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Old 12-12-2009, 08:39 PM   #3
tapar
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Posts: 62
Karma: 1420
Join Date: Dec 2008
Device: Kindle Keyboard 3g, Kindle Paperwhite v1
Yeah it does seem to be "pick the artifacts that bother you the least" with PDF conversion. I wish it wasn't such a popular format, hopefully a friendlier format will start to take over as the popularity of e-readers continues to grow.

I just got some insight into my issue as I was writing my reply. I was going to paste in a bit of sample text from a PDF, then convert it and paste in some results. I think my problem is a "carriage return line feed" type of issue. I noticed the text was formatted in such a way that wherever the text jumped to the next line in the PDF, the converted result had a full blank line inserted in. I remember an option about adding a line at paragraph breaks, perhaps I am triggering that inadvertently? I will experiment some more.

The problem I am having with Calibre's convert is it takes input like this small blurb form Brandon Sanderson's Elantris:
"ELANTRIS was beautiful, once. It was called the city of the gods: a place of
power. radiance, and magic. Visitors say that the very stones glowed with an
inner light, and that the city contained wondrous arcane marvels. At night,
Elantris shone like a great silvery fire, visible even from a great distance.
Yet, as magnificent as Elantris was, its inhabitants were more so. Their hair
a brilliant white, their skin an almost metallic silver. "

The same text from the converted Mobi file ends up looking like this on the Kindle:
"ELANTRIS was beautiful, once. It was called the city of the gods: a place of

power. radiance, and magic. Visitors say that the very stones glowed with an

inner light, and that the city contained wondrous arcane marvels. At night, Elantris

shone like a great silvery fire, visible even from a great distance.

Yet, as magnificent as Elantris was, its inhabitants were more so. Their hair

a brilliant white, their skin an almost metallic silver."

Actually it is too neat there still, here is a small jpg that shows the effect a bit better on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45598342@N08/
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