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DESCRIPTION
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.
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
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
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| Tofu User Reviews (71 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Mar 30 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.
(Version 2.0a2) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Dec 8 2007 |
ALANR I love ToFu and use it ALL the time. 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. Its not a major problem though. Maybe thats a function which could be incorporated into ToFu itself for the times when its needed.
(Version 2.0a2) | |
| Nov 11 2005 |
BABBETTE Very nice for reading etexts from Project Gutenberg. For once reading a Gutenberg book is a pleasure---not as much pleasure as having a real paper book, but a thousand times better than reading an etext in a word processing program. Tofu does tend to quit unexpectedly when leaving full screen mode... a fixable issue I wish there was a way to automatically set the number of columns without tweaking the pixel width of the columns. I'd like to get to a two page layout like a book automatically. It would be nice if you could set the scrolling preferences. When I read a text I get to the lower right hand corner I want to 'turn the page' but Tofu just slides one column over to the 'next column'. this requires a two click motion to get a new screen of columns. It would give a book like feel if you could set it to move the columns so the screen is filled with all new columns. In reading these notes I see what I really want is a preference that is "Give Tofu screen a book like setting"--two columns per screen, scrolling actually is like turning a page. Given that, and I'd pay for this.
(Version 2.0a1) | |
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| Mar 14 2009 |
GAZMAN My only complaint, and its a big one, is that in full-screen mode the menubar is still present and I find it annoyingly distracting when trying to immerse myself in what I'm reading. Until this gets resolved I'm going to stick with Stanza which, although shareware and not as polished, does full screen much better.
(Version 2.0.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Apr 30 2009 |
HIPPY DAVE regarding fullscreen, tofu seems to work perfectly with megazoom: 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.
(Version 2.0.1) | |
| Nov 20 2008 |
TEKL I'm missing a printing option.
(Version 2.0.1) | |
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| Oct 20 2008 |
NOTEFARM Amar is a genius and this program is a must have. Now reading on my computer is a joy.For another app that dose one thing very well I also would recommend Amars other App called Namely. Thank you for writing such perfect software.
(Version 2.0.1) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Mar 29 2006 |
SOMEONE Under version 2.0 alpha, the system wide service no longer works and remembering text position doesn't work at all for PDf files.
(Version 2.0a2) | |
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| Mar 29 2006 |
IMACBIE This is a very neat app. Hopefully PDF support will be complete with ease o.O
(Version 2.0a2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Mar 28 2006 |
HUEVOX This is a simple and effective app. Thank you so much for such a great tool! I would gladly pay a fee to use this.
(Version 2.0a2) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Mar 29 2006 |
if you really feel like sending the developer some money you may donate :+) http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/donate/index.html | |
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