iRex Digital Reader works to view Google Pdfs

amgoforth · 03-10-2009, 10:53 PM

Ever since I heard of the Sony reader I have wanted a device to read Google and Internet archive pdfs on. Well it takes a little time, but the DR will do the job on the Google pdfs. As far as internet archive pdfs go, the DR will not view them without some changes. I wish someone who knows more about pdfs then I do would come up with a solution. To get internet archive pdfs to be viewable on the DR involves reprinting the pdf to a pdf which winds up making a 2 or 3 hundred mb file. The DR will then read the file just fine, but what a hassle.

Grimulkan · 03-11-2009, 03:18 AM

Google pdfs (and downloads from Google books, a great many rare books there) work fine on the DR, although a they're a little slow and benefit from optimization. IA pdfs also seem to work for me, if you linked to a troublesome pdf, I could take a look.

If a "pdf print" throws out a pdf much larger than the original, its possible that your printer is printing the pdf as a bunch of no-nonsense images, which is why it loads on the DR, albiet slowly.

amgoforth · 03-11-2009, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grimulkan

Google pdfs (and downloads from Google books, a great many rare books there) work fine on the DR, although a they're a little slow and benefit from optimization. IA pdfs also seem to work for me, if you linked to a troublesome pdf, I could take a look.

If a "pdf print" throws out a pdf much larger than the original, its possible that your printer is printing the pdf as a bunch of no-nonsense images, which is why it loads on the DR, albiet slowly.

I did get a couple of Internet Archive pdfs to work on the DR. All others I have had to print to pdf. foxit does the best job because the files are smaller. I have tried using adobe acrobat pro to optimize IA pdfs, that dosen't appear to help and takes along time.

pwjone1 · 03-29-2009, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amgoforth

I did get a couple of Internet Archive pdfs to work on the DR. All others I have had to print to pdf. foxit does the best job because the files are smaller. I have tried using adobe acrobat pro to optimize IA pdfs, that dosen't appear to help and takes along time.

It really sounds like the Google book PDFs are showing up as graphics or images, rather than text. When Google/Sony cut the deal for ePub format books, OCR was used as near as I can tell, reading through the sites. The vanilla .PDFs that Google has out, I can see some graphics and other stuff, not clear to me that they've been OCRd. Probably the way to check whether it's text or not is to see what happens if you switch fonts or whatever. Granted, due to the way .PDFs work, that may or may not work, but would be an indicator. Or search on a word that you see.

Grimulkan · 03-29-2009, 02:16 PM

Most Google .pdf files are actually image-only, and do not even include the OCR'ed text. This is ridiculous, considering they have an image-over-text version "online", and allow downloading of text-only formats, but they probably have their reasons. Meanwhile, you can view the pdf files on the DR (slow, because they're giant images), but if you want to do a full text search you'll have to run them by Adobe Professional or ABBYY's Finereader.

Theoretically, an OCR software should be able to take a .txt file and match it to an image-only pdf making it an OCR'ed pdf (without the mistakes of an automatic OCR), but I don't know any that does that.

03-10-2009, 10:53 PM	#1
amgoforth Groupie Posts: 195 Karma: 3142469 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Odessa, Texas Device: 2 Kindles, 2 Nooks, 2 Kobos, Ipad.	iRex Digital Reader works to view Google Pdfs Ever since I heard of the Sony reader I have wanted a device to read Google and Internet archive pdfs on. Well it takes a little time, but the DR will do the job on the Google pdfs. As far as internet archive pdfs go, the DR will not view them without some changes. I wish someone who knows more about pdfs then I do would come up with a solution. To get internet archive pdfs to be viewable on the DR involves reprinting the pdf to a pdf which winds up making a 2 or 3 hundred mb file. The DR will then read the file just fine, but what a hassle.

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03-11-2009, 03:18 AM	#2
Grimulkan Lord Posts: 177 Karma: 328 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Q1 (on way out), PRS505, DR1000S (dead :<), TC1100 (10'' perfection!)	Google pdfs (and downloads from Google books, a great many rare books there) work fine on the DR, although a they're a little slow and benefit from optimization. IA pdfs also seem to work for me, if you linked to a troublesome pdf, I could take a look. If a "pdf print" throws out a pdf much larger than the original, its possible that your printer is printing the pdf as a bunch of no-nonsense images, which is why it loads on the DR, albiet slowly.

03-29-2009, 02:16 PM	#5
Grimulkan Lord Posts: 177 Karma: 328 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Q1 (on way out), PRS505, DR1000S (dead :<), TC1100 (10'' perfection!)	Most Google .pdf files are actually image-only, and do not even include the OCR'ed text. This is ridiculous, considering they have an image-over-text version "online", and allow downloading of text-only formats, but they probably have their reasons. Meanwhile, you can view the pdf files on the DR (slow, because they're giant images), but if you want to do a full text search you'll have to run them by Adobe Professional or ABBYY's Finereader. Theoretically, an OCR software should be able to take a .txt file and match it to an image-only pdf making it an OCR'ed pdf (without the mistakes of an automatic OCR), but I don't know any that does that.

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