Reading a document

This is the page you get when you press ⌘? with a document open and nothing else going on. It is about looking at a document rather than changing one; for marking it up, see Marking text.

The window

Three parts, and each can be put away:

Reading cycles in three: first the page and the tools, then the page alone, then everything back. The status line says which you are in and what the next press will do.

There are nine lists. Seven of them share the right panel: History, Marks, Talk, Bookmarks, Snapshots, Changes and Fields. ⌘3 moves to the next of these seven. The other two, Contents and Found, sit in the left panel beside the page thumbnails. View ▸ Lists names all nine and opens the one you choose. Use that menu when the tab strip is too narrow to show every tab, since some lists may scroll off the end.

Laying the pages out

Seven arrangements, one at a time, under View:

• Single Page: one page, and it stays put until you ask for another
• Single Page Continuous: one column, scrolling
• Two Pages: side by side
• Two Pages Continuous: side by side, scrolling
• Book: side by side, with the cover alone on the right
• Book Continuous: the same, scrolling
• Horizontal Continuous: a row, scrolling sideways

Two switches modify whichever arrangement is in force: Right to Left and Page Breaks.

Page Breaks draws a gap between one sheet and the next, so a scrolling layout shows where each page ends. Turn it off and the pages run together as one strip. That is easier to read straight through, and harder to use when you need to know what falls on which page.

Size

⌘+ and ⌘− zoom. Fit the Page sizes a whole page to the window.

Fit Width draws the page as wide as the view, which is how most people read a page of text. The two fits behave differently afterward: fitting the page keeps fitting the page, so resizing the window re-fits it. Fit Width is a one-off: the width you get is the width you keep until you ask for another zoom.

The Magnifier (⌃⌘M) is a loupe that follows the pointer and shows the page under it three times larger. It sits beside the pointer rather than under it, and takes no clicks: every press, drag and release reaches the page as though the loupe were not there, so you can use it while dragging a rectangle out. It hides itself whenever the pointer leaves the page. It is a switch: press it again, or ⌃⌘M, to put it away.

The view stays where you left it

The zoom and the scroll belong to you, not to the document. Marking a page, undoing, deleting a mark, moving a node: none of them moves the view. You stay at the magnification you chose, looking at the part you were looking at. Resizing the window is different: it does re-fit the page, because that is a change you asked for.

Getting about

⌘[ goes back to where you were before the last jump, and ⌘] forward again, so following a contents entry into chapter 58 of a thousand-page book leaves you a way back to where you were reading.

There is a second Back and Forward pair on the tool bar which does the same thing for whichever tab is in front, so it also works in this handbook. Both grey out when there is nowhere to go.

The chevrons beside the page number are a different pair. They step to the previous page and next page, one sheet at a time, in the pane you are working in. They are live on every document of more than one sheet, and grey out only at the first and the last.

Being read to

• Reading Bar (⌃⌘R): a band of ordinary brightness in a dimmed page, the screen's equivalent of a finger under the line.
• Spritz Selection (⇧⌘P): the selected words shown one at a time, in place.
• Read Aloud (⌥⌘R): speaks the selection, marking each word on the page as it is read. With nothing selected it reads the page.

Filling the screen

⇧⌘F is Presentation: the whole screen, one page at a time, fitted, on black, for showing a document to a room rather than reading it at a desk. ⌃⌘F is ordinary full screen, where everything still works.

Watch: a short video for this page is still to come.

Contents