MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Fed up with conversion issues on Sony reader

BlackVoid · 04-03-2008, 04:06 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).

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.

Thanks for the rtf tip, I might try that.

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?

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.

BookDesigner - I have tried this and could not find an option to save in LRF format. What am I missing?

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.

04-03-2008, 04:06 AM	#9
BlackVoid Evangelist Posts: 415 Karma: 510423 Join Date: Nov 2006 Device: Sony PRS-505	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). 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. Thanks for the rtf tip, I might try that. 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? 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. BookDesigner - I have tried this and could not find an option to save in LRF format. What am I missing? 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.