Hi,
To follow up on James' reply, there's Skim that is free and open
source, with some nice annotation options, that is available from
SourceForge:
http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/
There's also Adobe Reader, also freeware, which has a recent new
version release according to the Apple Downloads page:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/adobereader.html
Primarily of interest for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) users, there's Travis
Siegel's Softcon PDF Viewer, which modified the earlier version of
Preview to allow continuous reading under Tiger when using VO-A
instead of having to press a key at the end of each page:
http://www.softcon.com/mac/
Skim came up in a recent list discussion where Dónal originally asked
about being able to show PDF presentations that he had prepared with
LaTeX (and a style package called Beamer) using Preview in Full Screen
mode on a laptop. (This was a decision point in whether to buy a new
MacBook Pro or to use an old Windows laptop.) The discussion had
moved on to another thread on Keynote's accessibility for preparing
presentations when I commented that if he simply used Skim instead of
Preview, he could use Skim's presentation view mode (Command-Option-P)
to directly display his large set of existing PDF presentations, along
with any presentations he produced in either PowerPoint or Keynote
that were written out as PDFs (as some meetings request, so there are
no problems when the presentation files are displayed across platforms
due to differences in available fonts between Windows and Macs).
Further, there are presentation options to automatically play through
the presentations in timed mode, or with selected transition effects
etc. For all other purposes, Skim would basically work just like
Preview, only with additional options.
Note that the reason for this suggestion was primarily for
presentation display, not PDF reading, although that's not how most
list users would use Skim. I did follow up with a post on how Skim
works, compared to Preview, which you can read in the archived post:
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg15820.html
Again, note that this post quotes a much earlier post made on another
list, that wasn't primarily designed to answer the question about how
to use Skim and its annotation features, but which addressed the issue
of whether it was possible to get better results when using the "Find"
operation in viewing PDFs (under Leopard).
As for Adobe Reader, it uses text-to-speech instead of VoiceOver to
read PDF files. I find its configuration unintuitive, so I usually
have to read my notes on how this works in order to use it. For
example, the speaking rate isn't set by your text-to-speech rate
setting -- it's entirely ignored, and has to be set separately within
Adobe Reader, along with the voice selection. In order to save you
from reading through all the myriad menus (unless the Windows version
is just like this, and you're already familiar with the structure),
I'm pointing you to my archived list post that describes how to use
Adobe Reader:
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg08026.html
I really don't use this very often -- Preview and Skim are much nicer
to use -- and I haven't tried the latest version, so there may be some
differences or new options.
OT for this thread: you asked elsewhere about full-featured, free word
processing options under Snow Leopard. I assume you don't use LaTeX,
since that was also available to you under Leopard, through TeXShop.
For most people, the steep initial learning curve won't make this a
worthwhile alternative, but if you already use this as part of a linux
or unix distribution, or have other colleagues in computer science who
regularly use LaTeX, this could be an option.
Second OT point: I posted a few days before you rejoined the list
about O'Reilly's eBook bundles and the eBook "Deal of the Day" RSS
feed they just started, where nearly every day a DRM-free eBook bundle
is offered for $9.99. I recall that you've purchased online O'Reilly
books before. The bundles are multiple DRM-free formats, so you can
read PDF in Preview and ePub on a mobile device or through a web
interface such as O'Reilly's Bookworm. This may be of interest since
the iPad and iBookStore is supposed to use the ePub format. For more
details, see O'Reilly's eBook site:
http://oreilly.com/ebooks/
For the eBook Deal of the Day feed, check out:
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/ebookdealoftheday
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
James & Nash wrote:
Hi,
Other than Preview is there a PDF viewer / reader application that
is accessible with VoiceOver?
Yes there is, it is called Skim and you can get it from SourceForge
or:
http://www.opensourcemac.org
On 11 Feb 2010, E.J. Zufelt wrote:
Good morning,
Other than Preview is there a PDF viewer / reader application that
is accessible with VoiceOver?
Thanks,
Everett
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