Read a source

Every item in your library opens in an item pane, and the pane's Read tab shows the item's copies in whatever viewer suits the file. A PDF opens in a page viewer with highlighting, a photograph in a deep-zoom image viewer, a recording in a player and a spreadsheet in a table. This page explains which viewer opens for which file, what each viewer can do, and how Pangur keeps your place.

Three words on this page have a particular meaning in Pangur. A copy is one set of files that shows a resource, each file in it is a surrogate, and the reading copy is the copy that Read opens first. Resources, copies and surrogates defines them properly.

The item pane and its tabsCopy Anchor Link

The item pane has three tabs on every item, and a fourth on items that can have page images.

• Read shows the item's copies and opens one of them.
• About holds the item's details, its linked records and its notes. When the item has notes, the tab's label includes the count, as in About · 1 note.
• Study gathers five sections: References, Connections, Analysis, Outputs and Arrangements. The first two are described in References and connections.
• Transcribe appears when the item can have a facsimile, which is to say when its type is manuscript, letter, map or artwork, when it is a book with an ESTC number, or when Pangur already holds images for it. The desk behind it is described in Transcribe a manuscript.

If you open an item without choosing a tab, Pangur opens Read when there is something to read (a readable file or a facsimile) and About otherwise.

Above the tabs, the header has Back, Edit item, Cite this item, Share this item (on deployments that offer sharing) and a More for this item menu with Copy link to this item and Delete…. In an organisation's project, a viewer sees Edit item disabled, with a short explanation that viewers can read, ask and export.

The Read tab and the copies stripCopy Anchor Link

The Read tab begins with a strip of cards, one for each way the item can be read. There is a card for each copy, with the reading copy first and marked with a ribbon. Depending on the item there may also be a Text card for the item's text (a transcription, an imported edition, or the text read from its file), a Read as arranged card when an arrangement divides the item into texts, and a Video card for a video that plays on its own site. An Add a copy card at the end takes new files.

Choose a card to open it. Pangur opens the reading copy by default, unless you followed a link to a particular page or passage, in which case that opens instead.

The bar above an open copy has a few controls. Make reading copy makes the open copy the one Read opens first, and Edit… changes the copy's details. Open in the reading room opens the copy's text in the reading room. More for this copy holds Manage pages and parts…, About this facsimile, Unlink (for a facsimile linked from a repository) and Delete this copy….

Adding and arranging copies has its own page, Manage copies and parts. An item with no copies at all says that there is nothing to read yet and offers a drop zone for photographs, scans or files, together with a field for linking a library's digitised copy.

Which viewer opens each fileCopy Anchor Link

Pangur chooses the viewer from the file's format.

For any other format, Pangur says that the file cannot be shown here and suggests the extracted text or a download. Legacy Word .doc files are stored but not rendered in the document viewer.

Pages and extracted textCopy Anchor Link

A file that Pangur has read offers a switch between Pages, which is the file as it looks, and Extracted text, which is the text Pangur took from it. Your browser remembers which you chose, although a link to a particular passage always opens Pages.

The extracted text loads 8,000 characters at a time, with a running count ("8,000 of 412,000 characters") and a Load more button. Find in this view only searches the text loaded so far, and it stops at 2,000 matches. If Pangur could extract no text from the file, as with a scanned PDF that has no text layer, the view says so instead of showing anything.

The PDF viewerCopy Anchor Link

The PDF viewer's toolbar runs, from left to right:

• Find in document, which searches every page. On a long PDF it reports its progress ("indexing 40/300…") while it prepares the pages.
• Ask about this document, which opens a side panel for questions about this PDF (see Ask a question).
• Annotations, which opens the list of your highlights and your assistant's marks, with a count (see Highlights, notes and assistant marks).
• Previous page, a page box showing the current page and the total, and Next page.
• Zoom out, zoom in and fit to width. Zoom runs from half size to three times the fitted width, in steps of a quarter.
• Full screen and Exit full screen.
• Citations, a switch that links in-text citations to the reference list Pangur detected in the PDF. It is off by default, and your browser remembers your setting. The first time you switch it on for a PDF, Pangur scans the citations, which can take a few minutes.

Only one side panel is open at a time, either Annotations or Ask. Closing the Ask panel keeps its conversation, so you find it where you left it when you open the panel again.

If the PDF cannot be opened, the viewer says so and suggests downloading the file or trying again later.

Moving through a PDFCopy Anchor Link

These keys work when the PDF has focus, unless you are typing in a field or have text selected:

On a touch screen a sideways swipe turns the page, but only at fit width or smaller. On a zoomed page the same swipe pans instead, because otherwise you could not move around the page. The shortcuts for every part of Pangur are collected in Keyboard shortcuts.

The image and facsimile viewersCopy Anchor Link

The image viewer shows one image with deep zoom. Double-click to zoom in, or use the buttons to zoom in steps or to fit the image to the pane. Zoom stops at four times the image's pixel size. On a phone the small overview map is hidden to save space.

The facsimile viewer shows a manuscript's leaves, whether they come from a repository's IIIF manifest, from your own photographs, or from a PDF or image attached to the item. It has Previous leaf and Next leaf, a counter such as "Leaf 3 of 120" with the leaf's label and pixel size, and a strip of up to nine thumbnails around the current leaf. You can drag or use the arrow keys to pan, and the + and − keys or buttons to zoom. Images from a repository load directly from the repository's server, which means the repository has to be reachable while you read. If a leaf cannot be loaded, the viewer says so and points you to the repository's own viewer.

When a leaf has several photographs, Photographs of this leaf lets you look at another one, and Set as default makes that photograph the one Pangur shows for the leaf from then on.

The facsimile viewer also offers Read this leaf with the vision model, which is described in Reading pages with a model.

The document viewerCopy Anchor Link

Word, ODT, RTF, EPUB and Markdown files are converted on Pangur's server and shown as a page of text. Before the text is displayed, the web client strips scripts, styles, embedded frames, images, media and forms from the converted document and keeps only ordinary web, email and in-page links. When the document has two or more headings, a Contents list lets you jump between them. While Pangur is still reading a newly added file, the viewer says so rather than showing a partial document.

These files also offer Make a draft, which copies the file into a new draft and opens it (Write a draft).

The recording playerCopy Anchor Link

Audio and video files play in Pangur's player, which has Play and Pause, a seek bar, and playback speeds from 0.5× to 2×. When Pangur has drawn a waveform for an audio file, you can click the waveform to seek. Video adds captions from the transcript, an audio description track, picture in picture and full screen.

Some video formats cannot play in a browser as they are. For these Pangur makes a playable copy in the background and tells you that it will be ready in a few minutes.

YouTube and Vimeo videos play in those sites' own embedded players, with a link to Open on YouTube or Open on Vimeo. Transcripts, and the minutes they use, are covered in Record audio and video.

The table viewerCopy Anchor Link

Spreadsheets, CSV and JSON files open in a table that Pangur's server pages 200 rows at a time. Sorting (click a column heading) and Filter rows run on the server over every row, not only the rows on screen. A workbook with several sheets shows them as Sheets tabs, and a JSON file can be shown as a Table or a Tree. The Columns panel lists each column's type, its empty cells, its distinct values and its range.

Pangur reads up to 200,000 rows of a file, 20 sheets of a workbook and 256 columns of a sheet. When a file is longer than that, the viewer tells you it read the first rows only. The tree view does not open a JSON file larger than 8 MB, and it shows 500 children of a branch before pointing you to the table view for the rest.

Your reading positionCopy Anchor Link

Pangur remembers where you stopped in each file: the page and zoom of a PDF, your place in a text or document, the time in a recording, and your place in a table or image. The position is yours alone, within one project, and it follows you to your other devices.

A position belongs to one version of a file, so if the file is replaced with a different one, reading starts again from the beginning. When you read on two devices, the position set most recently wins. This means that an old position sent late from a device that was offline cannot move you back. Your browser keeps positions while you are offline and sends them when it reconnects.

On the Mac, iPhone and iPadCopy Anchor Link

Pangur for Mac shows the same item pane and viewers as the web client. The iPhone and iPad app has its own PDF reader with the same tabs, highlights, annotation list and assistant marks, and ⌘F opens find when a hardware keyboard is attached. On the iPad the tab picker is a segmented control, and on the iPhone it is a menu. The app can also keep items on the device for reading offline (see Pangur for iPhone and iPad and Working offline).