Name: Tofu
Rating: 4.7667 (72 reviews)

Free

Absolutely Free

Tofu overview

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 in version 2.0.1

Updated on Sep 09 2008

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.

Information

License

Free

Size

513 KB

Developer’s website

https://amarsagoo.info/tofu/

Downloads

49081

App requirements

Intel 32
PPC 32
Mac OS X OS X 10.4 or later

0.0

(0 Reviews of )

There are no reviews yet

der-verrueckte

Mar 31 2011

2.0.1

4.5

Version: 2.0.1

I really love Tofu, it greats and it does the job *almost* perfectly. Almost, because as I load .pdf Tofu does not break parragraphs correctly. Only major chapter divisions are divided, not really the parragraphs within. Is there a fix to this issue? has someone else encountered the same problem? Danke!

mmac79

Jan 8 2010

5.0

Best Column Reader on the mac so far. would love to have an export function though.

Gazman

Mar 14 2009

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.

evilinstone

Feb 24 2009

Please add support .fb2 format. Thanks!

Tekl

Nov 20 2008

I'm missing a printing option.

Notefarm

Oct 20 2008

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.

St00pid-M0nk3y

Sep 8 2008

2.0

Version: 2.0

Very cool and easy to use. And it's free! :]

Crucial

Mar 30 2006

2.0a2

Version: 2.0a2

Absolute genius. 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.

Imacbie

Mar 29 2006

This is a very neat app. Hopefully PDF support will be complete with ease o.O

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.

Guest

Nov 11 2005

2.0a1

4.0

Version: 2.0a1

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.

Oct 30 2005

A new release of this excellent application is always a very good news :-)

Oct 29 2005

ver. 2.0a4 requires Tiger (10.4). Its support for PDF requires a Tiger-only dynamic library.

Oct 27 2005

1.3.4

Version: 1.3.4

This is a great little program for anyone who spends a lot of time reading large text files. It is much more pleasant than scrolling through pages in Microsoft Word, and is quick, convenient, and easy to use. However, I have a few suggestions on how you could improve it. 1) Page numbers at the bottom of each column 2) A window below the scroll bar (or at the side of the viewer) that gives a summary of the file contents (i.e. word count, page count, enclosing folder/location) 3) The ability to open multiple files in the one viewer, and then move between them (each time that you add a file to the viewer, a new thumbnail could be added to the toolbar) Keep up the great work!

Sep 13 2005

Awesome application. Was hoping for an update but hey, everything works well. Have only noticed the text missing bog here and there.

Jun 14 2005

I find this a really great little program with a lot of potential. I use it for reading the many books which I have saved as text files. It's a most handy application and most comfortable on my eyes so far. I'm using Tiger with Tofu 1.3.4 and it works great except that once or twice in a document there are letters missing at the end of some lines where I have to guess what the last 1 or 2 letters of the word are...just a small note to consider for the next version...

May 27 2005

why is this only a text reader? what am i going to do with a read only text app? it wouldn't be too hard to allow editing and make this a truly killer application

May 5 2005

1.3.3

Version: 1.3.3

I tried this version of Tofu on a Mac mini running OS X 10.4 Tiger. My screen resolution is 800x600 and I make the font quite large in Tofu. When the Tofu window appears, there is always a huge blank space--like a rectangle that has been erased, obscuring the text behind it. I always have to reduce the font size by one step and then enlarge it again in order for Tofu to draw the text readably. This problem only appeared after I upgraded to Tiger.

May 1 2005

I just love Tofu as it makes me feel like I'm reading a newspaper. The format is so easy on the eyes and brain. I find myself using it as follows: after surfing to a page I want to read the text, I find the 'print format' link on the page, follow it, then select all text via the keyboard, then under 'services' choose 'view in columns', then control-L to view full-screen in Tofu. I just wish there was a simple way to make Safari or some other web browser capable of automatically finding and loading the 'print format' link on a page, then follow the rest of the commands above to make it automated! (version 1.3.3)

Apr 26 2005

Is there a trick to getting the "remember scroll position" preference to work? I'm using Tofu to read a very long html document but it never remembers where I last was in the document.

Tofu