. I noticed Repligo shaved down a lot of size from my PDFs and they do load quicker but was their anything else. I ask now only because I just got a 15% discount coupon from PocketGear :D , and will be making some purchases later today.

[yankeejeep]

Depends on your connection status. If you will have access to your desktop system to convert and transfer the files, then Repligo is a good choice. If you'll be receiving files when you're away from your desktop, it is a good idea to have something on your device that can work directly with PDF files, Acrobat Reader being the free option. Since I receive files regularly by email while away from my desk, I find Acrobat Reader a good option even though it is slow when dealing with complex layouts.

[dh]

There are only a couple of PPC apps that I miss and Repligo is one.
It's a shame these guys don't have the marketing funds to compete with Adobe because their product is years ahead.

[WyattEarp]

Okay, here's what I did. I forked over my $26.00 for RepliGo which I am glad I did because yesterday I remembered that I could use it to save web pages to my PPC which I needed to do :D . I also kept Acrobat 2.0 since that is unforunately the "standard" .PDF viewer and I get most manuals in that format first but and change it later with RepliGo :D .
Thanks for the input. :)

[MROX]

Don't know much about reader, but here some of them that are VGA compatible (I've been told). iSilo is a recommended one...

Readers
- Haali Reader
- µBook
- iSilo RECOMMENDED
- RepliGo
- EasyReader
- Handstory v3.1
- TeamOne Reader
- Pocket e-Sword

If it can help. Good luck.

[Ripper014]

Repligo is ok... but it is a proprietary format so it means reformating every document you wish to read in this format. Also I have run across at least one manual that could not be encoded into RGO.

The pluses are that you reflow quite easily with Repligo, I can't say the same about Acrobat... overall Repligo offers more... but Acrobat is free... the bottom-line for me is neither is perfect...

[Menneisyys]

TeamOne Reader

It's IMHO one of the worst readers. It has been unable to read almost anything I've thrown it at (on several PPC's so it wasn't a tempraly error). See e.g. http://www2.freeweb.hu/menneisyys/chm/#_Toc93221553 on it.

[Menneisyys]

The pluses are that you reflow quite easily with Repligo, I can't say the same about Acrobat...

Acrobat 2.0's ActiveSync plug-in supports auto reflow conversion, so your docs will be able to re-flow (and also display images in this mode, unlike RepliGo - this is a clear advantage of Acrobat over RepliGo!).

I haven't personally checked the conversion, but some people over FirstLoox say it's pretty good.

[yankeejeep]

If you're interested in a fairly small footprint option, there's the Westtek ClearVue PDF viewer. However, you do not get reflow and it is a little fussy about opening some PDF files (I find that it doesn't like about 10% of the files I receive). That's why I usually use Acrobat Reader 2.0 most of the time.

[Sven Johannsen]

Repligo is ok... but it is a proprietary format so it means reformating every document you wish to read in this format. Also I have run across at least one manual that could not be encoded into RGO.
And Adobe's PDF isn't proprietary? It is in wide use (understatement), but it is Adobe's. And Word .doc belongs to MS, etc. About the only non proprietary format around is .txt.

I assume you were trying to encode a pdf manual into rgo. Not surprising you came across one that failed. PDFs can be protected. It's like trying to convert a DRM'd WMA into and MP3.

The pluses are that you reflow quite easily with Repligo, I can't say the same about Acrobat... overall Repligo offers more... but Acrobat is free... the bottom-line for me is neither is perfect...

Agreed here. I keep both available for reasons cited above. I'm much more likely to come across existing content in pdf and need to read it. For the advantages in speed, ease of use, and file size, I'll convert what I am going to use for me to rgo when I have the chance.

[Ripper014]

Sorry... poor choice of words... yes Adobe's pdf is proprietary... but it is accepted as a standard, where RGO... is well... has a way to go to be recognized by the general public.

The pdf file I had was not protected... it just failed to convert... and the error message was that the file was to complex...

As I said neither format has taken a firm foothold in the pocketpc market and do not provide enough for what I need personally. It may for other users... for now... I just make due.

[Sven Johannsen]

Sorry... poor choice of words... yes Adobe's pdf is proprietary... but it is accepted as a standard, where RGO..

And that is a tribute to the geniuses at Adobe...the marketing guys, not the software guys ;) The idea of giving out free readers for darn near every platform, so you could call your format universal was inspired. It created a demand for content in that format, which is what sold the writer at the price they charge.

The Repligo writer is actually quite a bargain, considering.

[applejosh]

And that is a tribute to the geniuses at Adobe...the marketing guys, not the software guys ;) The idea of giving out free readers for darn near every platform, so you could call your format universal was inspired. It created a demand for content in that format, which is what sold the writer at the price they charge.

The Repligo writer is actually quite a bargain, considering.

Agreed. I do admit that the pdf format has lots of other properties (DRM being one, unfortunately) that make it appealing to the masses, but I do like the Repligo format for most things. It's simple and effective, and the rgo writer is a bargain at $30 (compared to the $300 for Acrobat). The other thing I like is that the Repligo viewer doesn't take up 7MB of space. I convert most of my desktop pdf's to rgo before transferring to my device. The reflow just works better for me. (I know transferring pdf's via ActiveSync is supposed to reflow, but I get wacky results sometimes; Repligo has had better luck for most documents.) I sometimes wonder why I keep Acrobat Reader on my PPC at all.

If Cerience had a more robust advertising budget, they might be able to gain market share, but for now it is (unfortunately) a niche product (and one that I hope becomes more mainstream).

[antlab]

But is it normal that with Acrobat for PPC the text appears very bad? I mean sort of not well antialiased (I have the Jam with Cleartype activate). I find this very annoying for the reading experience, and did not find any option to change the appearance. Do you have any advice?
Thanks

[Sven Johannsen]

But is it normal that with Acrobat for PPC the text appears very bad? I mean sort of not well antialiased (I have the Jam with Cleartype activate). I find this very annoying for the reading experience, and did not find any option to change the appearance. Do you have any advice?
Thanks

Bad is kind of a relative term. You must understand that Repligo, and others, were specifically targetted at handhelds, and oh-BTW, they have desktop viewers too. Adobe was around before PPCs or even Palms were though of, so handheld viewers were an afterthought. Way after if you recall the early PPC days. If you need to read pdfs though, you get the free adobe solution or buy the Westtek Clearvue one or the other overpriced one...or you convert the pdf. Repligo will let you do that in most cases. Those cases it doesn't, likely nothing short of Adobe Acrobat would help.

Incidentally, if anyone needs it and doesn't already know, there is a product called Win2PDF, that is essentially a pdf printer that will create pdfs from about anything, just like Repligo does to .rgo. You print to a file. It's around the same price as Repligo, and of course the pdf format is in wider use...though it is not optimal for PDAs/PPCs. So if you are producing for yourself, or PPC friends, I'd go Repligo. If you have a broader audience, don't think you can convince them Repligo is better, don't already have Adobe, and well...there's an option.

[applejosh]

There's also a software product called PDFCreator (at SourceForge I think). I'm not sure about the licensing for business use, but it appears to be free for at least personal use.

[antlab]

Thank you for the answer Sven. You are right about the relativity of the terms, but for example I often use Isilo for reading offline web pages on the PPC, and the rendering of both text and figures is spectacular. The problem is that much material is in PDF, and it would be good to have the same quality on the screen. I also tried pdftohtml, but the conversion seem produce quite messy results. For which concerns the production of pdf files on PC, I usually work with Pdf995, a free converter that works quite well.