I've seen a couple of comments about converting files to PDF for the iLiad -- not having one myself (yet) it's probably too soon to really worry about it, but I'd like to make Project Gutenberg's titles available pre-formatted for those that aren't as handy with the various tools as most MobileReader users are...

Which leaves me trying to guess what size might work best;

13x17cm
Margins: left and right 0.2cm
top and bottom: 0.5cm

A5 (148x210mm)
Margins: left and right 0mm
top: 15mm
bottom: 0mm

And I've created a few that look OK on my computer screen at

A5
Margins: left, right, bottom 5mm
top: 10mm
Greyscale cover images

I'd welcome suggestions and feedback on the current set up -- manybooks (http://manybooks.net/) will have "iRex iLiad" as a download option for a few days.

13x17cm
Margins: left and right 0.2cm
top and bottom: 0.5cm

You're probably doing this the wrong way round, I think. It's not (or should not be) a question of cramming as much onto the page as it can hold -- it's a question of balancing a typeface, and a line length against surrounding space. Margin space will almost certainly help improving readability -- but I won't be able to say until I actually have an iLiad in front of my eyes.

A quick check of one of the texts you have (The Abandoned Room, in iLiad format), I would say that you could easily make the margins wider without problems (or, alternatively, add a little extra space between the lines). But you have other problems that really should be taken care of first: the text is (to my eyes) illegible. Here's why:

Empty lines are used instead of paragraph indentation: this gives the page a very patchy look, which detracts from reading. Longer paragraphs do fairly well, but dialogue looks awful. I'm almost sure that closing up the empty lines, doing proper indentation *and* increasing margins would actually save pages in the end. (On a low-resolution device, such as the average PC screen, the empty lines may help a bit, but the iLiad is at least medium res, if not hi res.)

You really should use proper quotes, and dashes. They help a lot in understanding what's in the quote and what's not: inch signs " don't give any help at all. (yes, I know: Gutenberg texts are not exactly know for caring about such niceties: they need preprocessing.)

And if you can do something about widows, try to do so: page 81 gives me shudders with the single word at the top. (It's not an easy thing, I admit, particularly not if you generate files on the fly. )

Less problematical, but still ugly is the page heading: avoid boldface -- it attracts attention, and there's no reason for that in a page heading. Personally, I would leave the header out, and have chapter structure as bookmarks, and also leave pagination to the PDF reader. (But again, that may be dificult to do on the fly.)

As you probably figured out by now, I care very much about typography: I think most PDF eBooks available today are unacceptably ugly, but that they could, with a little work and care, be made much better-looking. That may make me go in the entirely opoosite way than most others.

It's probably a bit unfair to criticize without giving an opportunity to return the favour: I'm trying to create what I think of as good PDF eBooks, and these may be useful as a contrast. See some of my own attempts here (http://www.anders.thulin.name). (Ignore the chess books, please -- they're intended to be printed on a high-res printer, not for on-line reading.) On the other hand ... I'm lucky if I can do one of these texts in about 12-15 hours.

Acually 12x15cm is probably what works best, because thats the screen size of the iLiad which is not occupied by icons. I like to have a bout 0.5cm of margin to all sides.

Ath, I like the look of your books, I also really care about readability and good setting out, and I generally re-format most of the books I download. I personally would have a little less margin (I was looking at Sir Leslie Stephen: Social Rights and Duties), and there's something weird in your page numbers, c (1 of N), what is the c for?, but other than that, they look really good. :)

(Oh, I totally agree about abandoned lines on an empty page, hehe, I HAVE to do something about them)

...there's something weird in your page numbers, c (1 of N), what is the c for?

That's me trying to follow Adobe recommendations for eBooks.

Adobe recommends that the cover page is numbered 'C', and the 'inside cover' (which is where I have the ToC) is numbered 'c'. From then on, traditional numbering applies, i.e. I can do what I like.

I have no idea what it means, or why it is useful, but I thought might as well try it out -- just possibly it makes it easier for the Adobe Reader to find the cover to show in 'My Digital Editions', or for some indexing software to work, or whatnot.

I agree -- it's a bit confusing to the reader.

Oh... well, let's hope they know what to do with it! :p :D

Anyone know how to resize using Adobe Acrobat 7.0. Or if you can suggest an alternative package please let me know.

Many thanks

.stu

Anyone know how to resize using Adobe Acrobat 7.0. Or if you can suggest an alternative package please let me know.

Many thanks

.stu
Menu "Document" -> Crop Pages (don't know the exact english names; have the german version) or simply SHIFT+CTRL+T

But it doesn't really does what i want it to do. Try your luck.

Thanks I new I was almost in the right spot.

Just played around a little bit. Crop seems to change the paper size, but doesn't resize the content.

I tried another way: Printing to PDF-Writer from Acrobat. I created an new paper size (120x150) and it looks good.

Thanks for the suggestions and the feedback, everyone -- particularly ath. Since you've brought up so many salient points I figured it would be worth replying in detail, even if it's academic since neither of us seems to actually own an iLiad yet :(

You're probably doing this the wrong way round, I think. It's not (or should not be) a question of cramming as much onto the page as it can hold -- it's a question of balancing a typeface, and a line length against surrounding space. Margin space will almost certainly help improving readability -- but I won't be able to say until I actually have an iLiad in front of my eyes.

My thought about margins is the same as yours -- for the printed page. However, in my experience, large margins are un-necessary and problematic on the smaller screens of digital devices. Whether this holds true for the iLiad or not is something I'm interested to learn. My intent, with the small margins of the test PDFs, was to display as much text as possible, using some display area and the physical sides of the device to perform the same role as wider margins on a paper edition.

Empty lines are used instead of paragraph indentation: this gives the page a very patchy look, which detracts from reading. Longer paragraphs do fairly well, but dialogue looks awful. I'm almost sure that closing up the empty lines, doing proper indentation *and* increasing margins would actually save pages in the end. (On a low-resolution device, such as the average PC screen, the empty lines may help a bit, but the iLiad is at least medium res, if not hi res.)

I agree, but at this point at least, the software I'm using for HTML->PDF conversion has limited functionality in that area. I hope the iLiad will be high resolution enough to handle paragraphs like a printed page -- anyone with an actual device care to comment?

You really should use proper quotes, and dashes. They help a lot in understanding what's in the quote and what's not: inch signs " don't give any help at all.

Yeah, hit the nail on the head, there. I have no way to pre-process 14,000+ texts in any respectable way. My concern here is to get "close enough" so that the texts are readable. However, I'd say that " marks do provide a pretty good idea of what is or isn't in a quotation.

Less problematical, but still ugly is the page heading: avoid boldface -- it attracts attention, and there's no reason for that in a page heading. Personally, I would leave the header out, and have chapter structure as bookmarks, and also leave pagination to the PDF reader.

Good point - bold wasn't working. However, I'm not sure what capacity the iLiad has for saving your place in a document (or even displaying the current document title while you're reading). Page headings and pagination: how are they handled within the reader, folks? Does it help at all to have the page numbers/Chapters headings/Document titles in the page header?

As you probably figured out by now, I care very much about typography: I think most PDF eBooks available today are unacceptably ugly, but that they could, with a little work and care, be made much better-looking. That may make me go in the entirely opoosite way than most others.

On the other hand ... I'm lucky if I can do one of these texts in about 12-15 hours.

Well, 12-15 hours per text is more than "a little work and care" in my book. The examples you've got on your site look like very professional print products, and I'm sure they'd be readable on an iLiad as well -- but why not refine the rules to suit the iLiad, rather than simply mirroring print design rules?

Just played around a little bit. Crop seems to change the paper size, but doesn't resize the content.

I tried another way: Printing to PDF-Writer from Acrobat. I created an new paper size (120x150) and it looks good.

How does it look on your iLiad? Does 120x150 fit well?

Yeah, hit the nail on the head, there. I have no way to pre-process 14,000+ texts in any respectable way. My concern here is to get "close enough" so that the texts are readable. However, I'd say that " marks do provide a pretty good idea of what is or isn't in a quotation.

I use MS Word for this, just do a Replace of all " for ", it will make them open and close quotes automatically. Same for ' (single quotation or apostrophe marks). It's very easy to do. Other stuff (I also take some time on my texts) is a lot more time-consuming. :)

How does it look on your iLiad? Does 120x150 fit well?
Still on the truck :(

Still on the truck :(

Optimist.

http://www.irextechnologies.com/files/How%20to%20make%20content%20for%20your%20iLiad.pdf

http://www.irextechnologies.com/files/How%20to%20make%20content%20for%20your%20iLiad.pdf

If i have seen it correctly, they suggest an A5 format, which is not the best choice for the iliad as long as you cant get rid of the icons at the bottom.

To Fireproof
I wonder if this is what you're asking and if this will help and if the Iliad has Acrobat installed onboard.
On your computer open any pdf document. When your document is open, resize your window any size you wish by dragging a side, top or bottom edge. Then go to view menu and click "reflow". Ploblem solved. Any size your window is open, your text will follow every time you use this.

When your document is open, resize your window any size you wish by dragging a side, top or bottom edge. Then go to view menu and click "reflow".

That works on PC and with ordinary Acrobat readers. But the iLiad is a beast of a different colour: no window to resize, and no reflow capability, at least not for the foreseeable future.

That the reason for this thread: although documents can be shown on the iLiad, they can't necessarily be read unless they are fairly close to the actual screen size (or type size is large enough to be legible even after scaling).

Typical story I've been working in IT for years but I can't resize a PDF. I've been using Acrobat 7.08. If anyone knows an app to make converting pdf size easy please let me know..

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..

thanks folks.

I tried the trial version of this.
http://www.evermap.com/autopage.asp

Worked OK, but quite pricey for what it does.

The best solution for Textonly-PDFs seems to be saving them as HTML. The HTML-Viewer is quite good and you can change the textsize.

Using Acrobat I've found that the easiest way (the only way?) to resize is just to print to Adobe Printer with a new page size. According to Commander, Open Office does a good job too, using the "convert to pdf" function.

Using Acrobat I've found that the easiest way (the only way?) to resize is just to print to Adobe Printer with a new page size.
Yes, but its useless! The iliad automatically sizes the page so that it fits in the display. So it makes no difference if you open the original DIN A4 or print it before to DIN A5. What would make a difference is to cut (crop) out the white space around the real text. Then the font is better readable. All PDFs i tried so far are unreadable small on the iliad.

Yes, of course, I really meant for small variations. I was trying out several font sizes, margins, etc., but I had already changed the text using Word to an A5 to start with. As to not making a difference, I might be wrong, but I feel it's less work for the iLiad (so better page turns), if it doesn't have to resize too much.

Yes, but its useless! The iliad automatically sizes the page so that it fits in the display. So it makes no difference if you open the original DIN A4 or print it before to DIN A5. What would make a difference is to cut (crop) out the white space around the real text. Then the font is better readable. All PDFs i tried so far are unreadable small on the iliad.


Agree with you, by now I have been trying Acrobat and pdfFactory to crop the white margin to "up-5mm, down-5mm, left-1mm and right-1mm" recommended by iLiad's document, unfortunately I still don't know how to make it by these two PDF tools.

As we already collect so many PDF ebooks, how to crop the A4 or other size PDF files to A5 with small white margin is a big issue for iLiad user.

I also try http://www.evermap.com/autopage.asp (autopageX plugin for Acrobat), it works fine, doing what we need. But the 700KB plugin sold for $99!!! It is really expensive.

I found it!

Right Click on the Toolbar -> Advanced Editing -> Crop Tool -> Select the Area you want (should be the same for all pages or you have to do it one-for-one) -> Click again on the Button -> OK

try these (supplied by TaKir

http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/jap.zip

http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5366

Maybe you can find out how they work...^^

try these (supplied by TaKir

http://files.ebook.googlepages.com/jap.zip

http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5366

Maybe you can find out how they work...^^
Cool!