There are two main reasons: quality and bandwidth.
Yes, open source as well. CidReader was born to provide Music Sheet reading between musicians on a distance in Networked Music Environments, but with Covid I decided to create a more flexible version for any possible use. After some other features are completed I will provide full code to enable others to host their instance of CidReader.
Full mobile support is being planned, opening the website from a web browser on a smartphone works but page turning is still unavailable from the mobile. Changing pages from a Desktop application would change page on mobile as well. Please do not mistake CidReader Web with the CidReaderPDF app you can found on the Android Playstore. The old Android App is a very fast tool for peer-to-peer connections.
It is, this version of CidReader is a modified branch of the (Awesome) Generic Web Viewer provided in PDF.JS, the pdf rendering library provided by Mozilla/Google.
Absolutely not. Refer to Cid Reader for any possible issue on the website, even regarding the pdf viewer. Feel free to look into the contacts page to know more of how to report issues.
You can head over to the contacts page and choose any of the options.
The text layer is working, users will be able to select text and copy it, it is covered by the pointing layer at the moment and therefore not accessible.It will be fixed as soon as possible.
Only the “A” and “W” keys are hooked up to remote interaction, changing page by wheel or arrow keys will not send other users the page change action
Some of the features of the web app require a modern web browser to run. Any late version of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome should be fine. Local tests seem to confirm slightly better performance on Google Chrome.
When opening a file on your reader, you will upload the document on a server, distributing it to the others connected to the same page (e.g cidreader.com/mypage). The file will be kept on the server as long as somebody is in the room or as long as it is replaced by another document. By doing this, anybody joining the room after you uploaded your document will be able to load it automatically. When the room is empty everything will be deleted. The developer reserves the right to close rooms in case they stay open for too long.
Reload the page. If more than a user uploads a document at the same time the application might break, in case that happens simply reloading the page should fix it for now.
There are no permission settings at the moment, as long as permissions are being developed, I suggest you use the application with as many others as you like but keeping in mind that there is no way of banning or controlling other users at the moment. These features are going to be included as soon as possible.
There are many viewer options with this new version. Feel free to hit the options button on the right and browse through the viewing options. I personally suggest setting the zoom to “Page Fit” and enabling “Horizontal Scrolling” from the options menu. Pressing F1 the webapp will go full screen. In my opinion this combination is the most immersive set up possible. As long as users press the keys "W" and "D" pages will scroll no matter the view options you choose.
Please keep in mind that loading a document implies a loading time. On top of the screen of the user uploading there is a small text notifying progress in the upload. Loading times mostly depend on network speed, the bigger the PDF, the bigger the wait. The server is limiting uploads to 10MB as a safety measure. This is not a huge limit since a 300 pages book can fit in 10MB.
In each chapter of the Final Fantasy saga there always is a Character named Cid. He is a different character every time but most of times he is the pilot or captain of an airship, flying the heroes around the world.
First of all: THANK YOU, I really hope this little application could help as many as possible with their remote interactions. I am not an expert in fundraising but this button seems a good start. There will likely be a Kickstarter in the future to fund development and expand the servers.
In alternative there's a QR too, in case you have bionic eyes: