KOBO pdf thumbs-down

[viviena]

I hate those hard lines, they drive me bonkers. That said, it would be possible to open up the ePub and do a find-and-replace feature on <br />, which should be the equivalent of a new line. It depends on how Calibre's rendered the file in XHTML code. If the paragraphs are also separated by <br /> however (instead of being styled as <p> or perhaps <div>), then doing this causes problems of its own. In any case, it takes a long time and isn't usually worth the effort especially if the PDF's original presentation is poor -- I've tried it once, and never again.

I have an old copy of Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), so I'm not sure if it's possible with the latter, but does Reader have a native HTML export option? I've tried it once or twice with Acrobat, and it worked fairly well. No arbitrary breaks, anyway, and formatted properly in regards to paragraphs.

Another option is to crop the margins, and I'm reading a cropped PDF pretty satisfactorily on the Kobo at this moment. Not conversion, obviously, but sometimes it's just not worth the effort. This only works for PDFs with a lot of whitespace (such as academic journal articles -- they often have ridiculously big margins, for some reason -- or the occasional book) and if the font size isn't already on the small side in the PDF. I think you'd need either Acrobat or... I swear there's a freeware program mentioned on MR even, that does the same job.

EDIT: For the removal of margins, BRISS appears to be one such program. More can be turned up by searching the forums.

Last option I can think of is to use an OCR program that can scan through PDFs and output to an editable format. Not familiar with this route however.

I wouldn't say any of these ideas are necessarily better, but hopefully the brainstorming here will help somebody in some way.

[SameerH]

Originally Posted by 3d0g

PDF = Portable DOCUMENT Format. As documents are usually A4 / Letter sized, things are going to look tiny on a 6" screen. That's physics. The fact the kobo does PDF at all is a bonus. Many eReaders do not. Seek out EPUB content for a better eReading experience.

This is correct and the reason why we tried to preserve dimensions and offer a pan / zoom vs. reflow in the first launch.

However, based on everyone's feedback it's clear that reflowing PDF's is much desired.

We tried to include PDF reflow in the version 1.4 firmware but ran into some unexplainable crashes and ran out of time. We had no choice except to hang our heads and pull out the feature.

It was quite disappointing as it was in the top 5 most requested features. It's still on our list of things to do and we hope to get to it soon.

[SensualPoet]

Welcome back to the forum, Sameer.

The Kobo is really a very nice, basic reader. There are many happy customers, no doubt. Having a presence by a visible Kobo person here is terribly helpful in reminding us that Kobo is here for the long haul.

[3d0g]

Originally Posted by SameerH

We tried to include PDF reflow in the version 1.4 firmware but ran into some unexplainable crashes and ran out of time. We had no choice except to hang our heads and pull out the feature.

If you guy's pull it off, you'd have a HUGE advantage on the competition. PDFs tagged for reflow are basically non-existent, and the "auto-tagging" I've seen is a real crapshoot at best.

[HamsterRage]

Most PDF documents I've seen are formatted for A4 or 8 1/2 X 11" paper. This just doesn't work well on a 6" screen. I avoid PDF whenever possible.

PDF conversions to ePub are rough at best. They're really not much better than OCR'd documents as far as a starting place for ePub conversion. Calibre actually does a pretty good job as far as handling the line breaks. Fiddle the line % parameter.

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by zoran

I had some time trying out to convert pdf to epub. Calibre is
fine utility for this, but it is not panacea. People start to make
documents in pdf or saving them in pdf as default. Cannot say
why is that. The reason I mention this is that mostly they not
press <enter> in their work. So, there is not hard new line, or
I'm totally wrong. If I'm right, this kind of data is converted
without a hiccup. I have some books reading just as any other.
There is also another kind of pdf documents. They seems to
have new line and the output looks like this:

This is a new line that should show
you how I not
intent to format epub book.

Whatever I try, nothing. Converting this way, another way.
Stays the same. More users have the same problem. If some-
one could point to something better, please, do it.

Calibre does have a Line Un-Wrapping Factor that might help you. From the Calibre manual:

PDF documents are one of the worst formats to convert from. They are a fixed page size and text placement format. Meaning, it is very difficult to determine where one paragraph ends and another begins. calibre will try to unwrap paragraphs using a configurable, Line Un-Wrapping Factor. This is a scale used to determine the length at which a line should be unwrapped. Valid values are a decimal between 0 and 1. The default is 0.5, this is the median line length. Lower this value to include more text in the unwrapping. Increase to include less. You can adjust this value in the conversion settings under PDF Input.

Also, they often have headers and footers as part of the document that will become included with the text. Use the options to remove headers and footers to mitigate this issue. If the headers and footers are not removed from the text it can throw off the paragraph unwrapping.

Some limitations of PDF input is complex, multi-column, and image based documents are not supported. Extraction of vector images and tables from within the document is also not supported.

[zoran]

Originally Posted by moffattm

Calibre does have a Line Un-Wrapping Factor that might help you. From the Calibre manual:

Yep, I was aware of that.
Anyway, there is an option to manually change all line breaks.
Once, never again. Also, taking separate pages and doing some
exchanging is time consuming and tedious. As a result, I conver-
ted what I could. The rest is on my box and waits.
Since pdf was not intended for reading, but rather printing, my
best guess is that people know what they are doing. I have not a
single pdf on my reader. So far.

[51Bush]

Originally Posted by steerpike

Basically a PDF displays on a Kobo but is not able to be read. At full size, the print is tiny and zooming in and panning line by line with a 5 second delay would have my ereader thrown against the wall by page 3. Maybe there is a PDF out there somewhere that is the right size but I have yet to find one. A fail for the Kobo in my book.

You can convert PDFs and I have tried. Usually the line length is set which gives you a one word line every second line. An ereader is about a superior reading performance. so still a fail. I read PDFs on a netbook.

Bottom line - if the Kobo can't get this fixed, they are misleading customers by calling it PDF capable.

While I am in this mood, a few more disappointments are the limited battery life ( two weeks?), of sometimes 2 days. And a dead battery shows up by locking the display AND losing the place 400 pages in to a book - with no way other than page turns to get back to your place. A firmware upgrade is supposed to solve these issues but I have been on their Early Access program for a month now and no word at all.

A Kobo reads epubs fine which is why I have not taken mine back. Fair to say though, after spending NZ$300, I am not thrilled with my purchase.

Hi STEERPIKE
The KOBO update to ver 1.4 will solve your problems about the device locking up with an extinct battery. I've installed the upgrade with no problems at all and it then gives you a warning about "low Battery - please recharge" before you loose your place which I agree was terminally frustrating!

The 1.4 update link is on the Whitcoulls site now as well as the update to the Whitcoulls PC application itself.

The new 1.4 sleep/off mode is great on battery life too.

We use Calibre for ebook management and it's superb - even if there does seem to be an update every couple of days!

I agree PDFs ain't the greatest on the KOBO but you can always conert the suckers to EPUB using Calibre.............

Rots of Ruck

[vatsuko]

Originally Posted by SameerH

it was in the top 5 most requested features. It's still on our list of things to do and we hope to get to it soon.

please do so sir T.T...
i've bought the kobo reader in order to read some teaching material most is about designing ( lots of pictures and unusual gap that prevent me from converting it to EPub for a decent result. i've tried cutting whitey with briss, crop it with pdfcropper, papercrop, just about any software i could have my hand on )

we'll be waiting soo for 1.5 sir.. tq very much

[Vardd]

I've read many Pdf books on my kobo, university paper, textbook, etc.
I've been satisfied with every single one of them.

All you have to do :

Use Briss, Crop the Margin, this will get the text much bigger
- Transfer to kobo
-put landscape
And there you go, it takes 3 "click" to read a page, the text is large enough , Graph can be seen, Small text can also be read.

You can always use Calibre, but my experience with it hasn't been satisfying at all.

PDFill, the free version, can also be used to crop the margins. It is a little bit trickier, but doesn't take more then 2 minutes.

If you need help, let me know.

(It also depends what is "large enough" for you. I still pretty in my 20's with good eyes, so maybe I am biased? )



For the reading list , I remember a post about it a couple weeks ago. But I can't find it back. I'll try to find it for you tonight.

[alroy]

Buy the Bookeen Opus if you want to read PDF books. It handles PDF files the best and I know because I have 3 other ebook readers.

[46jimbo]

I've used the following method to read PDF's on my Sony Reader. I found this method in another section of this forum. Many thanks to those who made it.

Unzip the 'soPDF Bundle' file and have the 2 files in the same folder.

Run 'sopdfwin.exe' (its a graphical interface). Browse to find your input pdf file in the first box. Press 'Process' and it's done. (The original file is preserved and the new file is renamed.)

What the program does is crop the margins and chop the page length to fit the ereader screen.

Of course, you will have problems with graphics. Works best with straight text.

[zoran]

Originally Posted by 46jimbo

I've used the following method to read PDF's on my Sony Reader. I found this method in another section of this forum. Many thanks to those who made it.

Unzip the 'soPDF Bundle' file and have the 2 files in the same folder.

Run 'sopdfwin.exe' (its a graphical interface). Browse to find your input pdf file in the first box. Press 'Process' and it's done. (The original file is preserved and the new file is renamed.)

What the program does is crop the margins and chop the page length to fit the ereader screen.

Of course, you will have problems with graphics. Works best with straight text.

Interesting. It is no-install binary? If yes, I will try that out as soon as I
get to win node.

[moffattm]

soPDF is quite interesting. I had to try out all the different options to find one that worked well for me, it's a shame there are no instructions that tell you what each option does in detail.

I found "Fit 2x Height" works best for me, and then setting the Kobo to display in landscape and "whole page" magnification.

[zoran]

Originally Posted by moffattm

soPDF is quite interesting. I had to try out all the different options to find one that worked well for me, it's a shame there are no instructions that tell you what each option does in detail.

I found "Fit 2x Height" works best for me, and then setting the Kobo to display in landscape and "whole page" magnification.

I made a little search and found it on mobileread. Developer
left about a year ago, so no news on the sopdf.
Have you installed some added libraries to your computer?
Have a look at the very first post, I think the guy is "theguru".
He mentioned some running libs, part of visual studio.