(9)
Your rating: Now say why...
Tofu helps address the common problem that people don't like reading text on the screen. Why is that, anyway? I believe there are two main reasons: line width and visual instability. Text is usually very wide on the screen, which makes going from the end of one line to the beginning of the next difficult. That's why newspapers have narrow columns: It makes them faster to read.
So why not just take a normal window and make it narrower, scrolling down as you need? Well, there are usually a lot of lines in a text, and all look more or less the same, so if they move past your eyes
So why not just take a normal window and make it narrower, scrolling down as you need? Well, there are usually a lot of lines in a text, and all look more or less the same, so if they move past your eyes
What's New
Version 2.0.1:
- The "View in Tofu" Service now works again.
- Hyphenation now consistently works if set in the preferences.
- Quitting with unsaved changes while in full-screen mode now behaves correctly.
- Fixed a problem where the background would not be drawn correctly for short texts in full-screen view.
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Tofu User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
(53)
(53)
| Downloads:34,409 |
| Version Downloads:10,710 |
| Type:Business : Word Processing |
| License:Free |
| Date:09 Sep 2008 |
| Platform:PPC / Intel |
| Price:Free |
Overall (Version 2.x):  |
| Features: |
| Ease of Use: |
| Value: |
| Stability: |
Displaying 1-10 of 68
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Tofu helps address the common problem that people don't like reading text on the screen. Why is that, anyway? I believe there are two main reasons: line width and visual instability. Text is usually very wide on the screen, which makes going from the end of one line to the beginning of the next difficult. That's why newspapers have narrow columns: It makes them faster to read.
So why not just take a normal window and make it narrower, scrolling down as you need? Well, there are usually a lot of lines in a text, and all look more or less the same, so if they move past your eyes vertically, they are difficult to keep track of. The text doesn't feel stable, and you get lost easily.
In Tofu, text is arranged in columns, and each column is only as high as your window. So lines are nice and narrow, they don't move about vertically, plus your text is now in easy-to-digest chunks. You just scroll from column to column horizontally, and feel more in control.
Tofu also includes some other useful features to make reading easier for you. You can jump to any point in your text by simply typing some letters near it (without choosing any command first). There's a "View In Columns" service so you can, for example, grab some text from a web page. And it lets you use your voice to navigate text, so you can literally sit back and read.
So why not just take a normal window and make it narrower, scrolling down as you need? Well, there are usually a lot of lines in a text, and all look more or less the same, so if they move past your eyes vertically, they are difficult to keep track of. The text doesn't feel stable, and you get lost easily.
In Tofu, text is arranged in columns, and each column is only as high as your window. So lines are nice and narrow, they don't move about vertically, plus your text is now in easy-to-digest chunks. You just scroll from column to column horizontally, and feel more in control.
Tofu also includes some other useful features to make reading easier for you. You can jump to any point in your text by simply typing some letters near it (without choosing any command first). There's a "View In Columns" service so you can, for example, grab some text from a web page. And it lets you use your voice to navigate text, so you can literally sit back and read.
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der.verrueckte reviewed on 31 Mar 2011
Danke!
+2
+29
Mtin79 reviewed on 08 Jan 2010
+86
+1
+1
http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html
this lets you use tofu in fullscreen, with no menu bar, no window title bar, just a full screen of text and a scrollbar at the bottom.
+58
http://theswitchedonshow.com/community/showthread.php?t=3926
+10
Thanks!
+1
+74
notefarm reviewed on 20 Oct 2008
+230
St00p!d-M0nk3y reviewed on 08 Sep 2008
+2
+5
crucial reviewed on 30 Mar 2006
Tofu does not get nearly the attention it deserves. Tofu makes reading long documents on screen totally painless, and in some ways is better than reading a paper based document as you can see both the page before and after so you can easily scan for things and adjust column width for reading comfort.
If it has bugs, like sometimes spotty connection to services they are of so little consequence, compared to the simplicity and elegance of this app. My biggest gripe is that this is not built into the OS so that I can chose to read web pages without having to switch to it, or compose notes in TextEdit using the same concept.
I just wish there was more software out there that re-though problems and came up with such elegantly simple solutions. Solutions that remove barriers and have interfaces so simple that they need no toolbars, or other extraneous icons. Interfaces that just get out of the way. A lot can be learned from the elegance of this application, when it comes to software, less is often more.
+2
+4
It is, in a way built into the “System”. It introduces a Services menu option (Under File) “View in ToFu”. So all you need to do is highlight the required text and choose that menu selection. I do it all the time and have a keyboard shortcut defined for just that. This works in Cocoa apps (Safari, Camino etc.) but not in Firefox which does not support Services.
I do find that text from a few websites requires some pre-formatting in an editor to replace one return with two to maintain paragraph formatting in ToFu. It's not a major problem though.
Maybe that's a function which could be incorporated into ToFu itself for the times when it's needed.
+4
Hopefully PDF support will be complete with ease o.O
+62
hugelshofer rated on 16 Mar 2011