GUIDE

Reading

Bibliotaph has its own reader, so you don't need to switch to another PDF app. Double-click a book in the Library to open it, or click it once for its details and click Open. A book opened from the Library or Home opens where you left it; one opened from a search result opens at the matching page. A book you own online, such as on D&D Beyond, opens in the online reader instead; see Online libraries.

Getting around a book

Page box: type a printed page number (the one on the page) or a PDF page number, and press Enter. Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End go to the first and last page.
Zoom: the zoom buttons, Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus, or Ctrl and the mouse wheel. Ctrl+0 fits the page to the width again.
Contents: the book's own bookmarks, in a panel on the left. Click one to go there. Once the AI has scanned the whole book, each chapter also shows the settings, environments, themes and creatures found in it.
Page thumbnails: the toolbar button shows a strip of small pages along the bottom. The page you're on is outlined, and pages with notes have a badge. Click a thumbnail to go to it.
Links: links in the PDF work. On an index or contents page without links of its own, the printed page numbers become links too ("Go to page 34"). After following one, Back to page … takes you back.
Use this page as the cover: the picture button at the top makes the page in view the book's cover in the Library, for books whose first page is blank or a plain title sheet. To go back, use it on the first page. Reading the file again keeps your choice.

Find and copy

Ctrl+F finds words in the book. Enter or F3 goes to the next match, Shift+F3 to the previous one.

Drag across text to select it, double-click a word or triple-click a line, then Ctrl+C to copy. Scanned pages can be selected too, using the text Windows read from them. If a PDF doesn't allow copying, Bibliotaph says so.

Notes on pages

Click Note in the reader's toolbar to write a note on the page you're looking at (select some text first to note that page). You can make a note cover several pages with From page and To page. Ctrl+Enter saves it.

The toolbar's notes button shows a panel listing the book's page notes in page order, each with Go to, change and delete (with Undo). The book's details have a Notes tab with the same list, plus a note for the whole book.

A search finds a book by the words in any of its notes. If you get a new version of a book, or read another copy of it, notes follow their page by its text, even when the page number has changed.

Ask this book

With AI set up, Ask in the reader's toolbar opens a panel where you can ask the open book a question, such as "What does the miller know about the cult?". Ask this book on a card's menu, or in a book's details, opens the book with the panel showing. It's offered for PDFs with text and for e-books.

Bibliotaph finds the pages most likely to answer, and the AI answers from those pages only:

Every claim cites its page, as [p. 112]. Click a citation and the book opens at that page with the quotation marked.
Quotations are checked. Bibliotaph looks for each quotation on the pages it cites. One that isn't there is shown in italics without its quotation marks, and a sentence whose citation pointed at a page the AI wasn't given is marked "(not on the pages it read)".
"The pages I was given don't answer that." is what you'll see when the book doesn't seem to cover your question. The panel then lists the pages that came closest.

Under the answer, the passages it read are listed as links. Stop ends an answer early.

You can ask follow-up questions: "And where is his mill?" is understood in the light of the questions before it, and the panel shows "Looked for: …" when it reworded your question to search. Each book keeps its conversation (its last 50 questions), and lists it again when you reopen the book. New conversation starts afresh.

Ask finds pages by their words. With an embedding model, built in or on a model server, it can also find them by meaning, so "who's behind the disappearances" can find a page that never says "disappearances"; see AI. A book's pages are prepared for that in the background as soon as you open it, and the panel says how far it has got.

Windows of their own

Right-click a book and choose Open in new window (or press Shift+Enter, or middle-click a cover) to read it in a separate window. In the reader, Pop out moves the open book into its own window, and Return to main window brings it back. Open as many as you like, the same book twice included. Ctrl+W closes a reader window. Needs review can open a card's book in a window too, to check it before deciding (see Needs review).

Adding to a binder

Add to binder lists your binders, the one you worked on last first, and puts the page you're on into the one you choose; New binder… makes one, and Add pages… at the bottom adds a range. See Binders.

Maps and image packs

Images open with zoom and pan. In an image pack, the Left and Right arrow keys (or the arrows on screen) go to the previous and next image. A pack with PDFs in it, such as a party's character sheets, steps the same way through its files with the arrows on screen: each PDF opens as a PDF, and each image as an image. To make the image in view the pack's cover in place of its mosaic, click the picture button at the top, Use this image as the pack's cover.

WebP images need Microsoft's free WebP Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store. Without them, a WebP file shows in Needs review saying so.

E-books

EPUB books are read into pages of their own, so search, the AI, notes and binders can point at a page as they do in a PDF. When the book marks where its printed pages began, as many publishers' EPUBs do, its pages are those printed pages, with their numbers. Otherwise each chapter starts a page and a page holds about as much text as a printed page of a novel. The same file always gives the same pages.

Kindle books (MOBI, AZW and AZW3) are read the same way, with their contents, pictures and links. Kindle keeps a book's printed page numbers in a separate file, which Bibliotaph doesn't read, so their pages are always cut by length. A Kindle book with DRM, or one in Amazon's newer KFX format, gets a card but can't be read.

Opening an e-book shows it in Bibliotaph's reader as one long page of text in the app's colours, with the book's own pictures. The page box at the top says which page the top of the window is on, and the page box, the contents panel, Find (Ctrl+F, F3 for the next match), Note, Add to binder and Ask this book work as they do in a PDF. Search opens the book at the page it found, with the words marked. Zoom in and Zoom out (or Ctrl+plus, Ctrl+minus and Ctrl with the mouse wheel) make the text bigger or smaller, and Usual size sets it back. A link to another place in the book goes there, with Back; a web link opens in your browser after asking. You can select text and copy it.

A fixed-layout book, such as a comic or a picture book, shows each of its pages as it was drawn, one under another, and Fit page or Fit width fits them to the window.

The book's page is shown as a picture of its text, nothing more: anything in the book that would run a program, fill in a form or reach the internet is left out. The reader uses Microsoft Edge WebView2, which Windows 11 includes; on Windows 10 the reader says so if it's missing. The thumbnail strip and Use this page as the cover are for PDFs.

Locked, protected and missing books

A PDF with a password opens with a box asking for it. Remember it on this PC keeps the password in Windows Credential Manager, never in Bibliotaph's own files. Make its text searchable (ticked unless you untick it) lets Bibliotaph read the book for search. Settings > Passwords lists remembered passwords, with Forget.
A protected (DRM) book that Bibliotaph can't read still gets a card you can fill in, and Open in another app opens it in the app that can. A protected EPUB's or Kindle book's card takes the title, authors and publisher the book gives about itself, which aren't protected; its text isn't read.
A book on a drive that isn't plugged in says so, naming the folder and drive. Plug it in and click Try again.
A book whose file has gone offers Find it, which looks through every library folder, and Show last folder.

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