PDFRead 1.8.2 released!

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by Giangio

so..I started to thought that the best thing to see this damned pdf it's on landscape...isnt?

Yes, that's what makes PDFRead so useful. By viewing in landscape, it allows a bit larger text size to be displayed, and usually that is enough to read (make out) the text on small 6" screens.

This should be used as a last resort, when rendering to normal "text" ebook fails.

By the way, if you have two columns of text in your .pdf then you have a portrait view only when using the 'portrait-2col' layout mode. It displays pages like:

| 1  3 |
| 2  4 |

as

| 1 |
| 2 |
| 3 |
| 4 |

If that is the case, then you may benefit from this thread [Tool] Multi-column PDF files on 6 inch display.

[Giangio]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

Yes, that's what makes PDFRead so useful. By viewing in landscape, it allows a bit larger text size to be displayed, and usually that is enough to read (make out) the text on small 6" screens.

This should be used as a last resort, when rendering to normal "text" ebook fails.

By the way, if you have two columns of text in your .pdf then you have a portrait view only when using the 'portrait-2col' layout mode. It displays pages like:

| 1  3 |
| 2  4 |

as

| 1 |
| 2 |
| 3 |
| 4 |

If that is the case, then you may benefit from this thread [Tool] Multi-column PDF files on 6 inch display.

I dont undestand any more...I tryend now to create the prc with prc-mobi setting with landscape but...The image are strange...the first is ok, the second is view cutted...then it's repeated...


What I've to do????

Can I sent to you one of my pdf??

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by Giangio

I dont undestand any more...I tryend now to create the prc with prc-mobi setting with landscape but...The image are strange...the first is ok, the second is view cutted...then it's repeated...


What I've to do????

Can I sent to you one of my pdf??

Sure, email me the file and I will try to see what is going on.

[pixnaps]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

I think the .prc issue arises because I use a windows executable to convert the resulting .html to .prc using a variant of tompe's mobi2html.pl from Mobiperl on Windows computers.

For MacOS X, you would need to edit 'output.py' and 'common.py' to replace the 'NRhtml2mobi' command with 'perl html2mobi.pl' perhaps. I don't know what will work in Terminal, but you need a command that will take a .html and build a .prc in MacOS X.

If you want, I could upload my modified perl script called 'NRhtml2mobi.pl'.

I seem to have the same problem using the Ubuntu command line. PdfRead outputs the html (in the temporary folder) just fine, but fails to turn it into a prc file. (Other conversions, e.g. to lrf, do work.)

Any idea how I can get it to build a .prc in Ubuntu? I've installed perl, and extracted 'mobiperl' (0.0.41) into its own directory, but I've no idea what to do with it from here. It'd be wonderful if you could make PdfRead truly cross-platform in its full functionality.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by pixnaps

I seem to have the same problem using the Ubuntu command line. PdfRead outputs the html (in the temporary folder) just fine, but fails to turn it into a prc file. (Other conversions, e.g. to lrf, do work.)

Any idea how I can get it to build a .prc in Ubuntu? I've installed perl, and extracted 'mobiperl' (0.0.41) into its own directory, but I've no idea what to do with it from here. It'd be wonderful if you could make PdfRead truly cross-platform in its full functionality.

First, try installing Mobiperl per the instructions Installing all required modules on an Ubuntu installation on this webpage https://dev.mobileread.com/trac/mobiperl.

Second, get and install over Mobiperl my modified Mobiperl/html2mobi and use 'html2mobi' but rename it to 'NRhtml2mobi' as modifications are made to NOT reduce image sizes, and thus this program no longer is the same as tompe's 'html2mobi'.

Mods to Mobiperl-0.0.37
=======================
- MobiPerl/MobiFile.pm (changed: my $data = MobiPerl::Util::get_image_data ($filename, 0);)
- MobiPerl/Util.pm (changed: my $rescale_large_images = 0;)
- Palm/Doc.pm (added version printout code from previous version)

I hope that's it!

I haven't tried this out, but it should work if you also edit the edit 'output.py' and 'common.py' to replace the 'NRhtml2mobi' command with 'perl html2mobi.pl' perhaps.

BTW, the original author of PDFRead, Ashish Kulkarni, is working on PDFRead v2 which will hopefully be cross-platform and output .epub, which could then be used to create .prc. The timing of (any) release is not yet known.

[pixnaps]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

First, try installing Mobiperl per the instructions Installing all required modules on an Ubuntu installation on this webpage https://dev.mobileread.com/trac/mobiperl.

Second, get and install over Mobiperl my modified Mobiperl/html2mobi and use 'html2mobi' but rename it to 'NRhtml2mobi' as modifications are made to NOT reduce image sizes, and thus this program no longer is the same as tompe's 'html2mobi'.

Mods to Mobiperl-0.0.37
=======================
- MobiPerl/MobiFile.pm (changed: my $data = MobiPerl::Util::get_image_data ($filename, 0)
- MobiPerl/Util.pm (changed: my $rescale_large_images = 0
- Palm/Doc.pm (added version printout code from previous version)

I hope that's it!

I haven't tried this out, but it should work if you also edit the edit 'output.py' and 'common.py' to replace the 'NRhtml2mobi' command with 'perl html2mobi.pl' perhaps.

Right, I installed all the required perl modules. (But I wasn't sure if more was required to install mobiperl itself, besides copying the source files into a directory.)

I've now downloaded your mod version, and copied that into the PDFRead src directory (where I run 'python pdfread.py ...'), renaming the perl script html2mobi so that now 'perl NRhtml2mobi' runs (albeit with error messages because I'm not passing it the arguments it expects).

So now it's just a matter of integrating this with pdfread, right? I tried editing the two files you suggested, replacing each of the three mentions of 'NRhtml2mobi' with 'perl NRhtml2mobi' instead, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Any ideas?

[pixnaps]

(I guess it doesn't matter too much, since I can run 'perl NRhtml2mobi' manually on the temporary html file to complete the conversion. But it would be handy if this step could be automated...)

[dragoon670]

I glanced through the format specs for posted here, and was wondering if you're going to do an update soon to support the new version of the kindle and its 16 shade grayscale display. Also, I was wondering how this handles picture heavy pdf documents, I have several technical pdfs which are scans of actual documents that I would like to carry around with me, would I be better off using this tool or converting the pdf into a folder of jpegs?

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by dragoon670

I glanced through the format specs for posted here, and was wondering if you're going to do an update soon to support the new version of the kindle and its 16 shade grayscale display.

Now that you mention it, I do remember thinking that, after hearing the specs of the Kindle 2, it would be more useful to have 16 shades of gray than 4 shades. However, even though PDFRead's 'prc-mobi' profile may currently have the Kindle 1's (and Cybook Gen 3's) color depth, the final colors can be overriden by entering '16' in the GUI input box for Colors. See the attached sample and open it up using the software Mobipocket Reader. The .jpg quality is currently poor due to Mobiperl's desire to downgrade the images to the 63K Palm limitation. I really should fix that!

Also, I was wondering how this handles picture heavy pdf documents, I have several technical pdfs which are scans of actual documents that I would like to carry around with me, would I be better off using this tool or converting the pdf into a folder of jpegs?

Well, you know that PDFRead just produces a bunch of (cropped/enchanced/rotated/etc.) .jpgs and wraps them up in a .html listing of same which gets feed to Mobiperl's (modified) html2mobi. If you want the .jpgs to remain either use the 'debug' empty file trick in the PDFRead install directory or choose 'html' as an Out Format. Either way, you'll get a folder of .jpgs!

[dragoon670]

I've tried running this on a couple pdfs I have, and I've run into the problem I thought I might. Every page in my pdf is considered an image, so when pdfread tries to rasterize it down, nothing happens, and at the end I get a html file blank of everything except the name and author info I put into the gui. I've also tried putting in a pdf I made from a ripped web tutorial and that also came out blank.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by dragoon670

I've tried running this on a couple pdfs I have, and I've run into the problem I thought I might. Every page in my pdf is considered an image, so when pdfread tries to rasterize it down, nothing happens, and at the end I get a html file blank of everything except the name and author info I put into the gui. I've also tried putting in a pdf I made from a ripped web tutorial and that also came out blank.

Are you able to extract a folder of images from that .pdf using your own methods?

Perhaps the .pdf is secured/encrypted/prohibited in some way?

So does PDFRead work for ANY .pdf you have?

PDFRead always renders images from .pdfs irregardless of how they were created (from text or image scans). If no images were extracted, then the .pdf to images process is "broken" somehow for that .pdf.

[dragoon670]

I can use Acrobat to export out a sequence of JPEGs, from my understanding there's no encryption or drm or anything on these pdfs, they're scanned copies of books I have.

[dragoon670]

I tried making an html with the imgdir import option, and it worked, but the quality was super low, and practically unreadable.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by dragoon670

I can use Acrobat to export out a sequence of JPEGs, from my understanding there's no encryption or drm or anything on these pdfs, they're scanned copies of books I have.

Strange. Has PDFRead ever worked on any .pdf before?

If not try converting this sample .pdf I used for the above CAA_16shades.prc, then be sure to enter the options as indicated on the image below:



Click Convert and open your resulting .prc. Does it work for the sample?

If not, then your installation is not right. Please reinstall (preferrably in the default location).

[dragoon670]

I don't have mobi reader here so I'll have to wait till i get home to check the prc, but attempting an html failed, and the only setting I changed from your specs was the output type to html. There's probably a good chance that the install didn't work perfectly.