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View Full Version : Bored of PDF support


IorPerry
03-15-2009, 05:19 PM
The support for PDF inside the cybook is embarrassing!
I think it is so complicated cut out the margin in a pdf? ooo i must see the text section inside the 60% of screen, if i try to zoom, the scrool have only 2 position: with half margin and half text or half text and half margin!
The conversion with the reader lost all fortmat of table, index, figures!
This evering i want read the pdf: http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/2_1/toolkit/docs/NVIDIA_CUDA_Programming_Guide_2.1.pdf

Inside cybook all text is WHITE, if i try to convert to prc, copy it to the cybook, and open it from cybook, at page 2 it goes in stall!

I am every day more happy to have bought the cybook!

PS. if there are the support for images in folder i can convert every page to an image and open it... but it is missing! and i don't want 115 items in my library!

netseeker
03-15-2009, 05:41 PM
You must be joking, right? You didn't really expect that such a comlicated PDF, which is formatted for A4-display btw., could be well readable on a device with a 6'' display?

EowynCarter
03-15-2009, 06:15 PM
You must be joking, right? You didn't really expect that such a comlicated PDF, which is formatted for A4-display btw., could be well readable on a device with a 6'' display?
That's true.
It's also true the the cybook could do a better job at reading pdf's.

netseeker
03-15-2009, 06:30 PM
It's also true the the cybook could do a better job at reading pdf's.
Well....yes, you are right. :)

Abelturd
03-15-2009, 06:33 PM
That's true.
It's also true the the cybook could do a better job at reading pdf's.

No it probably couldn't. The function of PDF as a format is clearly misunderstood. Once you publish your document as a pdf you give it its final look. If you format it to the size of A4 you will never be able to display it on a smaller screen without compromises. It's folly to expect good results in this situation and than rant about it if they're not delivered.

IorPerry
03-16-2009, 03:47 AM
You must be joking, right? You didn't really expect that such a comlicated PDF, which is formatted for A4-display btw., could be well readable on a device with a 6'' display?

First: you don't have a cybook, i don't know the sony pdf support, but i will never judge it!

Anywhere:
The linked pdf is all white! all text is missing! do you think the problem is the 6" display?

knowing the pdf (i am a developer) i thin the cut of margin is the easier task to do.

netseeker
03-16-2009, 04:05 AM
Have you try to read any pdf on the cybook?
No because i own a sony. And btw. the sony does the job maybe a little bit better than the cybook (because of the support of 'real' pdf-reflow) but with this specific pdf even the sony can't do some "magic" to make it good readable.

The linked pdf is all white! do you think the problem is the 6" display? I am a developer and know the pdf format: i can make the reader that automatically cut of the border! why the cybook don't have it?!?
I don't know any reading device which can crop the borders automatically. There are tools like soPDF (just do a search here in the forum) which can do that. As for the borders with the specific nvidia pdf: Look again at the PDF - there is a header on some pages which would make it very difficult to crop the margins automatically. (And btw. i'm a developer too and very familar with PDF and i've already created programs which do crop borders in pdf documents)

Please don't get angry, but it's just not realistic to expect that such a PDF could be good readable on a 6'' screen - even without the borders.

netseeker
03-16-2009, 04:14 AM
First: you don't have a cybook, i don't know the sony pdf support, but i will never judge it!

Anywhere:
The linked pdf is all white! all text is missing! do you think the problem is the 6" display?

knowing the pdf (i am a developer) i thin the cut of margin is the easier task to do.
IorPerry, please don't edit posts the way you did this time after someone did already answer to it.

IorPerry
03-16-2009, 04:39 AM
No because i own a sony.

Exactly, you are in the wrong thread!!

I am willing to read the pdf scrolling, the 6 inch screen is like an A6 a quarter of A4... but with a pair of little work the support can be optimal, and now it don't!

PS. I edit it before your post.

IorPerry
03-16-2009, 04:46 AM
soPDF is what i search... but the thread tittle is:
"soPdf - Better than Yet another PDF to LRF converter"

How can i understand that it is for me? LRF?!? what is?

netseeker
03-16-2009, 05:13 AM
Exactly, you are in the wrong thread!!
Me looking around... No, i'm exactly where i thought that i should be.
I didn't say that i don't know the cybook. :)

soPDF is what i search... but the thread tittle is:
"soPdf - Better than Yet another PDF to LRF converter"
How can i understand that it is for me? LRF?!? what is?
LRF (or BBeB) is the sony-specific file-format. The wiki has an overview of known eBook-File-Formats: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_formats.
soPDF was thought as alternative to a to tool called "Yet another PDF to LRF converter". But soPDF does a PDF to PDF conversation so it should be exactly what you are looking for.

Pulp
03-16-2009, 08:02 AM
IorPerry, please try to keep a respectful tone in the forums!

If you only came here to blow off some steam because your Cybook does not work like you expected it to, that is ok, but if you start insulting other people because they answered to your rant in a similar way there is a good chance this discussion might get out of line.

If you came here to get information and some friendly advice, I cam promise you there is a lot to be found in these forums - and I can asure you that users like netseeker, who does not own a Cybook himself, can give you a lot of help on the topic aswell.

Most of us who are into mobilereading and e-ink devices for a long time now, took a lot of effort to compair every single device out there to compair it to our own reader.
Hence it doesn't really matter which device we own, we are pretty familia with the good and bad of the others aswell.

So to answer you questions:

A complicated PDf like the one from nvidia is indeed a lot of work for a small device like an e-ink reader. I've also tried to open similar documents on a palm and even if it succeeds it takes a lot of time because most pages consists of several images that need to be resized - what takes a lot of computing power.
You will get better results with documents that constist of a lot of text and a few pictures in between.
Additionally there is the problem with the screensize that requires you to watch the pdf in landscapemode to be able to read anything.

For these complicated documents, if it's inevitable to read them on the Cybook, I have found it to be a better soultion to use a program that creats images of the pages.
These programs take the pdf document and break one A4-page after another down to one to 3 landscapeimages, allowing them to be read quite comfortably.

Another way would to convert the files to mobipocked format, but documents like this one are bound to be a lot of work to get an acceptable result and unless you want read the document over and over again it's probably not worth the effort - if you plan to use it on a regular basis you might consider it anyway.

The empty text in you specific document is caused by the fact that PDFs can come with special fonts embedded, but can come without the embedded fonts but still require them. That's the case with your document - you will have to find out what fonts are used in the document and install them on your Cybook - after that, the PDFs should be displayed correctly.

tompe
03-16-2009, 08:26 AM
OpenInkpot seems to have manual zoom in that works. I agree with the point that it does not work good at all on the Cybook. I suspect nobody at Bookeen really tested to read a book not formatted especiallt for the wcreen size with it. If they had done they would have noticed what functionality was missing.

IorPerry
03-16-2009, 08:39 AM
IorPerry, please try to keep a respectful tone in the forums!


I apologize to netseeker if I have offended him. But i don't think, i say only if he don't have a cybook can not judge its pdf support.

With soPdf the result is perfect, it is the tool I was looking for since I bought the cybook.

netseeker
03-16-2009, 11:01 AM
I apologize to netseeker if I have offended him. But i don't think, i say only if he don't have a cybook can not judge its pdf support.
With soPdf the result is perfect, it is the tool I was looking for since I bought the cybook.
Even if we had a "rough" discussion, i'm glad that your problem is solved. Don't forget to spend the developer of soPdf a little bit Karma for his good work.

Even with cropped borders i can't read that special nvidia-pdf on the little 6'' screen without using the zoom or landscape mode. The page breaks within the tables as well as in the example-code make it hard to read on a 6'' screen. Your eyes must be much better than mine. (well, i wear glasses so this is no surprise at all)

Ortep
03-16-2009, 11:13 AM
Your eyes must be much better than mine. (well, i wear glasses so this is no surprise at all)

Grin...you should be better of with glasses. Most people without them have slight problems, for example a cylindric abbaration, but not enough to correct them. But as soon as you start wearing glasses you make a correction for everything.

Most of the time I can see more than my wife

Pulp
03-16-2009, 11:14 AM
well, i wear glasses so this is no surprise at all

It is surprising that you wear glasses and still don't see :D

HarryT
03-16-2009, 12:23 PM
OpenInkpot seems to have manual zoom in that works. I agree with the point that it does not work good at all on the Cybook. I suspect nobody at Bookeen really tested to read a book not formatted especiallt for the wcreen size with it. If they had done they would have noticed what functionality was missing.

Hopefully the forthcoming Adobe software update for the Gen3 will give it the same PDF reflow capability that the Sony has which, by all accounts, works pretty well for many PDF files.

EowynCarter
03-16-2009, 03:23 PM
I apologize to netseeker if I have offended him. But i don't think, i say only if he don't have a cybook can not judge its pdf support.

With soPdf the result is perfect, it is the tool I was looking for since I bought the cybook.

You did a pdf to lrc and lrc to mobi ?.

IorPerry
03-16-2009, 03:34 PM
You did a pdf to lrc and lrc to mobi ?.

No, the soPdf makes a new pdf from the source pdf, the new pdf has the pages without margin, and every page is split into 2.

see the attachment of first post of http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32066

I converted my pdf and copied all necessary font to my cybook. you can see them with the reader, File->Properties and it is a tab with fonts.

Now I have no excuse to not study... :)

Tluong
03-22-2009, 07:15 PM
The support for PDF inside the cybook is embarrassing!
I think it is so complicated cut out the margin in a pdf? ooo i must see the text section inside the 60% of screen, if i try to zoom, the scrool have only 2 position: with half margin and half text or half text and half margin!
The conversion with the reader lost all fortmat of table, index, figures!
This evering i want read the pdf: http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/2_1/toolkit/docs/NVIDIA_CUDA_Programming_Guide_2.1.pdf

Inside cybook all text is WHITE, if i try to convert to prc, copy it to the cybook, and open it from cybook, at page 2 it goes in stall!

I am every day more happy to have bought the cybook!

PS. if there are the support for images in folder i can convert every page to an image and open it... but it is missing! and i don't want 115 items in my library!

It is very frustrated to read the PDF file with Cybook.

However I found a very good way to have a PDF files which read perfectly with the reader.

First I have my files in MS Word format (original or by converting) than I go to this website: http://85.17.201.208/bookmaker/ to convert them to Cybook PDF, voila I had the perfect PDF files for Cybook. I even had the files in my Vietnamese language :).

Tluong
03-22-2009, 07:19 PM
You must be joking, right? You didn't really expect that such a comlicated PDF, which is formatted for A4-display btw., could be well readable on a device with a 6'' display?

It is very frustrated to read the PDF file with Cybook.

However I found a very good way to have a PDF files which read perfectly with the reader.

First I have my files in MS Word format (original or by converting) than I go to this website: http://85.17.201.208/bookmaker/ to convert them to Cybook PDF, voila I had the perfect PDF files for Cybook. I even had the files in my Vietnamese language . :)

Tluong
03-22-2009, 07:22 PM
No it probably couldn't. The function of PDF as a format is clearly misunderstood. Once you publish your document as a pdf you give it its final look. If you format it to the size of A4 you will never be able to display it on a smaller screen without compromises. It's folly to expect good results in this situation and than rant about it if they're not delivered.

It is very frustrated to read the PDF file with Cybook.

However I found a very good way to have a PDF files which read perfectly with the reader.

First I have my files in MS Word format (original or by converting) than I go to this website: http://85.17.201.208/bookmaker/ to convert them to Cybook PDF, voila I had the perfect PDF files for Cybook. I even had the files in my Vietnamese language . :)

Tluong
03-22-2009, 07:24 PM
That's true.
It's also true the the cybook could do a better job at reading pdf's.

It is very frustrated to read the PDF file with Cybook.

However I found a very good way to have a PDF files which read perfectly with the reader.

First I have my files in MS Word format (original or by converting) than I go to this website: http://85.17.201.208/bookmaker/ to convert them to Cybook PDF, voila I had the perfect PDF files for Cybook. I even had the files in my Vietnamese language . :)

Ortep
03-23-2009, 04:29 AM
It is very frustrated to read the PDF file with Cybook.

First I have my files in MS Word format (original or by converting) than I go to this website: http://85.17.201.208/bookmaker/ to convert them to Cybook PDF, voila I had the perfect PDF files for Cybook. I even had the files in my Vietnamese language . :)

Why do you go to so much trouble to create a fixed format lik PDF? If you have them in MW word format you can use MobiCreator to convert them to PRC. Then you have all the advantages of a real ebook format like reflowable, your own choise of fonts and also the font size.