Fed up with conversion issues on Sony reader [Archive]

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BlackVoid

04-02-2008, 03:18 PM

I have a Sony PRS-500 and I am using it to read my ebook collection (free ebooks, various formats: txt, rtf, pdf).
My problem is that no matter what I do the conversion to LRF ends up with very crappy results. Line breaks are not where they should be, multiple paragraphs are joined and I get incomplete pages cut in half in the middle of a sentence. If I do not convert and use rtf / txt, it is a pain too with variable line lengths, inappropriate line and page breaks.

I AM FED UP. :angry::angry::angry:

I am looking for a Reader that has decent conversion software that actually can convert into a usable format. Are the readers that have html support any better in this regard?

I really do not understand in this day and age why cannot we have a firmware that can handle multiple formats properly. Or at least a decent conversion tool added with the reader. I appreciate the effort that some people have put into free conversion software, but nonetheless the conversion is not working properly. :help::help::help:

gwynevans

04-02-2008, 03:55 PM

What source material are you using - if the source is decent, then you should have no problems with something like libprs500, whereas if you're getting bad results, it's likely to be a bad source...

The easiest is almost certainly going to be the Reader's native RTF support, but I get good results even with a basic text file & txt2lrf, using the following 'template'. Although a decent HTML file would probably be better, if I want to create my own books from raw text, this suffices for me...

<head>
<style type='text/css'>
.break { page-break-after: always; text-indent: 0em; }
.drop { text-indent: 0pt}
.drop:first-letter { font-size:xx-large}
.centre {text-align: center; }
</style>
</head>
# Title
# Author
<p class="break"> </p>
///Table of Contents///
## Chapter 1
<p class="drop">Paragraph1.

Paragraph2.

Paragraph3.

JSWolf

04-02-2008, 04:01 PM

PDF can be problem. Even perfect PDF can be a problem.

If yo are starting with a text file, use Word to clean it up, save as RTF and load into Book Designer. It will then preserve the paragraphs.

HTML should be ok as is.

Check the original source to see if it has any problems. If it does, it's a bad source and sometimes you just cannot do anything to fix it.

Dr. Drib

04-02-2008, 05:11 PM

Things that look ok in Microsoft Word will sometimes NOT look ok on the Sony Reader.

You will want to avoid txt files with carriage returns after each line. Just toggle on the paragraph marker (I think that's what it's called), and see if carriage returns are there after each line. This kind of file will NOT look good on the Reader, unless you want to fix it, which is what I did on ONE book that I uploaded to make available to everyone here on MobileRead.

RTF files and Word files that have carriage returns after EACH paragraph present NO PROBLEMS for the Sony Reader.

I've NEVER had a problem with HTML files, when I run it through BookDesigner. (Note: I use BookDesigner when I make available Public Domain books for MobileRead. However, there's a strong learning curve to using this program.)

PDF files -- you're dealing with static pages that are formatted (sized) for something larger than the size of the Sony Reader (and most other ebook reader) screens. There are workarounds only for this problem.

My suggestion to you: load your word or RTF files using Word. If it's something you want to read on the Sony Reader - and the carriage return is at the end of paragraphs (as most are) - then back out of Word and load the file onto your Reader. No problem.

I hope this helped.

However, you will be forever frustrated (in my opinion), if you want to read PDF files on the Reader.

Don

JSWolf

04-02-2008, 05:27 PM

You can also use pdflrf to fix the PDF to be more readable on the 500.

Patricia

04-02-2008, 07:04 PM

I use Stingo's macro to eliminate the carriage returns at the end of each line in .txt files. (Do a forum search to find it, if you're interested.)

Then I do a quick edit in word if necessary. I then drop the file into Book Designer if I want to make tables of contents, or add pictures etc.

I've made a lot of books for the Sony Reader: at least a hundred of them started as text files (usually from Project Gutenberg). With Stingo's macro it only takes a few minutes to get a novel into a readable format.
1. Open a new word document.
2. Use the insert menu to insert the txt file.
3. Save the file.
4. Then run Stingo's macro. This eliminates hard line breaks, and sets the font at Times New Roman size 14 (a convenient size for the Reader).
5. Save the document - as rtf if you like - and it should be perfectly readable on your Reader.
6. However, you can do further editing in Word or in book Designer if you want pictures, a TOC, or other features.

AnemicOak

04-02-2008, 07:18 PM

I've done over 300 books for my Reader & been very pleased with the results thanks to Book Designer and the tools in Libprs500 with very minimal work.

Source material of course is what matters for ease of conversion & that will be true for any of the devices out there.

RWood

04-02-2008, 10:46 PM

Following on from what Patricia said, Stingo's Word Macro (there is a link from the Conversion page in the Wiki) is customizable to produce whatever font and size you want if you choose to keep the document in DOC or RTF and load that to the Reader. Like Patricia, I always use it as a preprocessor for text files before I load them into BookDesigner.

BlackVoid

04-03-2008, 03:06 AM

BlackVoid

04-03-2008, 03:26 AM

gwynevans

04-03-2008, 06:47 AM

libprs500
This program has absolutely no respect for any formatting. Paragraphs are merged together, 3 line pages broken in mid-sentence, paragraph indentation lost and similar problems all over.

That's just not true.

It actually supports markdown (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus) formatting well, but you need to be aware that with markdown, a paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines, and that lines/blocks with prefixs of at least 4 spaces or 1 tab are treated as code/preformatted.

HarryT

04-03-2008, 06:54 AM

Is this any good?
http://www.prs-500formatter.com/paydotcom.html

The problems listed here are typical. Although the libprs500 conversion works a bit better than the methods mentioned at the above link, it still has a lot of issues with paragraphs and page breaks.

The root cause of all these issues is the almost complete lack of semantic information in a PDF file. A PDF (most PDF, at least) knows nothing about paragraphs, lines, or even words. All it contains is instructions at the level of "draw a letter 'A' in a 10pt Courier bold font at such-and-such an offset from the corner of the page".

Very often the best thing you can do with a PDF is feed it to an OCR application and let it try to make sense of it.

gwynevans

04-03-2008, 07:43 AM

BlackVoid

04-03-2008, 09:15 AM

I now have an application called Nuance PDF Professional. It makes a decent RTF out of a PDF. That PDF converted to lrf is not too bad, but formatting errors are STILL VERY COMMON. And this is slow and time consuming and even this does not get very good results.

It actually supports markdown formatting well.

NO, IT DOES NOT. The above mentioned Nuance software handles formatting VERY WELL. It is just about identical to the PDF. libprs500 is not even close. It does not recognize indentation or paragraphs, even if paragraphs are separated by a totally empty line. In the LRF it will be packed together without consideration with 1 word lines, 2 line pages etc.

Is the Hanlin any better in this regard? At least I read that it has conversion software added to the package.

JSWolf

04-03-2008, 09:18 AM

JSWolf

04-03-2008, 09:27 AM

I have decent pdfs and txts mainly. They are quite ok to read on a PC - no format problems at all.

pdflrf - this tool makes very big files, which turned me off. Only a few books would fit on the reader and I guess it is going to be slow too (did not try the file on the reader, but when I have seen a 1 MB pdf turned to a 17 MB monster, I gave up).
I've had cases where the resulting LRF was smaller then the original PDF. But it would make the PDF more readable even if larger.

libprs500
This program has absolutely no respect for any formatting. Paragraphs are merged together, 3 line pages broken in mid-sentence, paragraph indentation lost and similar problems all over.
You only get problems like that if you start with a lousy source. That's what you get from darknet downloads. A lot of sources are just way poorly formatted.

Thanks for the rtf tip, I might try that.
If you clean up the text in Word and save as RTF, you can load into Book Designer and output a nice LRF.

I was also thinking that maybe with Adobe professional PDFs could be converted to better run on the reader - is this the case? I am skeptical because the official Sony guide for PDFs suggests to save the file in RTF and then convert back to PDF - I do not think this would work well. When I save rtf from PDF, a lot of problems appear. Can you actually reformat the page size in Adobe without losing paragraphs and indentation?
Even Acrobat Professional does not output a perfect conversion.

Still, this is a lot of hassle for something as simple as text formatting. Sony should have included a decent tool for lrf conversion or the reader should support a wider variety of formats. Html support is a serious omission. Even decent txt / rtf documents look crappy on the reader with awkward line breaks and paragraph problems.
The tools we have now work very well if you don't start with such poorly formatted source. It's would be that way for any conversion.

BookDesigner - I have tried this and could not find an option to save in LRF format. What am I missing?
Did you properly install Book Designer? See the thread http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11786 on where to get the installer and the update and how to install on Vista. Also you'll need the Book Cleaner files too available at http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11649

Once it's properly installed and working, you just go to the Make eBooks menu and select Sony Reader (LRF) and you get a dialog as to how to make them, set the options and go.

I would be very interested how the other readers handle these kind of problems. Is it just the Sony reader, or do the other readers have these issues as well? I love the actual hardware and the e-ink display very much, but software support is abysmal for the Sony reader. I would even consider shelling out the money for the Iliad, provided it handles formatting much better.
Other readers would have the same trouble. It's not Sony vs. other readers. It's your source is poor and you are not doing a very good job fixing the mess.

NatCh

04-03-2008, 09:31 AM

Is the Hanlin any better in this regard? At least I read that it has conversion software added to the package.
Yeah, it does ... if you can get it to run. :rolleyes:

Most devices (read: all of the current ones) are going to have the sort of trouble you're describing. The main root of it is that PDF doesn't like to play well with others. :shrug:

A note on libprs500: it seems that a lot of folks are getting much more satisfactory results out of that app than what you're clearly getting. That suggests to me that there's something different between what you're doing with it than what others are doing. Exploring that may help you address what you're running into. Assuming, of course, that the problem isn't just PDF related.

From what you're saying, it sounds like the files you're starting with may have some particularly funky formatting issues that aren't showing up in Word (or whatever) but that are throwing your actual conversions off.

Since you clearly have a need for better PDF support, the iLiad might be a better fit for you. It's not perfect for PDF, by any means, but it does a reasonably good job with displaying them natively, owing to its larger display. The iLiad forums have a good bit of discussion along those lines, to give you a better feel for what it can and can't do.

Oh, yeah, to address a question you had above about BookDesigner that I don't think anyone's answered: there's not a "save to LRF" type of operation, to make an LRF you use the "Generate LRF" button in the toolbar. It' looks like the funky "AE" symbol that's on the PRS500 (but not on the 505). If you hover your mouse over the toolbar buttons you'll see the help pop-up with text along those lines. There's a great tutorial posted here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10313) that might be of help to you, as well. :nice:

Timoleon

04-09-2008, 06:08 PM

I've had great results on all sorts of texts, and text with graphics, with the following:

First of all, start with something *other* than a pdf file. The exception would be if you own Acrobat, then you can convert the pdf to plain text in many cases (as long as the pdf isn't just a collection of images...).

Open your file in Microsoft Word and take a good look at it. Often you can spruce things up without too much trouble --- you might even try doing an "autoformat" on the text and see if that helps. You can always back out if you don't want to work with the results.

Once you've got things looking reasonably half-decent in Word, save your file as an html file.

Open the html file in BookDesigner and do some further editing with respect to titles, author, subtitles, table of contents, etc., until you've got it the way you want it.

Save the results as a "lit" file. This is important. Libprs500 works especially well with "lit" as the import type.

Open up the lit file in libprs500 (latest version!), make some minor adjustments (I like to have libprs500 insert a blank line between paragraphs), and convert the file over to an lrf file. Libprs500 also gives you the option to save both your lit file, the lrf file, an opf file, and a jpg or some other graphics file to a single directory for storage and/or later use.

I've done about fifty conversions in the last two weeks, including some truly *nasty* un/poorly formatted stuff, and everything has come out great. Kovid Goyal has done an absolutely fantastic job on libprs500, and BookDesigner is a must-have as well. The only thing I'm wishing and waiting for is for Kovid to implement a complete conversion/export option to .epub. He certainly has the brains and ability to do it!:thumbsup:

As a postscript, a great tool for cleaning up and formatting text is something called Interparse4. If you google it you can still find it out there...

Tim

BlackVoid

04-11-2008, 02:57 PM

Ok, example here. And this is not even the worst, just average bad.

I REPEAT. The PDF is totally well formatted. It is not the input material that is at fault. Please look at the PDF - NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. Lrf loses most formatting nonetheless.

BlackVoid

04-11-2008, 02:59 PM

I now have a trial of Adobe professional installed, but I could not find how to resize the pages for the Sony Reader. Any ideas?

BlackVoid

04-11-2008, 04:09 PM

The first time I tries BookDesigner I missed the patch and could not use it to create LRF. Now I applied the patch and it WORKS!!!!

And BD actually makes a decent format. Thanks!!! The only drawback is that each book has to be converted 1 by 1.

igorsk

04-11-2008, 04:57 PM

All Baen books are available in LRF from Webscriptions. This particular one is even available for free on Baen CD, though not in LRF. Hovewer, it can be easily converted to LRF, for example by using lit2lrf on the Microsoft Reader LIT file.
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/12-HellHathNoFuryCD/HellHathNoFuryCD/The%20Stars%20at%20War%20I/index.htm
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/12-HellHathNoFuryCD/HellHathNoFuryCD/The%20Stars%20at%20War%20II/index.htm

gwynevans

04-11-2008, 06:14 PM

I now have a trial of Adobe professional installed, but I could not find how to resize the pages for the Sony Reader. Any ideas?
Looking at the Sony document mentioned in the "Conversions to PDF" section here (http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/PRS505) on the wiki, the 'recommended' method is to do a "Save As RTF", set the page size, etc to suit the Reader then Print to PDF. (It doesn't, of course, mention Book Designer, etc, as alternatives.)

WillAdams

04-14-2008, 07:12 AM

BlackVoid, the problem is that the formatting in the .pdf is encoded as positional informatin (place this character in this font at these x,y coordinates), so one needs to analyse that so as to determine where paragraphs begin / end &c.

Marcel Weiher wrote a utility, TextLightning for Mac OS X (ob. discl. it's shareware and I was a beta tester) and there're other tools which do this, and there are a few others, e.g., SolidPDF for Windows.

--- unless it's a ``tagged'' .pdf where such is embedded in the file structure.

William