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Old 02-14-2010, 06:42 AM   #1
Tobago
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Question Problems with converting Palm PDB-PDF files to other formats/show in calibre-viewer

First, thank you for calibre, it's great software, still supporting my old Palm m500!!

I have a problem with some PDB-files, which are 'Tagged PDFs', created with Adobe Reader for Palm OS. Those I cannot convert to any other format.

I get the below error for each 'PDF-PDB':

Code:
ERROR: Konvertierungsfehler [Conversion failure]: <b>Misslungen[Failed]</b>: Konvertiere Buch 11 von 41 [Converting book x of y] (PR SB 42 - Das Zeitko_1_pdf_0l)

Konvertiere Buch 11 von 41 (PR SB 42 - Das Zeitko_1_pdf_0l)
Resolved conversion options
{'asciiize': True,
 'author_sort': None,
 'authors': None,
 'base_font_size': 0.0,
 'book_producer': None,
 'chapter': u"//*[((name()='h1' or name()='h2') and re:test(., 'chapter|book|section|part\\s+', 'i')) or @class = 'chapter']",
 'chapter_mark': u'pagebreak',
 'comments': None,
 'cover': None,
 'debug_pipeline': None,
 'disable_font_rescaling': False,
 'dont_justify': False,
 'dont_split_on_page_breaks': False,
 'extra_css': None,
 'extract_to': None,
 'flow_size': 260,
 'font_size_mapping': None,
 'footer_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)',
 'header_regex': u'(?i)(?<=<hr>)((\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?\\d+<br>\\s*.*?\\s*)|(\\s*<a name=\\d+></a>((<img.+?>)*<br>\\s*)?.*?<br>\\s*\\d+))(?=<br>)',
 'input_encoding': None,
 'input_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.InputProfile object at 0x02BF1D50>,
 'insert_blank_line': False,
 'insert_metadata': False,
 'isbn': None,
 'language': None,
 'level1_toc': None,
 'level2_toc': None,
 'level3_toc': None,
 'line_height': 0.0,
 'linearize_tables': False,
 'margin_bottom': 5.0,
 'margin_left': 5.0,
 'margin_right': 5.0,
 'margin_top': 5.0,
 'max_toc_links': 50,
 'no_chapters_in_toc': False,
 'no_default_epub_cover': False,
 'no_inline_navbars': False,
 'output_profile': <calibre.customize.profiles.OutputProfile object at 0x02BF1F10>,
 'page_breaks_before': u'/',
 'prefer_metadata_cover': False,
 'preprocess_html': False,
 'pretty_print': True,
 'print_formatted_paras': False,
 'publisher': None,
 'rating': None,
 'read_metadata_from_opf': 'c:\\dokume~1\\tristar\\lokale~1\\temp\\calibre_0.6.39_jbyt9o.opf',
 'remove_first_image': False,
 'remove_footer': False,
 'remove_header': False,
 'remove_paragraph_spacing': False,
 'remove_paragraph_spacing_indent_size': 1.5,
 'series': None,
 'series_index': None,
 'single_line_paras': False,
 'tags': None,
 'title': None,
 'title_sort': None,
 'toc_filter': None,
 'toc_threshold': 6,
 'use_auto_toc': False,
 'verbose': 2}
InputFormatPlugin: PDB Input running
on D:\temp\CO\eBooks\Das Zeitko~1 pdf\PR SB 42 - Das Zeitko_1_pdf_0l (62)\PR SB 42 - Das Zeitko_1_pdf_0l - Das Zeitko~1 pdf.pdb
Python function terminated unexpectedly
  No reader available for format within container.
 Identity is .pdfADBE. Book type is Adobe Reader (Error Code: 1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site.py", line 103, in main
  File "site.py", line 85, in run_entry_point
  File "site-packages\calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 99, in main
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\convert\gui_conversion.py", line 24, in gui_convert
  File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plumber.py", line 745, in run
  File "site-packages\calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 211, in __call__
  File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\pdb\input.py", line 39, in convert

calibre.ebooks.pdb.PDBError: No reader available for format within container.
 Identity is .pdfADBE. Book type is Adobe Reader
On my Desktop-PC I do not have Adobe Reader installed, because of frequent security issues, but instead I have FoxIt PDF-Reader, but the system standard PDF-Reader should be used nevertheless, so the internal PDF-file should display correctly, at least in the Calibre-internal eBook-Viewer.

Having a rather large library of those 'PDF-PDBs', so being unable to import/convert them is quite problematic.

I want to get away from the PDF-format to a common, open ebook-format and reader, but this currently stops for me the proceding.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
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Old 02-14-2010, 08:00 AM   #2
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PDF-PDBs are not supported. Only PalmDoc, ztxt, and eReader PDBs are supported.
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Old 02-14-2010, 09:09 AM   #3
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I see, do you know/have an idea how I can extract the PDF from the PDB again?
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Old 02-14-2010, 11:59 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobago View Post
I see, do you know/have an idea how I can extract the PDF from the PDB again?
Nope. Send me a few, john at nachtimwald.com and I'll look into it.
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Old 02-18-2010, 07:25 AM   #5
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Smile

Hi John, sorry for my late reply.

I played with the PDF-PDBs and had some corresponding original 'non-palmed' PDFs to compare to.
The AdobeReader for PalmOS converter adds a stub to the original PDF-file and wraps it into a PDB-file.

This is for text-only PDFs, if there are images, overlarge fonts in it,
they are replaced with a lower size/resolution version, according to
the chosen colour-depth and size in Adobe Reader for PalmOS-Converter.

It's easy to get a PDF back, all it takes is finding first hex-values sequence
25 50 44 46 2D ('%PDF-') in the file, stripping everything before it and
finding the PDF-End-marker: hex: 25 25 45 4F 46 ('%%EOF') and remove
everything after it.

To put it in Perl-code:
Code:
  if ( $pdfPdb =~ m/(%PDF-.*%%EOF)/m ) {
 print "Successfully extracted PDF: <$1>\n";
 }
The procedure works with every PDF-PDB I have tested so far!
I am really glad I am finally not trapped with non-recoverable PDF-PDBs.

I searched the 'net before for a software or script to do this, but found none.
Now adding support for the PDB-type/identifier '.pdf'/'ADBE' in Calibre would be easy in my opinion!
This would be another feature only Calibre supports, to make it even more outstanding.

But please do not hardcode opening it with Adobe Reader, but with the system's default PDF-Reader.
(I uninstalled Adobe/Acrobat PDF because of frequent security problems and use Foxit PDF Reader instead.)

I can send you some PDFs if you want, but most are multi-Mebibite large.
Should I open a new ticket for Calibre?
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Old 02-19-2010, 07:08 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobago View Post
This is for text-only PDFs, if there are images, overlarge fonts in it, they are replaced with a lower size/resolution version, according to the chosen colour-depth and size in Adobe Reader for PalmOS-Converter.
Are these changed in the PDF itself that is in the PDB container?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobago View Post
It's easy to get a PDF back, all it takes is finding first hex-values sequence 25 50 44 46 2D ('%PDF-') in the file, stripping everything before it and finding the PDF-End-marker: hex: 25 25 45 4F 46 ('%%EOF') and remove everything after it.
Sounds easy enough to deal with.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobago View Post
But please do not hardcode opening it with Adobe Reader, but with the system's default PDF-Reader. (I uninstalled Adobe/Acrobat PDF because of frequent security problems and use Foxit PDF Reader instead.)
calibre would open it with the internal viewer unless you set it to use the reader set as the system default.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tobago View Post
I can send you some PDFs if you want, but most are multi-Mebibite large. Should I open a new ticket for Calibre?
Opening a ticket and attaching a few files would be great. If the size prevents them from being attached or if they are under copyright you can email them to me directly at john at nachtimwald.com. I would like a few so I can test the python solution I'll add to calibre before releasing it. I want to play with things like setting the metadata as PDF's and PDB's support different info.
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Old 02-21-2010, 08:09 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by user_none View Post
Are these changed in the PDF itself that is in the PDB container?
Yes, I have now created new PDF-PDBs where I have my original PDFs compared with WinMerge and they are completely different, so the PDFs are (almost) completely changed, but the representation when converted back is quite similar.

Quote:
Originally Posted by user_none View Post
Opening a ticket and attaching a few files would be great. If the size prevents them from being attached or if they are under copyright you can email them to me directly at john at nachtimwald.com. I would like a few so I can test the python solution I'll add to calibre before releasing it. I want to play with things like setting the metadata as PDF's and PDB's support different info.
Created ticket http://bugs.calibre-ebook.com/ticket/4971, I emailed you the link to the server hosting the files, some are under copyright.

Last edited by Tobago; 02-21-2010 at 08:23 AM. Reason: inserted Ticket-Link
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Old 04-29-2010, 04:57 PM   #8
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Palm PDF will change pdf to text.
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