What’s the best way to work with pdfs in 2022?

Here’s a problem I didn’t think I’d be dealing with as the year 2023 draws nigh. What’s the best way to read pdfs?

To explain: I read a lot of digital texts, from emails and social media updates to ebooks, web-native ebooks, and game content. But pdfs remain awkward for me, at least in the ways I work. I like to read them closely or skim texts. I want to see images in great clarity. I need to annotate the copy. And I insist on being able to copy the source material plus my annotations to other applications.

Which is apparently a tall order. For one, many pdf files are hard to read on mobile devices, especially phones. Some pdfs have formatting which might have been very nice in print or on a big screen, such as several columns and neatly integrated visuals, but which force readers on smaller screens to pan left to right and back, zig zagging across the file like a little kid trying to read under a blanket with a tiny flashlight. This drives me to schedule pdf reading for when I can be in my office, happily glaring at my yard-wide desktop screen.

Others lock down text so it can’t be shaped into more pleasing forms. Compare with the Kindle, for example, whose .mobi files are “flowable” — capable of being easily resized — and single column. Yet the Kindle gargles on pdfs.

Then there’s the annotation problem. Some of us grew up writing notes on print texts (books, journals, xeroxes) (and remind me to tell you about my first concussion and the problem of notes…