MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Any program to cut and merge pages to new aspect ratio?

DSpider · 12-15-2011, 04:29 AM

I think it's just sad that manufacturers don't add "fit to width" for PDF. If I make a PDF 1x1 centimetres, the reader displays only a small square in the centre? Now that's just pathetic... That's why I hope they'll release colour e-Ink, Android tablets next year, where you can choose your favourite reading program! Being stuck with just the one that the manufacturer provides - with its idiosyncrasies, bugs and whatnot - is a very BAD idea. But I guess they figure you won't be using PDF (much!).

So you'd like the bottom of a page to continue on the next page? You could export the PDF as JPG images (or PNG so there won't be any artefacts) and save them into an ePub. AFAIK, if you set a different font size than the author intended, ePub splits images automatically between the pages - which I find it very odd, but whatever. You'll also lose the search/highlighting function unless you run them through ABBYY FineReader. Apparently version 11 can save directly to ePub (you'll have to change the output settings so that it doesn't process the images from PNG to JPG or worse, from JPG to JPG, producing even more artefacts).

Trying to reflow the PDF may not work if it's not a tagged PDF, or it may screw up paragraph positions because the "standard" PDF has individual letters and groups of letters as a bunch of objects with fixed positions, which sometimes produces awkward results.

12-15-2011, 04:29 AM	#2
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	I think it's just sad that manufacturers don't add "fit to width" for PDF. If I make a PDF 1x1 centimetres, the reader displays only a small square in the centre? Now that's just pathetic... That's why I hope they'll release colour e-Ink, Android tablets next year, where you can choose your favourite reading program! Being stuck with just the one that the manufacturer provides - with its idiosyncrasies, bugs and whatnot - is a very BAD idea. But I guess they figure you won't be using PDF (much!). So you'd like the bottom of a page to continue on the next page? You could export the PDF as JPG images (or PNG so there won't be any artefacts) and save them into an ePub. AFAIK, if you set a different font size than the author intended, ePub splits images automatically between the pages - which I find it very odd, but whatever. You'll also lose the search/highlighting function unless you run them through ABBYY FineReader. Apparently version 11 can save directly to ePub (you'll have to change the output settings so that it doesn't process the images from PNG to JPG or worse, from JPG to JPG, producing even more artefacts). Trying to reflow the PDF may not work if it's not a tagged PDF, or it may screw up paragraph positions because the "standard" PDF has individual letters and groups of letters as a bunch of objects with fixed positions, which sometimes produces awkward results. Last edited by DSpider; 12-15-2011 at 05:05 AM.