PRS-600 how to read pdf file on prs 600

[venkatesh]

Hi,

I have trouble reading some technical pdfs on the PRS 600.
I have tried/trying the following options

Option 1.

I tried copying the file directly on the Reader. It renders the basic font as very small. If I increase the font to Medium on the reader, then the formatting is lost.

Option 2.

I tried to convert the pdf into epub using calibre. But again it is no use

Option 3.

I am now trying to convert the pdf into a pdf using calibre.

But if others have tried and know better tools or options then please help me out.

BTW I use a Mac, so the tools need to be Mac or Linux based.

If there is no one proper way then I guess we can use this thread to enumerate all possible means people use.

thanks,
-venkatesh

[m-reader]

Calibre manual actually states that PDF is the worst input format for conversion. The formatting issue you are experiencing with increased font size is actually a "feature" - reflow. If you open a PDF file in Adobe Reader and turn reflow on, you'll get the same effect.
I don't have much experience in fiddling with PDF other than cropping white margins with Adobe Acrobat. This seemed to help things on my Irex Iliad.

[grooks]

I believe with a Mac you can edit the PDF to remove the margins so it may look better in portrait mode. An alternative is to read the PDF in landscape mode. It will break each page into a top half and bottom half but otherwise maintain the integrity of the original document.

As you are finding out PDFs are not ideal formats for 6" screens, especially technical PDFs.

[robkat]

try converting to html then epub. may work

[drmaxx]

Originally Posted by grooks

An alternative is to read the PDF in landscape mode. It will break each page into a top half and bottom half but otherwise maintain the integrity of the original document.

For technical documents with complex layouts this is the only reasonable way to go.
For shorter documents I convert PDF files into RTF files, edit them so that they look decent and convert them to epub. Did not find any reasonable way to deal with long documents.

[Mike_73]

Did you try zoom and pan?
It may not be too convenient to move a letter sized page on a 6" screen to actually read the content, but depending on how good your eyes are, you can zoom in on only 1/4 page and then move the page 4 times. If this is too small, increase zoom level and move around a little more.
This feature is one of the main reasons I switched from 505 to 600. If I cannot reflow the pdf properly to a larger font, I use zoom and pan.
Since I switched readers, I haven't reformatted any of my pdfs.

[venkatesh]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I tried the landscape mode it works the the best. I am also trying tool called pdfread. It was able to convert one of my complex pdf files really well. But it seems to convert the pdf into a set of images. So the reading experience is not consistent across pages and across pdfs.

So as per suggestions here is the list

1. Read in landscape mode
2. Convert small pdfs to rtf edit and convert to epub (I havent tried it yet)
3. Try your luck with calibre conversion (hasnt worked for me)
4. Use the Sony reader reflow (it works beautifully, just that it is inconvenient)
5. Try using pdfread to convert pdf file to fit the reader
6. Try to clip the margins of the pdf file (using a acrobat reader??)
7. Convert pdf to html and then to epub (havent tried it yet)

-venkatesh

[torwalker]

Hi
These suggestions are useful, however the best seems to be not to use PDF but to convert to rtf. I recently loaded some text based PDFs onto my PRS-600. The font scaling feature had NO effect and to use the zoom even in landscape and keep the text readable meant small number of words in view and frequent panning right, left and down. Add to that the up down left right arrows which it appears must be there when in use (and blocking text) and the whole thing is really annoying. It's possible that I am missing something but I don't think so. Copy and paste into a blank Word document, save it and import it into Reader and life is MUCH easier. It's the one thing about the PRS-600 that has not lived up to my expectations. Do you think Sony intend to improve the software to handle these file types?

[R0B_IX]

Here are a few more suggestions (this is what I've been doing).

First, if you don't care about the dictionary feature, then give pdflrf a shot. It will basically convert your document into a set of images and allows you to resize the pages during conversion. For instance, I go with the option that turns every page into two pages and fits each page to the width of the device (eliminating margins). In addition, and this is very nice, it can thicken all of the text, making documents easier to read.

If that doesn't meet your needs, you might want to try using acrobat (not reader, but the full thing) a shot to do the pdf -> html conversion. I've found that it does the best job. You can get a free trial from adobe's website to see if it works for your documents. Once it's in html, I usually have calibre convert to an epub, but that's just personal preference.

[Mike_73]

Converting a pdf by extracting the text to a wordprocessing program works really good. I tried that before and it's great as long as there aren't pictures and graphs involved.
If a pdf font cannot be increased by the zoom (s, m, L, etc.), then usually the pdf is made of pictures. I've encountered that before. If it's a true pdf (just try in Acrobat reader): If you can highlight text then it's a real pdf, if you cannot then the pdf's pages are actually pictures which you can extract).

But actually, as the 600 provides zoom and pan, I didn't need to convert anything. Either if it's true pdf or not. If reflowing mixes up the text, just zoom to any level with the touch slider and then pan to where ever you want to read. Worked perfectly so far for me ;-)

Edit: Ok, sometimes I wished text would be rendered darker, but in that case, increasing zoom usually does the trick.

[beppe]

You might try to optimize your PDF.
This post shows how

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9562 [/URL]