Heavy Graphics PDFs
Hi,
I was trying to load a PDF file that is quite heavy in graphics but the files size is only 1.4mb. The first time I tried to load the file the whole iPhone froze and I had to do a reset, trying it again the file loaded but took along time and scrolling around & rotating was very very slow.
The file i tried can be accessed at http://www.facilities.unsw.edu.au/maps/kensington.pdf
Regards,
Zac
- Forums:
- Login to post comments
Same
Same problem here, cannot upload PDF's without it crashing the iPod.
Trying Again
On close inspection opening up the same file via Safari also takes a long time and is quite slow so I think it might be an issue with the iPhone rendering the PDF file rather than TouchFS.
Trying to load a 37mb 900 odd page text PDF also froze the iPhone and I had to do a hard reset.
Is there any way of with large files loading as you scroll through so that it doesn't crash the iPhone with large documents?
We're using the standard system viewer
We're using the standard system web browser control to view PDFs. I'm curious however, if these files are problematic in both mobile Safari, and in the TouchFS viewer. We're interested in knowing if Safari has better performance than the viewing component made available for developers to use.
I will try the pdf you've linked to and test it myself. Hopefully, though, you'll experience the same behavior between mobile Safari and TouchFS.
Especially w/graphic heavy PDFs, there will definitely be a delay as the system viewer loads the images as pages scroll by. Some users have had luck running their PDFs through a PDF compressor to achieve better viewing performance though.
There's always the possibility that the system components will improve over time as Apple updates the iPhone OS. That's one nice thing about using the standard components instead of writing them ourselves.
Oops...I just read the followup above mentioning the same behavior in Safari. Whew! I know it doesn't help you, but I feel better at least that it's not just TouchFS.
Just opened your PDF too...and it even takes my real computer a few seconds to fully draw all the line art. It may be small filesize-wise, but it takes a lot of processing to draw all those vectors, and fill in all those shapes.
The iPhone is incredibly feature full and powerful, but it's still a hand held device with extremely limited resources. Hopefully, though this will improve w/firmware and software updates.
Its normal to crash
I'd like to have big files opened without crashing too but it may be a impossible thing, given that map pdf file is even slow on my laptop(core duo 2G with 1G RAM and ATI X1400, opened in foxit pdf viewer). For all I know the ipod touch is not equipped with hardware better than my laptop, and even my computer freezes sometime viewing huge files. So probably you really need to pay attention to the size of the file you are assessing on this tiny mobile device instead of hoping it could does everything ur computer does, because I found in most of the time it just can't.
This is true
One of the great things about the iPhone and iPod Touch is just how powerful they are...for a hand held computer. However, people need to realize that it's currently not realistic to expect this little device to have the same kind of processing power as their standalone computer.
We're sure Apple will keep improving the iPhone OS which is why we're trying to use as much of the standard system components in our own software–an Apple update will help us too.
We could put checks in TouchFS so it will only display files we "think" will perform great, but would rather let users decide what constitutes "good" performance. Some users may be happy with waiting twenty seconds for a file to appear...I'd really rather not draw an arbitrary line when it comes to displaying files though. Let the device do its best, and hope most users will find it useful...that's our plan.