--- THE LATEST VERSION IS 2.5.x ---
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10402


I was upset with the Reader's PDF support, and tried to figure out what could be done about it. Indeed, many people say PDFs are hard to read because of the small letters. This is not true! (Just try printing something on a laser printer.) Instead, Sony royally messed up the font rendering. This little script is the solution.

PDFrasterFarian renders (rasterizes) PDFs on the computer the correct way, then runs the results through several image processing filters to greatly increase boldness, contrast, and legibility. The result is a BBeB .lrf ebook file that you'll have actual pleasure reading.


The advantages of converting the vector-based PDF into a bitmap book are:

+Far better legibility
+Fast page turns (~2s no matter what)
+Autocropping (which doesn't get reset with each page turn)
+Can display the PDF as half a page per screen, or even a quarter of a page per screen (and one page per screen too, of course)
+Automatic international font support
+100% preserved formatting and graphics
+Table of contents
+You can enter the correct title (also author... you can use this for sorting)
+Fixes PDFs that the Reader can't normally read (eg Google's books)


Disadvantages:

+Conversion takes time (5-20 minutes per 100 pages, but it's twice as fast with a dual-core chip)
+Only one layout per file supported. Ie, can't switch from portrait to landscape mid-read. This is a limitation of rastered, as opposed to vector, graphics.
+File size may increase, especially when splitting each page into many screens. However, not by much.


--INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS--
1. Unzip the rar archive.
2. Double-click 'install' or 'install.cmd'
3. Please take some ritalin and read.
-------------------------------------

The install/uninstall scripts put a context menu option for pdfs into windows explorer. If you right-click a PDF and choose to convert, the script will ask and explain in detail a few parameters before converting. When it's done, out pops a .lrf.

Jah Rastafari!

I love it! As a bonus, PDFrasterFarian converts Google books...

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=52109#post52109

Yes, pics. Oh, please. Oh, please!

Who else has tried this?!

Ok, I finally got a chance to take some pics. As you can see, with v1.0 it goes from unreadable to legible, but with v2.0 I'll finally get the image post-processing to where I want it to be (plus, the boldness is adjustable). v2 should be done within a few days.

image 1 is the unaltered PDF
image 2 is PDFrasterFarian v2.0
image 3 is PDFrasterFarian v1.0
image 4 is the pBook which I also happen to own (which is good, since I got the pdf off bittorrent)

Alex, it's crazy how much more readable pdf files are after your script converts the to lrf. It's even crazier that Google Books pdfs don't display at all on the Reader untill you convert them with your script. Sony should build this kind of conversion into the Connect software. Anyway, thanks for building this. I can't wait for v2!

This is great! I was really bummed out when I discovered Google's downloadable books were unusable on the reader. Gutenberg and manybooks.net are good sources, but it's nice to be able to have old books retain their original typesetting and illustrations.

how exaclty do you use it?

Yes please... some instructions for the lost... thanks! :)

PDFrasterFarian v2.0 is now almost done. Please help test the Beta in this (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=52459#post52459) thread.

RTbar and valkyriesound... are you asking about how to get started or how to choose the right options? To get started, double-click 'install' or 'install.cmd.' Then, right-click a PDF file in Windows Explorer and click PDFrasterFarian. v2.0 explains all this, and hopefully explains the other parameters as well. Let me know if you're still having problems.

Neilm, yeah, Sony really should bundle this type of conversion. Of course, I think it can make the Reader render things right in the first place. (although I guess page turns will still be slow).

Alex, it's crazy how much more readable pdf files are after your script converts the to lrf. It's even crazier that Google Books pdfs don't display at all on the Reader untill you convert them with your script. Sony should build this kind of conversion into the Connect software. Anyway, thanks for building this. I can't wait for v2!

Sony just needs to add support for JPEG 2000 stream decoding in their PDF viewer (Google) and fix their PDF rendering engine to recognize it is rendering for a 16 level monochromatic display and that 255 should not cause error distribution.

Neither of these should have presented a technical challenge to Sony. I'm curious as to why they haven't patched these issues yet.

Hey Sony, if you need help: check out my work on the same issues on the iLiad. :D

Man oh man SOOO close masny mags are still not quite legible in portrait "ok" in landscape but landscape is not ideal. Looks like I am going to just have to get aggressive with the cropping :-) is there a way in acrobat to individually crop "dynamically" by drawing on each page ? right now I have to goto document crop and pick each page seperately or "global" changes. would rather just skim through it and "draw" my crop and then tell it to have at it when I am done.

Excellent work on this BTW !! truly nice peice of kit you put together.

the only thing I can ask for is more speed :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Nasty Problem with this program. well technically its just a nuisance but I hate it :-) (the bug not the program)

So far every single file I convert it FLIPS page 1 and 2 ie its puts page 2 as the first page and page 2 as the second page. ??? this time I even told it to PREVIEW page 1 and it indeed showed me the proper page but when it was all done I still had page 2 FIRST in the reader and connect software ???

Suggestions?
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

whoa... no idea what's causing the 1 vs 2 page problem. what version of pdfrasterfarian are you using? (use v2. it's not "final," but in all respects it's better than v1). If you have this problem with v2... and you have this problem with every document.... i'm at a loss, but i guess try posting one of your pdfs. i've never encountered this myself (with v1 either, frankly).

i'm also looking into making pdfrasterfarian faster, we'll see how it goes.

p.s. yeah, go for the aggressive cropping. that and a boldness value of 5 (in v2) seems to do the trick for me with my mags in portrait. I haven't found a good utility for manual cropping, but JAP comes close. I keep wanting to see if SNeS (its author) and I could do something to use his cropping gui and my post-processing. Maybe you can send him a pm with kind words.

scotty... im guessing they don't support jpeg2000 because it'd be very slow, much slower than on iliad (then again, all pdfs are slow). as for 255 causing dithering.... really, it does that? how dumb of sony!

Damn I made a short 7 pager test sample to show you and now its putting TWO PAGES before page one. the PDF looks fine but the converted file has the pages out of order. goto www.nerys.com/stuff and click on sony reader then test conversion

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

which version of windows are you using? (also home vs pro)

Hi Alex,
I love your program (havnt actually got my reader yet but doing some conversion in anticipation)

I'd just like to report a small bug, it doesnt handle blank pages. Try a PDF with one blank page and in the image conversion stage it has an error saying something similar to 'no image found' Im almost certain its caused by blank pages I've tested it with two seperate PDFs with blank pages and it gets stuck each time.

Thanks for the software!

*edit* Saw this is being dealt with on another thread :) many thanks.

XP Pro SP2 (I assume you were asking me :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/

Is there a way to have the PDF file retain its original Table of COntents after being processed and converted by PDFRasterfarian? it seems like eveyr time I try the PDF file gets converted beutifully, yet the Table of COntents is lost completely.

All help is appreciated!

some versions had bugs with this, but v2.1.3 converts the ToC well

Is there anywhere I can find a step by step how to use this.

found it..

There's no howto, but I tried hard to make the UI into its own howto. If you have any questions, please post them and i'll try to clarify.

In other news, v2 is finally stable enough to, well, call it stable. I'll post it here in addition to the devel thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=54760). Find it on page 1

Thanks again for the awesome proggy Alex! This thing works like a champ and it's even more cool that you're continually fine-tuning it to perfection, I know it takes a lot of time, patience, and work to keep things going; so thanks! One thing I'd like to point out, you said v2.1.5 is available as new, but I haven't seen it posted on the Beta forum or here (still seeing v1.0.0 posted here and v2.1.4 on the neta list). Not complaining, as it works for me as is, but thought I'd bring it to your attention.

PS Thanks for optimizing this to take advantage of dual-core, speeds things up and then some (not that I mind the wait, considering the results).

Azayzel

sorry, i'm experiencing technical difficulties. (it's turning out pretty much impossible to upload anything to mobileread from shanghai).

v2.1.5 is no biggie. Basically, I cleaned up some text and explanations here and there. The most important thing is that when you see the screen asking for "portrait", "landscape", or "quarters of a page", it is asking you whether you'd like to fit a PDF page all on one screen, or split it among two or four screens. Many people thought "landscape" was for landscape documents, not the Reader's landscape mode.

is there an alternative location to download 2.1.5?

the question, nerys, is if there's an alternative way to upload 2.1.5. Mobileread has set up an ftp for me, but I'm not able to upload there either. It uploads for a while at some ridiculously slow speed, and then dies. Anyone know of an ftp client that will resume uploads and maybe do error correction?

zip it up and send it to me I will toss it up on my site till mobileread gets things sorted out.

When I try to install I see 2 path not found lines then it says installation ok. Do not see pdfrastarian in right click menu. V2.14, xp pro sp2

sounds like you need adobe acrobat

I have NO idea how to install this program. Can someone run me through it?

Thanks.

i've finally fixed up the original post with install instructions and a link to the latest version. sorry it took so long.

Sweet! 2.1.6, I need to make some time so I can test it out and see what's new. Thanks Alex of the Corporeal Pressings! ;-p

Hmmm it's not working for me, perhaps it's because my OS is Japanese? But it won't convert what I want it to, and when I tried to convert an English PDF it ended up just being entirely blank :p. the error message is:

Input File Name : D:\PDFrasterFarian 2.1.6\\temp\temp.lrs
Output File Name : D:\testpdf.lrf
ファイルの整合性をチェックします
整合性のチェック完了
[Warning ] Publisherの文字列が長すぎて、表示しきれない場合があります。
書誌情報ファイルの整合性をチェックします
書誌情報ファイルの整合性チェック完了
[Warning ] Invalid value blockrule. Set Default value [line: 25]
正常終了

It shows a warning about too long Publisher value, but the last line is "Normal termination".

Perhaps I'm an idiot . . .

I am new on this forum and am considering picking up the Sony Reader after seeing it on display at Borders. I am a bit concerned since, as I search the Connect site, I don't see many of my favorite authors available. No Pynchon. No Yann Martel. No Andre Dubus. Interesting . . .

But here's to the point:

I downloaded your program and wanted to give it a shot. I have Adobe Reader installed, but the only unzipper I have is WinZip. I don't think it can handle your .rar file. Any suggestions?

I plan to use my reader to take along some gaming books (D&D) I have in .pdf to gaming sessions and was going to try and convert some just for fun. Will these things be readable?

Anyway. I hope to learn a lot just hanging around the forums and reading what I can.

Thanks for the help.

Get WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm) to handle RAR (and many others) archives. You can also try 7-Zip or IZarc for freeware extraction alternatives.

It shows a warning about too long Publisher value, but the last line is "Normal termination".
hmmm but that still doesn't explain why it doesn't work at all :s. Either a complete white document or not converted at all :s

I plan to use my reader to take along some gaming books (D&D) I have in .pdf to gaming sessions and was going to try and convert some just for fun. Will these things be readable?

I'm not sure how good your game manuals will look, even after conversion; mainly due to their original size. Most D&D manuals are a bit larger than regular US magazines, which when converted are fairly usable. Not sure how small the font will be once converted. Of course if you don't mind viewing in landscape mode, you'll probably be able to read it much easier (I think that when you use the software to convert in landscape mode, it's optimized at a differnt setting than in portait mode. Alex will need to confirm/deny this though, as I don't know).

Secondly, if things do work out for you... you might want to set some bookmarks on each chapter and other important sections ahead of time since you cannot skip to a certain page - though you can skip in percentages of the page, as well as 10 pages at a time.

Let me know how things work out for you, or maybe post an demo of a page or two that works/didn't work for you. Have fun!

I'm just not following exactly how this thing works. I had no trouble doing the install. I saw all of the well documented comments about each option. My question is exactly how do you use this program? I right clicked on a PDF file and selected PDFrasterFarian. Then I am prompted to select the program I want to "use to open this file". That brings up several programs on my PC including Adobe reader, AutoImager (which I installed specifically for this process), etc. No matter what I select, nothing seems to "happen". The PDFs look the same (at least on my PC). Also where exactly does AutoImager fit in. Does PDFrasterFarian automatically launch AutoImager or am I suppose to have it running already. Sorry for my frustration, but based on the feedback in this forum, it sounds like this is a great application. Loading readable PDFs in my Reader would add major functionality to a good product. Lost in Austin...
Thx, Joe

I guess I need some help... When installing 2.1.6, I get the followingThe operation completed successfully

Error: Access is denied.




Installation done...

TO USE: right-click a PDF file in Windows Explorer
select 'PDFrasterFarian'


ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE:
In order to use the Explorer right-click menu, you need to install either
Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat Pro

In order to use FULL image processing, you will need to install AutoImager
autoimager.com/download.asp (note, trial won't expire)

To do manual cropping use Adobe Acrobat Pro, which gives the best results,
or the free JAP software, at files.ebook.googlepages.com/setup.exe

Press RETURN to close...and right clicking a .pdf file doesn't show a PDFrasterFarian option or any other obvious choice for launching a conversion.

It seems AutoImager is no longer available for downloading :-(

Could the necessary processing be done with ImageMagick?

I guess I need some help... When installing 2.1.6, I get the followingand right clicking a .pdf file doesn't show a PDFrasterFarian option or any other obvious choice for launching a conversion.

Same here. I saw two "Access is Denied" messages, and no context menu option afterwards.

It seems AutoImager is no longer available for downloading :-(

Ouch, that sucks! Since there was a bit of concern expressed here (and I was a bit curious myself to see what happened), I decided to Google and drop by the website. After clicking on the "Download" tab and seeing the "Product Not Currently Available for Download" remark, I simply clicked on the little icon next to it that and voila, it took me to SnapFiles.com where I was able to initiate the download of the demo.

Try what I mentioned above and you shouldn't have any problems. Perhaps they're having webserver issues ATM and will have it fixed shortly. Indeed, it would suck if it was no longer available for d/l (but I'm sure we'd have a few resourceful people who've d/l'd a backup just for this scenario; VM's work great!), not sure what Alex would do in this case, but he's pretty resourceful and persistent so it wouldn't take long for a workaround.

Good luck! :happy2:

Edit: Sorry for the quick but inaccurate advice. I decided to run the setup file I d/l from the above-mentioned artcle and found that AutoImager's developers, Mystik Media, decided to have the software delivered via Internet dowload using the setup program as a client (I remember thinking this during the first install, though I didn't drop to my Temp directory to salvage what was d/l'd, sorry). When I ran the setup, I received the error message that the software is no longer available for d/l. Grrr, who knows what happened.

It seems this thread should be made sticky...

Alex, can you give an overview of what the process is that you use? I've been wishing for a DJVu viewer on the reader, but in the abscence of that, I was wondering whether the same principles can be applied to making usable books out of non-OCR scans (I have some graphically intensive reference material that I would love to put on the reader). One possibility would be to turn the scans into a PDF and then run your tool, assuming that would even work - but another might be to apply the same transforms to the .png files directly, and only then turn them into a PDF.

This sounds like just what I have been waiting for. However I have installed as per the instructions but don't see and reference to PDFrasterFarian win the context menu when I right click on a pdf file in Windows Explorer.

I have Acrobat installed and am using Vista Ultimate

Any help would be gratefully appreciated

Hi, i also had a lot of problems running PDFrasterFarian, it always gave me an error. - Here is what i did:

- i installed AutoImager3.03 into c:\programme\AutoImager
=> you can get it here:
http://www.internet-magazin.de/downloads/cm/dtt/downloadQQ/AutoImager_3.03/QQareaidZ30ZfileidZ2350/AutoImager3.03.exe.html
- i installed AutoImager3.03 again (repair)
=> the second time i did this, i had to restart my computer (weird...)
- then i extracted the PDFrasterFarian folder into: c:\programme
- run the install.cmd from the PDFrasterFarian folder
=> the adobe reader has to be the standard reader for pdf
- right click on any PDF you want to convert and choose: PDFrasterfarian
- follow the instructions

this way it worked for me...

hope it helps!

_darius

Alex, it has been mentioned before in this and other threads about the difficulty some are having trying to install the software. I have been looking and the few bits of advice that people gave have not so far helped me. Do you know what is in conflict when I get the "Error: Access denied." message. I have all of the required additional programs (I think) but I am frustrated by this message. The software tells me that the installation has been completed but the right click access is not there. Any ideas?

ugh... i'm sorry about going awol for two weeks. I was hoping 2.1.6 would work well, but apparently it doesn't (at least for some people). on top of that, autoimager disappearing also caught me by surprise.

AutoImager can be downloaded here (http://projects.mobileread.com/reader/users/alex_d/AutoImager_SETUP.rar). The link is also on the front page.

The "Access denied" error message may be because you do not have administrative priviledges and cannot install applications or modify the windows registry. Do not run 'install' as a limited user.

Regarding Windows Vista... I have no idea how well it would work, but I've heard that the new security policies prevent the executing of scripts (PDFrasterFarian is a script) and may also be the reason you get "access denied" when the installer tries to modify the registry. I'll install Vista soon, but for now perhaps others can offer advice on how to make it work.

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs). However, regarding dejavu... i tried looking for a simple, command-line renderer (eg, djvu->png) and the only thing i found was for linux/cygwin. Also, i've tried looking for another program that can do image dilation besides AutoImager and have not been able to find anything. The algorithm is pretty simple, though, so i may be able to program it in directly (but it might be slower).

I always get this message whenever I open the lrf file in Connect Reader:

"Operation failed due to error."

wtf? :(

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs).

BTW I'm writing a web2book plugin to do this too (folder of images). Not that you should stop...

I am trying to understand just what AutoImager is for as a standalone. I installed it and PDFrasterFarian per the first post to this thread. I do see in PDFrasterFarian where it says that the bolding requires AutoImager. Is that all I need the autoimager for? Is it accomodating PDFrasterFarian automatically? I would like to improve two column PDF files from journals so they read still better on my reader than what I am getting on PDFrasterFarian. I wish I could scroll around a page with the reader.

Anyway, I've been learning .net and I'll rewrite pdfrasterfarian to get rid of its ridiculous text-mode ui, make it compatible with Vista, and usable without an explorer right-click menu. I'll also put in some long-promised features (esp. enhancing and collating a folder of images instead of pdfs). However, regarding dejavu... i tried looking for a simple, command-line renderer (eg, djvu->png) and the only thing i found was for linux/cygwin. Also, i've tried looking for another program that can do image dilation besides AutoImager and have not been able to find anything. The algorithm is pretty simple, though, so i may be able to program it in directly (but it might be slower).This would be wonderful!!! I haven't been able to get the current version to work, but that's okay as I now really look forward to the next version even more. I would be ecstatic if I can actually read "regular" PDFs on the Reader, and half page mode in landscape is perfectly fine for almost all the documents I would want to read. Also, I'm not concerned about conversion times (the parts which happen while I'm not babysitting the process), so it would be a plus to eliminate AutoImager in my opinion.

First of all, this last version finally works on my system. I can see why people are so excited about this program. What a great piece of software.

No for the problem. I tried converting The Foxfire Book Vol. 1. THis book has a lot of inline graphics some full page. The conversion is loosing pages adjoining the graphics. I'll go from page 22 to a full page image on page 23 to page 25. Any ideas.

Is there a way to invoke the script with all the parameters straight from the command line? I have 'lots' of pdfs that I want to convert and I'd rather just create a script with all the data and leave it to run over a (long) weekend.

"I would like to improve two column PDF files from journals so they read still better on my reader than what I am getting on PDFrasterFarian. I wish I could scroll around a page with the reader."

Scrolling is completely impossible unless you start loading custom firmware onto the Reader. No one has done anything like that yet, although I think people have figured out ways how it could be programmed in theory. What I'd really like to see is firmware that lets you use the reader as an auxiliary display for the PC. With the processing done on the computer, ink-speed page flips and scrolling would be a piece of cake. Anyway, do you have any other ideas to improve PDFfrasterFarian's output besides scrolling? Have you tried quarters-of-a-page mode? It's very good for two-column documents.

Anyway, I'm done rewriting the dilate filter from scratch using c++ and c# so that autoimager is no longer needed. It even works faster. I'll bundle it up and release as the next 2.1.x. I also plan to rewrite the 8bit->2bit dithering step so that it outputs precise values (0, 85, 170, 255). imageMagick (the other graphics exe) doesn't do this right, often affecting contrast and image quality. While I'm at it, i'll also redo the resize step to see if using another algorithm can produce clearer, cleaner output than the resize+unsharp imageMagick combo I use now.


Stingo... nope, not a clue. Please post the pdf.

eldel... technically, "promptless mode" is very easy to implement. All the pieces are in place for passing defaults via the commandline, except the part where it shuts up and doesn't ask you any questions. No one has really requested this feature before so I didn't get around to implementing it, but I'll try putting this in the next 2.x release.

Alex,

Thank you. I appreciate your contribution to making readers more useful! I did try quartering, but have not yet found it practical. Part of the reason is that a two column article also has images that are across the full page, so the landscape mode seems to keep those intact. It's only that the size of the fonts even in landscape are a little small for this pair of aging eyes. As time goes on I expect that readers will be bigger and thus more practical overall, but I am pleased to be learning how to work with it now.

As far as other ideas, I did buy a book from Connect and was delighted to see that the footnotes were highlighted so I could jump to them. (I haven't figured out how to jump back yet except using the history funtion.) So I suppose extracting images from PDFs and inserting a link like the footnote might then allow the text to quartered. I would wager I can do that with some of the programs I have seen referenced, but it may be beyond my abilities at this time. CHeers and thanks again!!

After clicking on a footnote you can jump back to where you were by clicking left on the joystick

Version 2.2.0 is now posted in the beta forum (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=59556#post59556)

As promised, AutoImager is now gone. Also, if the right-click menu doesn't work for you, you can now just double-click "PDFrasterFarian.cmd" (after unzipping everything) and it'll show a Windows dialog to select a file and also ask you where to save it (I know, I know, futuristic technology is amazing).

These new features were made possible with .NET Framework 2.0, so you need to have that installed. However, chances are it's already installed on your PC (e.g., if you have ATI display drivers). If not, you can download it here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en). If you don't know what it is, it's a lot like Java but much less crappy.


Also, image quality has been improved by tweaking the processing algorithm and writing my own downsampling filter. It's now a good bit sharper with higher contrast, but perhaps the older filter looked more "natural" and antialiased by virtue of fuzziness. (comment on which one you like more... i might put the old one back as an option under advanced mode)

Anyway, it's in the beta thread because it hasn't been tested much yet, so if you'd like you can wait a bit to see if any bugs are found.

Version 2.2.0 is now posted in the beta forum (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=59556#post59556)
{snip}
Anyway, it's in the beta thread because it hasn't been tested much yet, so if you'd like you can wait a bit to see if any bugs are found.
OK, I've decided to give this tool a try. It runs, without errors. However, it takes my 100kb PDF and over-writes it with a 2kb PDF. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, since all the words are missing from the new PDF, so what did I do wrong? should I have expected it to over-write the input file?

It should NOT be over-writing the original PDF.

It seems there's some big issues with 2.2.0.

I'll let you know when I get this sorted out and when there is a "stable" 2.2.x version available. For now, we can continue discussion in the beta thread. I probably shouldn't have mentioned 2.2 until it's been used by a few people.

I've posted 2.2.1 and am crossing my fingers that it'll work, but we'll see...

Alex, check your PM box!

I still get 2KB files

Please help!
I got the massage 'Evaluation period expired, please contact pdfsupport@pdf-tools.com' while I try to use PDFrasterfarian 2.1.6.
pdcat.exe may cause this problem.
Could I have any solution for this massage?

I ran into this message as well, but the output still came out OK (albeit a bit large in size; usually PDFR makes things smaller, not larger :confused: )

I solved the problem below by myself.
Eliminating 'EOF' in the crop_ps.awk works fine!
PDFrasterFaran is a really great tool!
---------------------------------------
Hey, guys.
I have trouble in using autocrop option.
When I turned the option on, I always get blank page only. If it is turned off, I get the converted lrf document but the document is not splitted even though it is set to half or quarter splitting. Please give me a clue to solve the autocroping problem.

Previewing, I got a message as below.
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: EOF
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: ^ syntax error
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: EOF prints;
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: ^ invalid in expression

Thanks, daiphile, i'll incorporate that fix into the next release. It's weird that this is the first I heard of this error. I hope if I make the change it doesn't cause problems for others.

As for pdcat... despite the message it doesn't seem to affect anything. Don't worry about it, but i'll try to find another tool. This also doesn't affect file size. The LRF comes out larger than the PDF if the PDF didn't have any pictures.

astra_lestat, thanks for the feedback but talk about the beta build on the beta thread.

Sorry Alex, but I can't seem to follow you on the filesize question. I'm just a little curious as to how the LRF is larger than the intial PDF when every other conversion has always resulted in a much smaller LRF. I understand that the LRF contains meta data, but does it really double the amount of characters in a given file when the actual text is present in the original PDF; i.e., almost all of my originals were rastered versions prior to PDFR, so didn't contain any actual text.

It's ok if you can't explain it (be tough with what limited info I've provided you with; i.e., the original file), but thought I'd ask anyway. Thanks for the clarification!

PDFRasterfarian is awesome.
I, however, am insane.

I'm using one of the 2.1.x betas...it works great, but do I remember an option where you could manually change the cropping options? Or is that just my crazy broken memory?

Happy reading!

My LRFs don't contain any characters. When a PDF contains text, that text is turned into PNG images (it is rastered). This enables me to control the quality of font rendering, run post-processing "photoshop" filters, and preserve exact formatting. The images, though, turn out pretty small since they only have 4 colors and limited resolution. If you start with a PDF document that contains lots of pictures (especially high-res color), the end result will turn out much smaller because the information that the Sony Reader can't display gets stripped. However, if the PDF was just text and a few vectors (lines, circles, etc.) then the LRF will come out larger. Of course, given 2gb sd cards it doesn't really matter.


Daft Willie,
Maybe you're thinking of the overlap settings when you use the mode that splits a page four ways. Of course, you can also choose whether or not to do automatic cropping. Manual cropping, however, would be too impractical with a text interface. To do manual cropping I suggest first running the PDF either through Acrobat Pro (what I do) or JAP (which may give you even more control, but it preforms a rasterization step also and the final quality gets reduced a bit). If anyone knows any other PDF manual cropping programs, Please let us know (maybe I can just integrate it into the toolset). Manual cropping will be a big feature of pdfrasterfarian 3.0, whenever that sees the light of day.

Good day all.

I've downloaded PDFrasterFarian 2.1.6. When I install it and run it, it labeled 2.1.4.

I initially tried 2.1.3. This version processed a document, but I couldn't find the final file. I upgraded and when I run 2.1.4, it processes 2 pages and stalls (it could still be processing for all I know). I is definitely taking more time than 2.1.3.

Help!

Dr. S.

Hi Alex,

Wonder if you could help me. I'm using your wonderful software. But every file I use PDFraster on increases in size dramatically. Thus a 600 K article would go up to about 2.2MB in size while a book 1.2 MB in size would increase to 15MB after the change. Is this normal or am I missing something?

Thks in advance.

PDFrasterFarian converts all text to images, so the size increase is natural.

Yeah, I figured as much. Almost all of my previous uses of PDFR had been on already rasterized PDF's, so PDFR almost always shrunk the file size down quite a bit. The other day I ran it on a PDF that contained the embedded text and when it was done the result was double the original file size. I guess PDF's have some type of built-in text compression that is much greater than simple raster images. I'm going to try feeding the raw content into another program and seek optimal output size vs quality.

I still stand by my opinion that PDFRasterfarian is by far one of the best tools for getting PDF's to look good and perform better on your Reader.

ditto

I've installed the latest versions on my laptop. They seem to work better than on my work PC. However the file that the software produces locks up my reader. When I try to open the file the reader locks requiring a soft reset to get going.

I hope this helps.

Dr. S.

Good day all.

I tried processing a PDF file with my work PC again. I get errors when the Dilate filter is tried. I've installed .net 2.0 and .net sdk. Have I missed something?

Thanks in advance.

Dr. S.

Where is the link to download this program?

[NEVER MIND!!!! SOLVED MY OWN PROBLEM. If Adobe Acrobat is not the DEFAULT program for opening pdf's, you won't see the context menu entry...]


Sorry, but I have tried to install the program. I have Acrobat, I have the image program, install seems to go fine, but no context menu. No errors at all on the install. I'm very confused.

Help?

-chuck

Please help!
I got the massage 'Evaluation period expired, please contact pdfsupport@pdf-tools.com' while I try to use PDFrasterfarian 2.1.6.
pdcat.exe may cause this problem.
Could I have any solution for this massage?

I have the same error.
Should I worry about it?

Set the date back a few months into 2006 and it will work.

Yes, pdcat.exe cause this problem.
If you wait a few the problem is solved.
Try to convert only one page in a pdf file.
After you click on ok when pdcat.exe signaling the end of evaluation period, PDFfrasterfarian will continue to work normally like nothing will be happen.

Hello,

I have created a tool called PDFRead which will convert PDFs for reading on multiple ebook devices. It isn't as polished as PDFRasterFarian, but it can run on Windows and Linux and has some enhancements.

See http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=63167

polished is definately the wrong word to use with PDFrasterFarian. I'm the kind of guy who likes to figure out all the core, internal functionality but doesn't have the experience or the patience to do all the more mundane, but important elements.

anyway, I see your software also does dilation. (I think you were the guy who asked me how to program all that... glad i could help.) Does it do a simple dilate and shrink, or does it do the unsharp filter too (ie, the full pdfrasterfarian treatment)? If so, why don't we just add any features that might still be unique to pdfrasterfarian 2, test it fully with sony reader, and call it pdfrasterfarian 3? (I dunno, I really hate the linux practice of instead of releasing versions of utilities with more features, improvements, etc, they just release a whole separate program whenever a new author with new ideas joins. It results in needless confusion, creates barriers for adoption, and stalls progress. In the long term, it definately stalls progress. E.g. instead of using vim some people still use vi. And no one uses even better takes on vim because they haven't heard of them and don't want to be botherd. And no one wants to make an even better version of the better versions of vim because there's already a dozen utilities floating around and no one will know or use your stuff. UGh, it's just so stupid. Anyway, sorry for the rant.)

anyway, I see your software also does dilation. (I think you were the guy who asked me how to program all that... glad i could help.) Does it do a simple dilate and shrink, or does it do the unsharp filter too (ie, the full pdfrasterfarian treatment)?

Well, I just do a dilate and shrink -- in my experience the unsharp filter provided negligible benefit, so I removed it (I think you mentioned that too).


If so, why don't we just add any features that might still be unique to pdfrasterfarian 2, test it fully with sony reader, and call it pdfrasterfarian 3? (I dunno, I really hate the linux practice of instead of releasing versions of utilities with more features, improvements, etc, they just release a whole separate program whenever a new author with new ideas joins. It results in needless confusion, creates barriers for adoption, and stalls progress.
[snip]


Well, it's more of a complete rewrite than a simple port -- I've taken different approaches in a lot of places, and a different set of tools is used. I started off with a version specific for my 1100 (which was nothing like PDFRasterFarian), made it generic enough so now that it has almost all the functionality and a lot of other features -- it wasn't just another case of the Not-Invented-Here syndrome in action.

But yes, it does make sense to simply call it PDFRasterFarian 3 instead of a new name. Can you take a look at the current version and see if there is something I have missed/can add?

Hi,

I dont possess the sony reader yet because I will use it to read pdf´s only and am not sure whether the reader is appropriate. This software looks great. I happend to generate the LRF file but dont know how to open it in windows so that I can see the result. Does anybody know how to open it?

Thank you very much.

dexter

Download the "Connect" software from Sony and install it. This allows you to view LRF files on your PC.

Thanks. It worked.

just one last Q: Is the pdf going to be smoother in sony reader than it is displayed in the CONNECT Reader? (the result is not that great in the Connect Reader).

Am sorry to say that but the reader and PDF currently do not walk together :(
If PDF is a priority number 1 for you then you have to look for anothewr eBook device.

moved

dexter, yes, it'll be much smoother when viewed on eInk than on an LCD. Also, DO NOT preview it in connect software!!! It resizes the images, destroying the quality. PDFrasterFarian has a 'preview' feature. Use that instead. You can also buy an SD card, put the pdf and lrf on there, walk into a borders or compusa, etc, and try it out on a real life Reader. That is definately the best plan.

"Am sorry to say that but the reader and PDF currently do not walk together
If PDF is a priority number 1 for you then you have to look for anothewr eBook device."
astra_lestat, do you say that after having used pdfrasterfarian? you also say "currently," which means you think things can be improved. do you have ideas?

astra_lestat, do you say that after having used pdfrasterfarian? you also say "currently," which means you think things can be improved. do you have ideas?

Last time I used PDFRasterfarian it produced 2KB files :(
I gave up after that.

I have a very small hope that one day someone is going to come up with a near perfect solution :) As they say: hope is the last thing to die.

astra_lestat, I assume you got the problems with 2.2.1 -- you should have kept 2.1.6, it worked well for most people (some people did have/are having problems with 2.2.1).

If you want, you can try PDFRead (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10184), which is eventually going to be merged as PDFRasterFarian 3. It has a very basic GUI, and should work for most people out-of-the box.

astra_lestat, I assume you got the problems with 2.2.1 -- you should have kept 2.1.6, it worked well for most people (some people did have/are having problems with 2.2.1).

If you want, you can try PDFRead (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10184), which is eventually going to be merged as PDFRasterFarian 3. It has a very basic GUI, and should work for most people out-of-the box.

I think you are right, and I have downloaded pdf read yesterday :) I plan to test it over the weekend. Thanks!

I have finally found a third-party program that can do dilation besides AutoImager!

This program is part of the wonderful NetPBM package which unfortunately seems to sit in ImageMagick's shadow yet offers much more powerful functionality in an easier to use interface. It has allowed me to do dilate, simple average-based downsampling*, and even produce pngs with exactly the colors the Sony Reader can display.** Also, images seem to come out much clearer due to better dithering.

In NetPBM I've also discovered an "edge enhancement" filter which seems like it could do a better job than the sharpening filter. This remains to be verified by you guys.

One downside of NetPBM is that it is considerably slower. Sigh. Because of this and also in case you like the sharpening more (and also to let you compare before and after since the sharpening could be put into the new path***), i'll keep the AutoImager/ImageMagick processing path (with the tweak to sharpening that I put into the defunct 2.2.x but never included in the stable 2.1.x series.)

anyway, stay tuned for PDFrasterFarian 2.3.0. I'll release it soon.

now... i still have to add djvu/images support and a goddamn gui (or at least a normal installer... not something that's really needed, but something that would make new users more comfortable).


* the advanced filtering that imagemagick always does and doesn't allow you to turn off results in a blurrier image.
** imagemagick would try to find the four "optimal" colors to create its palette. These colors would often turn out to not be exactly the ones that the Reader uses, resulting in a 2nd round of dithering. netpbm lets me specify the palette explicitly.
*** one annoying thing is that to do a sharpening in netpbm, you have to call like three commands to create intermediate masks and other bs. this is more powerful, but it's much slower and there should be a quick path.

Any new developments?

Does anyone know if pdfrasterfarian has compatability issues with the Vista operating system? I installed version 2.1.6 and when I right-click a pdf file, there is no option popping up to choose pdfrasterfarian. Thanks in advance.

In order to do the install of PDFrasterFarian on Vista, I had to start an Administrator command prompt by right-clicking on the "Command Prompt" icon and selecting "Run as Administrator".

The install.cmd script does things that require privileges, and they don't work unless you start a privileged command prompt.

That said, while I did get the right-click PDFrasterFarian option, it wouldn't work on my system, complaining that an included component had expired, and I haven't looked at it since.

Also, guys, the latest version is 2.5.x it's available here:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10402

my apologies for not updating the OP

also, please ignore the "component had expired" message.

Does the PDFrasterFarian work to the file of Japanese?thanks:smash:

Does the PDFrasterFarian work to the file of Japanese?thanks:smash:

yes, because PDFrasterFarian isn't "reading" the PDF. It creates images from it.

First time poster that just got my reader in the mail last night!! Help ! Im running vista and i cant install rasterfarian. when i try to install it says access is denied. push any key to continue. Then after i hit any key it takes me to this page from microsoft where it tells me to download "Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)" so i download dotnetfx.exe and installed it. Then i try to install rasterfarian after that and still the same thing happens. Tells me access is denied,and directs me to the same microsoft page again. Pleas help thanks !!

P.s great community here,cant wait to be part of it. Now that i got a reader !!

I guess no body has encountered this problem before. Sucks for me i guess.

It might take a little while for a reply - I've only used Rasterfarian a couple of times and not on Vista. It might also help if you edited your first post to change the thread title to something like "PDF Rasterfarian install problem - Vista."

Sorry that I couldn't help any further than that. :( ;)

guys, I am new...Had a huge and maybe stupid question:

I downloaded, extracted, and installed RasterFarian v2.5, ran once of the configuration, everything seems fine. When I started to do conversion, I got a windows dialogue error: "PDF Library - Evaluation period expired, please contact pdfsupport@pdf-tools.com"...Am I doing anything wrong, what am I suppose to do. If I click ok, my converted lrf will simply be blank.

NOTE: Please ignore the "evaluation expired" warning message.
operation will continue normally (and may take a minute)

This is the in the first message when you run the application so I think you can disreguard the message.

I am also a newbie I found that this applaction can convert some of the PDF files I have but on most of my PDF files it will only create a 2k .lrf file. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?

That's weired then..

I got this evaluate expiration message and all the pdf converted are BLANK....also, when I get this message, I have to go through the configuration steps everytime when I try a conversion.

Can someone help me pls?

Its cool,thanks for trying,i guess no pdf files for me. Oh well,i still like my new reader. Even though i got it for pdf's.

Anyone any ideas?

CUT
P.s great community here,cant wait to be part of it. Now that i got a reader !!

Hello:

I want to immediately state that I don't use the program - but there are VERY knowledgable people here who will be happy to offer assistance.

My reason here is to say hello and to welcome you to the community.

Don

Its cool,thanks for trying,i guess no pdf files for me. Oh well,i still like my new reader. Even though i got it for pdf's.
After you installed .net 2.0 did you reboot before trying to install again? Are you sure the account you are using has access to install where you are trying to?

yes,

VISTA USERS MUST RIGHTCLICK AND RUN THE INSTALLER WITH ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES.

Ok, that "trial period has expired" message is a bad sign. I've sent alex a private message about it.

Mark

Additional note: I heard back from Alex. Everyone who is using the current version of this product needs to make a choice. Alex is using a commercial tool as part of the conversion process, a tool which has not been paid for (thus the "trial expired" message) and cannot be distributed as part of a product even if it WAS paid for.

I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate the effort that Alex has put into producing this. However, distribution of a trial version of a commercial tool like this is just wrong, and Alex is quite aware of what he has done. I'm not going to reproduce his reply here, but I will say that I have no intention of using this tool while it violates the license of pdf-tools (the company that makes pdcat.exe).

If you are using Rasterfarian, then you need to decide whether you want to encourage this kind of behavior. I certainly won't. I love my reader but I'm not going to break the law to read PDFs on it.

I'm sure there are going to be some people who insult me for taking this position, or tell me "Who is it hurting?" or some other justification. And you are certainly within your right to do so. Remember, though, that people go to jail or pay fines for distributing illegal copies of software and I have no intention of doing either one of those things.

Mark

Simple solution. Don't distribute the pdf-tools with the package, and point the user to the pdf-tools.com website, telling them how to download the trial version and how to install the files.

RasterFarian will still work the way it is. If the user decides to buy the tool, it's his/her own choice.

Simple solution. Don't distribute the pdf-tools with the package, and point the user to the pdf-tools.com website, telling them how to download the trial version and how to install the files.

RasterFarian will still work the way it is. If the user decides to buy the tool, it's his/her own choice.
But how do you overcome the expired without spending more on this program then the ready now costs?

Several people have made excellent points. It would be entirely legal for people to go request eval copies of the pdf-tools command line suite... it's just not something everyone would want to do, and would make setting up RasterFarian even harder.

Of course, Alex has basically told me that because of my actions, he doesn't want me using his program (which I won't, especially since it would be hypocritical of me to use something that I have specifically reported as being a problem). My goal was not to inconvenience people or to piss off Alex... I don't want to see MobileRead get into trouble. I will say this too: I only reported the problem to Alex and MobileRead. I did not tell pdf-tools or anyone else.

Mark,

You are entirely correct, and I support your actions 100%. One cannot distribute a program that contains an "evaluation" version of a tool like that, and every software developer is very well aware of that fact.

Mark,

You are entirely correct, and I support your actions 100%. One cannot distribute a program that contains an "evaluation" version of a tool like that, and every software developer is very well aware of that fact.
Worse then that, it's now an expired trial.

Well, since Alex once gave me permission to release a patched version of RasterFarian (search for it in one of the threads)...

Although that permission was for some bugfixes, I don't think he'd mind if I use it to remove the licensing problems.

This version has the licensed pdcat.exe removed. It was doing nothing more than "concatinating" the pdf to another location. So I used a simply "copy" command instead.

Get it here. (it's too big to upload in mobileread)

http://hightech.afmag.net/rasterfarian-for-sony-reader-copyright-problems-download-the-patched-rasterfarian-version-here.html

I'm going to start a new thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13678) on this one, athlonkmf, it deserves the highlight. :yes:

Great news! Thanks much! :)