Reading (Desktop)

Thorium Desktop supports three different reading modes, respectively for:

• EPUB (also known as reflowable EPUB)
• PDF
• and Fixed Layout EPUB (also known as FXL EPUB)

Reading progression

When reading EPUB files, you can progress forward and backward in the publication by using:

• the arrow buttons displayed on both sides of the reading view
• or the left/right arrows of your keyboard

With PDF files, the experience is different:

• scroll up and down with your trackpad or mouse wheel
• or use the left/right arrows of your keyboard

A progression bar is also available at the bottom of the screen to view your current progression and/or jump to another location.

On the left of this progression bar, you’ll notice two actions to go back and forward in the history of your reading session.

If you follow a link, jump to another location in the table of contents or any other similar action, you can always use the back action, to go back to your previous reading position.

If you hover over the progression bar, you’ll notice that it will become segmented. Each of these segments, represents a chapter/resource in the publication. By hovering over the end of the blue bar, you’ll get a detailed view of your current progression in the publication.

Customizing your reading experience (EPUB)

With reflowable EPUB files, Thorium Desktop provides a highly customizable reading experience where you can adjust the text and layout completely.

To adjust these settings, click on the Settings action in the upper right corner of the screen.

In the display section, you’ll find setting for:

• Themes
• Layout (scrolled or paginated)
• Text alignment
• Columns

By default, Thorium Desktop uses a Neutral theme with black text on a white background. Five other options are available, such as Sepia, Night and Paper, in addition to four high contrast themes.

If you prefer scrolling instead of pagination, you can also switch the layout mode to Scrollable.

This will disable multiple columns and center text in a single column instead.

In this mode, you’ll scroll through the entire publication, one resource at a time. Make sure that you continue scrolling when you reach the bottom of the current resource in order to move to the next one.

You can also adjust how the text is aligned and how many columns are displayed in paginated mode on this screen.

If you’d like to customize text to a greater degree, click on Customize text formatting.

This will enable two additional sections: Text and Spacing.

In the Text section, you can change the font size and select a different font family.

Our selection includes fonts from all the classic font families (Serif, Sans Serif, Humanist Serif, Modern Serif and Old Style Serif) plus specialized fonts (OpenDyslexic plus a monospace and a duospace font).

In Spacing, you can also fine tune spacing for the following elements:

• margin
• paragraphs
• lines
• words
• and letters

By default, these settings are applied per publication.

If you’ve found settings that are well-suited for you, it’s possible to save them and apply them to another publication. To do so:

• open the publication with the settings that you’d like to use
• open Settings and click on Preferences
• click on Save
• open the publication where you’d like to apply these settings
• open Settings and click on Preferences
• click on Apply

You can reset these shared settings at any time by clicking on the Reset action at the bottom of this screen.

Customizing your reading experience (FXL EPUB)

With Fixed Layout EPUB (FXL EPUB) files, your reading experience cannot be customized nearly as much due to the nature of the format.

Fixed Layout EPUB behaves more like a PDF than a normal EPUB, which means that you can only control:

• the zoom level (how the content is fitted in your screen)
• and whether you see a single page or two pages at a time

While reading an FXL EPUB, you’ll notice an additional action in the upper right corner: Fit.

By default, Thorium Desktop will fit the entire page in your screen, but as an alternative, you can also set a zoom level with this action to 50%, 100% or 200% of the page.

When the page is zoomed in, you can use your trackpad and/or mouse wheel to pan into the rest of the page.

Customizing your reading experience (PDF)

With PDF files, customization is similarly constrained to a few options.

Clicking on Settings will display a completely different set of options compared to EPUB:

• Zoom provides two options to fit the page into the screen plus various zoom levels

  

• Display allows you to switch between a single page or two page spread view

In addition to these settings, a dedicated Fit page or width action is also displayed in the upper right corner.

With this toggle, you can quickly change how the page is fitted to the screen.

Navigation

If you’d like to navigate somewhere else in the publication, click on the Navigation button, which will show the following options:

• Table of contents
• Landmarks
• Search
• Go to page
• Bookmarks
• Highlights

The Table of contents is the main way that you can navigate in a publication.

It’s authored by the creator of the publication, which means that it might be empty for some publications.

Landmarks play a similar role, but unlike a table of contents, they only include key locations in a publication (cover, start of the main text, list of images…).

Go to page allows you to jump to a given page, based on the print pagination. It may be empty, if the file doesn’t contain any reference to its print equivalent.

Search

To search inside the publication, click on the search icon while reading.

This will expand the action bar with a text field, where you can type the keywords that you’d like to search for.

Typing a keyword will display the total number of search results and actions to navigate between them.

To view the full list of results, click on the number of matches.

This will open a list where results are grouped and ordered based on the progression in the publication.

Click on any of these results to jump to them. Your search keyword will be highlighted on the page.

As an alternative, you can also skip the list of results altogether and navigate between them using the next/previous actions in the search bar.

If you’d like to search for another keyword, hover on the search field and click on the cross icon to enter a new keyword.

If you’d like to dismiss the search bar, click on the cross icon displayed in the list of actions.

Please note that some PDF and EPUB Fixed Layout publications may not contain any text at all. You won’t be able to obtain results when searching such publications.

Zen mode

The very last action displayed in the action bar triggers zen mode, a dedicated reading mode where most of the user interface is hidden.

In this mode, progression and navigation is only possible using keyboard arrows and shortcuts.

Print (PDF)

When reading a PDF file, a Print action is available as well.

Printing might be restricted to a limited number of pages for DRM protected files.

The print dialog allows you to select and preview which pages should be printed.

Use the following syntax in this dialog:

• if you want to print only a page, write the page number
• if you want to print consecutive pages, write the number of the first and the last page separated by a dash character (for example, 2 - 12)
• if you want to print an ensemble of single and/or consecutive pages, use the semicolon character to separate the different groups of pages (for example, “3 ; 7 ; 10 - 12 ; 20 - 24”)
• you don’t need to write the first or the last page of the publication when they are included in a group of consecutive pages (for example - 12 if you want to print page 1 to 12, or 12 - if you want to print pages from page 12 till the end of the publication)

A preview that allows you to see all the selected pages will be automatically generated as you type your selection.

Other actions

A number of other actions are also available in the toolbar and covered in separate pages from this guide:

• in the upper left corner:
  • a Bookshelf action will bring you back to the homepage
  • and an Information action will open the publication details
• in the center, you’ll find two actions related to Read Aloud
• in the upper right corner, you’ll also find:
  • an Add a bookmark action, covered in Bookmarks
  • and an Add a highlight action, covered in Highlights

Please refer to these dedicated pages to learn more about these features.

Keyboard shortcuts while reading