Yet another PDF to LRF converter

[kovidgoyal]

why not just embed a python interpreter into your c++ app and use the python directly? Or better yet rewrite pdflrf in python, that's going to be a *lot* easier than translating python into c++

[KEM]

I just tried your tool on a 2 column pdf. The file is very readable on the PRS500 and the tool was easy to use.

Over all it worked great but the picture on the front page was converted to 4 pages and the last line of each page repeats on the following page. Is there something that I can change in my set up to fix that?

[cacapee]

Set overlap to 0

[evgen]

One additional advantage of linking in the python interpreter is that you will get access to some nice tools like pyPdf, something I was able to swap in to my hacked version of pdfread to eliminate the obnoxious external dependency on pdftk, which can do nice things regarding pdf manipulation (e.g. write the TOC catalog with a small bit of hacking, etc)

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by evgen

One additional advantage of linking in the python interpreter is that you will get access to some nice tools like pyPdf, something I was able to swap in to my hacked version of pdfread to eliminate the obnoxious external dependency on pdftk, which can do nice things regarding pdf manipulation (e.g. write the TOC catalog with a small bit of hacking, etc)

You have a hacked version of pypdf that can read the toc catalog? If so can you send it to me: kovid _the usual email address separator_ kovidgoyal.net

[Vienna01]

Confused pdflrfwin.exe vs pdflrf_gui?

[ereszet]

I have followed all your pdflrf releases with growing amazement of what you have achieved and how soon you responded to new demands and challenges. Apart from all the options that pdflrf offers, it is extremely fast. Believe me, I have tried scores of different programs/utilities (DOS/Windows/Ubuntu) to process pdf/djvu photos of old books (like Google books) before OCR-ing them with Finereader and none is even close to your program. Thank you.
And now is my humble suggestion. Can you include pdf as an output? Sony Reader is only one of many toys for reading books while pdf format is universal. It would be so useful to have pdf files readibility improved before OCR-ing them and storing them in my laptop library or reading with Archos 704 (I just ordered it and hope that 7" screen will make a difference to Sony's 6").
For your info, my workflow before discovering pdflrf was: 1. reading page images or pdfs to Finereader, 2. recognizing blocks of text/images, 3. saving images with blocks only (no white space surrounding it), 4. reading images back to Finereader, 5. OCR-ing, 6. saving to pdfs (text under image). Of course the original page images require a lot of cleaning before going to Finereader, because otherwise all black margins or blobs would be recognized as blocks and prevent removal of white space surronding the text.

[ereszet]

I have followed all your pdflrf releases with growing amazement of what you have achieved and how soon you responded to new demands and challenges. Apart from all the options that pdflrf offers, it is extremely fast. Believe me, I have tried scores of different programs/utilities (DOS/Windows/Ubuntu) to process pdf/djvu photos of old books (like Google books) before OCR-ing them with Finereader and none is even close to your program. Thank you.
And now is my humble suggestion. Can you include pdf as an output? Sony Reader is only one of many toys for reading books while pdf format is universal. It would be so useful to have pdf files readibility improved before OCR-ing them and storing them in my laptop library or reading with Archos 704 (I just ordered it and hope that 7" screen will make a difference to Sony's 6").
For your info, my workflow before discovering pdflrf was: 1. reading page images or pdfs to Finereader, 2. recognizing blocks of text/images, 3. saving images with blocks only (no white space surrounding it), 4. reading images back to Finereader, 5. OCR-ing, 6. saving to pdfs (text under image). Of course the original page images require a lot of cleaning before going to Finereader, because otherwise all black margins or blobs would be recognized as blocks and prevent removal of white space surronding the text.

BTW. As it is my first post to the forum, and I am having problems with sending it (I had to login a number of times), I am sorry if this post appear more than once.

[DrMoze]

I just tried (after finding in this thread) the pdflrfwin.exe utility. It's the first time I was able to successfully translate *anything* into lrf format! And the results make some pdfs (which I had given up on) quite readable. Yay!

Question: Are there any settings that can reduce the pdf file size, perhaps at the expense of a slight impairment in print darkness? For example, a 1.5MB pdf file was converted to 18.5MB! ANother pdf of 64kB became 1.1MB. At this rate, I can only fit a few medium-size pdf's on the netire reader! (Yes, I have an SD card, but I like using groups on the internal memory...)

Just wondering. But thanks ofr a great and easy-to-use utility!

[cacapee]

version 0.8 adds support for Table of Contents in pdf files. It is possible to preview output images to test out various settings. An experimental linux build (built on Ubuntu) has been added. Improved threading support so processing should be faster. Changed default colors to 4 to reduce frequency of file size questions. Added more filtering options and better dithering so images should look a lot better

[DrMoze]

Ah, # of colors is (of course) the main reason for larger files.

BTW, v8 (pdflrfwin.exe) cuts out every tie I try to convert a second file. After selecting the second file, the program quits. (v7 did not have this problem.) I'm running WinXP Pro sp2.

[cacapee]

I cannot reproduce it here. Does it happen with any kind of file?

[timestory]

Originally Posted by cacapee

version 0.8 adds support for Table of Contents in pdf files. It is possible to preview output images to test out various settings. An experimental linux build (built on Ubuntu) has been added. Improved threading support so processing should be faster. Changed default colors to 4 to reduce frequency of file size questions. Added more filtering options and better dithering so images should look a lot better

It is great to add ToC feature, I just converted one PDF book with one level bookmarks, when I imported the lrf file to reader, found that all those links are stored in Table of content under the menu for this book.

But when I converted a PDF book with multiple level bookmarks(one root), and imported this book, found that only the root item stored in Table of contents, all others are skipped.

[cacapee]

Ah, this will be fixed in the next release

[leha]

Hi, thanks for nice converter. Being linux user I have a remark. I am not sure how portable your code is and if you are interested in writing linux gui for your utility but it might be easier to keep your windows version wine compatible and skip on gui interface for linux. Of course I would like to see nice kde frontend but now it is easier to run windows version in wine then command line linux utility.